The boxing world was already excited about Moses Itauma – then he dealt Dillian Whyte a knockout blow within two minutes. Whyte was considered the 20-year-old’s sternest test to date, having previously dispatched Derek Chisora and sharing the ring with Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury. Itauma did not get the memo, flooring his opponent in the first round to maintain an unsullied record of 13-0 (11). Itauma catches the eye because he exhibits as a consummate athlete. Clips show him flicking a football around like Ronaldinho, his strength numbers are eyebrow-raising – squat: 211kg / bench: 175kg / deadlift 280kg – and he ran a sub-two-hour half-marathon over one of the Covid lockdown because, in his own words, “I was pretty bored”. But it is Itauma’s speed and power that excite most when he fights. To train these attributes, alongside boxing-specific work and other exercises, his strength and conditioning coach Jordan Vine uses Olympic weightlifting training – something he says that many boxing coaches are hesitant to do. This is what happened when I tried it. Olympic weightlifting is, on the face of it, just two lifts; the snatch, followed by the clean and jerk. The snatch involves lifting a barbell from the ground to an overhead position in one smooth motion. The clean and jerk involves lifting a barbell from the ground to a front rack position, where it sits across the shoulders in front of the neck, then hoisting it overhead in a separate movement. These are the two exercises completed by weightlifters at the Olympics. Athletes have three attempts at each lift, and their score or ‘total’ is the combined value of their heaviest successful clean and jerk and their heaviest successful snatch. While weightlifting comprises just two exercises, weightlifting training has a far wider scope, with variations of these moves used to develop specific attributes or portions of each lift. For example, the snatch/clean pull, drop snatch, tall clean and power snatch/clean. Itauma’s PRs in the power clean and power snatch are 140kg and 95kg, respectively. There are many who will devote countless hours to this practice and not touch these numbers. “For me, the key attribute for boxers to develop is power – [creating force, fast],” Itauma’s strength and conditioning coach Jordan Vine tells me. “Olympic weightlifting is my background, so we do a lot of Olympic lifts. I think this is what gives us an edge over others, as coaching these lifts is second nature to me. I also try not to overcomplicate things – there’s a beauty in doing the basics well and consistently.” I was overjoyed when I heard this. Olympic weightlifting is one of the greatest sporting expressions of force there is. It is not brute strength that shoots the barbell skyward, but rather an explosive and cohesive triple extension at the knees, hips and ankles – not unlike that seen when landing a knockout blow. Force has to be generated through the ground, transferred through the legs and core, then expressed through the upper extremities, requiring speed and total body tension while, again, mirroring a punch. There are plenty of other elements that play into an athlete’s ability to express power in a sporting context – one Olympic weightlifting session will not make an elite boxer. Factors such as stature, body composition, skill, technique, strength, genetics, muscle fibre composition and more will all play their part. But elite sport is a game of minuscule margins, and anything that may nudge an athlete’s performance in the right direction can make all the difference come fight night. I am no stranger to Olympic weightlifting. It has been a consistent part of my training plans for the last three years, although I remain aggressively average at the practice. However, buoyed by my chat with Vine and Itauma’s impressive victory over Whyte, I headed to my local gym and loaded up a barbell for an Olympic weightlifting session. The aim: to build to a heavy single on both the snatch and the clean and jerk. After a comprehensive warm-up, I started with the snatch – the trickier of the two lifts, and consequently the one where you will most likely lift significantly lighter weights. In training, it appears Itauma favours the power clean and power snatch. This means he catches the lifts with his thighs remaining above parallel rather than in a full squat, relying on a powerful pull to generate enough height on the barbell to do so. I was semi-glad to see this – the mobility needed to catch a squat snatch is enough to humble most people – and endeavoured to do the same. Even so, the power snatch soon reintroduced me to my humility. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to do a biceps curl well. There are tweaks you can make to influence muscular engagement, but a novice will be able to crank out reps within their first session. The snatch, on the other hand, is a lift complex enough to leave even rocket scientists scratching their skulls. “For me, the Olympic lifts are not used enough with boxers because they’re very technical and most strength and conditioning coaches can’t teach them,” Vine says. “But they’re the best exercises for developing explosive power, and I use them in most of my sessions.” There are myriad things to think about as you lift the barbell from the floor: tight body, bar over the midfoot, chest up. Then, as you look to shoot the bar from your hips to overhead, you have to resist the urge to rush or you risk bypassing full extension of the hips – the source of most of your power in this movement. Through this process, which is all over within a fraction of a second, the barbell must stay close to your body in a temporarily weightless state as you rotate your wrists underneath the bar to catch it with extended arms. Try as I might, most reps felt slightly off. Filming a few, I could spot some areas where I was going wrong, whether this was pulling too early or allowing the bar to travel away from my body so it looped back towards me and knocked me off balance during the catch. After half-an-hour of micro-adjustments, reruns and significant rest periods, I stuck the landing on a few solid reps, and the resulting feeling of satisfaction was immense. In the end, I left with a top lift of 75kg – 20kg shy of Itauma’s showing. The clean and jerk has always been my favourite of the two Olympic lifts, not least because it is slightly simpler and - as is the case with most people - I am a little bit better at it. Similar to the snatch, there is a lot to think about with each lift, and twice as many chances to fail as you have to first clear the weight, then jerk it overhead. However, I find these lifts offer a slightly wider margin for error than the snatch – a lift where, if you catch it a couple of millimetres too far forwards or backwards, the barbell inevitably sends you off balance and forces you to drop it. Because of its marginally more straightforward nature, the power clean is a favourite among athletics and American football coaches for developing power. There is something primal about prising a heavy weight from the floor then extending at the hips to send it flying up to your shoulders. Consequently, it is incredibly fun. I managed to build up to 105kg on the day, then send this overhead successfully with a split jerk – an exercise where you start with the barbell across your shoulders, dip slightly at the knees, then explosively straighten your legs to drive the weight upwards before dropping into a lunge position and catching it overhead with arms extended. I was happy with my efforts, although Itauma’s 140kg power clean PR clearly demonstrated why one of us is a professional athlete and the other simply writes about athletic feats.