I still lift at Brussels Weightlifting School (BWS), albeit virtually right now. As you will see below, I took home my barbell which was sheltering at the local CrossFit, borrowed a CrossFit set 0f 5kg discs as I did not get to BWS fast enough before the lockdown, and use my own heavier discs from the garage box from my old home plateau. I lift on my front porch on concrete slabs, with cardboard, a wooden plank and some rubber mats.
So I film my lifts and ship them off via IG messages to my coach Anna van Bellinghen, who comes back fairly quickly with comments. Anna shares a One Drive space with me for my training program, and I update it weekly on what days I plan to train.
My video coach Michaela Breeze also gets videos from me using Hudl, and she comments and draws on the videos for commentary. Given she is a new mum of twin boys, this is currently done while she is walking the boys in a baby sling on windy Welsh roads, so the occasional background noises are quite interesting (baby crying and windy gusts). 🙂
Is everything cancelled or postponed? The European Masters is now in late Fall / early Winter. I was planning to go to the Worlds in Germany in September, but when they moved it to America and to a bad time of year for me (resit exam sessions are in late August; as a professor, hard to get out of supervision), that event went away. Now the Worlds is cancelled, and the next Worlds is Kansai 2021, which is not only expensive but again a time of year which may be a challenge for me to get time off work. I do love the IMG events, having been to several, but where the lifting venue is in Japan is fairly remote from anything and might be a challenge to organize travel post-COVID.
The Belgian lifting season had started with one interclub, but not clear to me at this point when we can go further, or where/when I will take my Cat 1 refereee exam which we had discussed.
But I love lifting, so I keep going as I can.
