Shechet ’09 works the weights

Shechet began weightlifting in high school as extra training for his original passions, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo and mixed martial arts. But as he lifted more and more, Shechet began to enjoy weightlifting for its own sake. Following his freshman year, he discovered a very well-qualified weightlifting coach in his home town of Lexington, KY.

“Initially it was still supplemental, but the longer I did it the more I liked it,” Shechet said. “This past year I’ve decided to take time off from other stuff to focus on lifting.”

Unfortunately for Shechet, he was unable to attend his first scheduled competition last month after sustaining an injury just before the tournament. And though Shechet’s raw numbers — his high for the snatch is 62 kilos and for the clean sweep is 86 kilos — might not blow you away right now, he has a clear-cut plan to elevate his performance.

“If you look at the way high-level Eastern European lifters train, you learn that the first three years are just spent on technique,” Shechet said. “It is an incredibly technical sport, and there is no margin for error. If you focus only on getting strong early, you can easily injure yourself and end your career early. I’m not happy with my numbers right now, but as long as my technique improves, the strength is the easy part.”

Shechet spends most of his time on variations of the snatch and the clean, working on specific parts of the motion separately so as to ensure that his technique is impeccable throughout the entire movement.

“I also spend a lot of time squatting and doing general conditioning,” Shechet said. “Work capacity is a big factor in how much you can train, and spending time on conditioning now makes it so that I can push it later.”

While it may seem a surprise to those who imagine weight-lifters as airheaded buffoons, Shechet suggests that the mental requirements of lifting far surpass the physical demands.

“You have to be able to attend to an incredible number of minute details in executing each lift,” Shechet said. “You need to know where your balance point is. You need to know how far the bar is from your body. You need to know how tight and rigid you are keeping your body. All of these are physical tasks, but the ability to coordinate them is very mental.”

Confidence is also a big part of Shechet’s performance as a lifter.

“You have to be able to deal with periods without progress and stick to it,” Shechet said.

Shechet cites his coach as the biggest contributor to his success, as the observations of an outsider go a long way.

“I absolutely need another pair of eyes on me,” Shechet said. “I can miss a lift a dozen times and not know what went wrong, but my coach can say to me ‘your pinky is loose’ and it’ll work. He has this joke: if you don’t make a lift until the fifth time, have you gotten stronger? No. You just did it right.”

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Discipline and dedication have also helped Shechet along the way. He cites school as the only priority he holds above lifting.

Shechet’s eating habits play a big part in his training. He follows the Paleolithic diet.

“Basically, if I couldn’t pick it out of the ground or stab it with a stick, I don’t eat it,” Shechet said. “We haven’t really evolved to digest grains and dairy, so I stick to things that were available to cavemen like meat, leaves, berries and nuts.”

Shechet is a psychology major and a member of Terrace Club. He hopes to pursue strength and conditioning as a career, and spends much of his spare time reading up on the field.

Gymnastics and track and field are Shechet’s favorite sports to watch, and his favorite sports team is the Bulgarian light and middleweight weightlifting team.

“Bulgaria is a small country without an enormous population, but they work so hard and perform every time,” Shechet said. “The level of dedication is incredible. Those guys are practicing twice a day every day and putting up mind-boggling numbers. I kind of idolize them.”