I couldn’t think of a better way to wrap up our fitness series than with this motivated and athletic individual, Melissa Allen. Melissa is someone I’ve met through an athletic whitewater sport. Bellyak. In my opinion there is nothing this girl can’t do when it comes to physical fitness, something she takes seriously to train and mixes it up for fun and play but let me promise you, she is not afraid to get her sweat on!
How do I sweat?
Ha, well it certainly depends on what year we’re talking about! I’ve been active nearly all of my life and I have always had a drive to move my body and become the best I can be, in whatever sport I choose. Movement has been how I most relate to the world and feel at my best. As a pre-teen, my parents had me in swim team multiple summers in a row to keep me busy while not in school and I played basketball and soccer while in middle and high school. During those years I was also introduced into partner dancing and I started running. I remember that running while in high school kept my teenage anxiety in control and dancing gave me a creative social outlet that introduced a whole new way to move my body and connect with people. In college running was always my go-to. I was alone and could sweat and process and just be. Trails or road, it didn’t matter. About two years ago after many longer distance races I decided to do a trail marathon on my 26th birthday. It was one of my favorite birthday memories to this date, but after that feat, I was ready to move on to another physical challenge.I was introduced to Crossfit and quickly picked up the sport, really enjoyed the brutal workouts and myriad movements to master. However, the gym I went to began a Barbell Club in December of 2016, specifically training individuals in Olympic Weightlifiting and as usual my curiosity lead to me start training in the club. I was mesmerized watching well trained athletes lift, and craved to feel what it would be like, to move the way they did. Within a few weeks I stopped Crossfit all together to focus on Olympic Lifting and have been training as well as competing in the sport ever since.
To briefly describe what Olympic Weightlifting is, in the broadest sense, it is a way to get a barbell with weight locked-out overhead by two extremely technical and explosive moves called the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk. One gets the barbell from the ground to locked out overhead in one movement, and the other goes from the ground to the shoulders, then to overhead. What drew me to this sport is the technicality it requires to become a good lifter. You can be strong but if you don’t have the correct technique, there is a good chance you will not be able to make a lift. I also had many misconceptions of what “weightlifters” looked like, or who they were. I remember having the image of huge men grunting in my mind when someone said weightlifiting, however that is certainly not the case!
I found that when I am focusing and about to lets say, Snatch, my mind clears and my breath deepens. I can not think about anything other than what I need to do to lift the weight, but also not think too much about it, so where my body will be slow. It’s a balance of thinking and not. It’s a dance between your body, the barbell and gravity. My strength has exponentially grown since weightlifting and it’s a sport that there is always, always something you can get better at. Faster at. Smoother at. And I love that about it. Weightlifting has humbled me and given me a confidence no other sport has before. It has also taught me to let go. You have bad days where you’re not moving well and can’t make a lift and feel like everything is off track. That’s normal, and to be able to accept and embrace those days along with the great ones has transferred into my overall approach with life. I have also some of my closest friends as an adult through the Weightlifting community.This year I have qualified for the American Open Series, a national level competition, and look forward to continuing to fine tune my technique, increasing my strength and finding my own style of meditation while sweating and putting a barbell over my head. I still take days to dance or work on gymnastic movements, and even though I may have bounced around sports in my past, this one might be here to stay for a while.
