To the Paris Olympics and Beyond (w/Meredith Alwine)

I wasn’t ever super taught technique, step by step, in the lifts. I came into it very quickly, lifting big numbers already. By the time I got to the international stage, I hadn’t been taught technique very much.

Welcome to the “BarBend Podcast,” where we talk to the smartest athletes, coaches, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today I’m talking to American weightlifter, Meredith Alwine, the current Pan American Champion in the women’s 71 kilogram category. I first met Meredith back in 2016 in the early days of BarBend, while doing color commentary for the RVA Open in Richmond, Virginia.

Back then, Meredith was an up-and-coming collegiate lifter. Let’s just say her progress since then has been nothing short of astounding.

She’s risen through the ranks from the local collegiate and national levels to now being a contending force at any international competition where she’s representing the US. She joins the podcast to talk about training, her progress in the sport, and coach-athlete dynamics in weightlifting.

Also, I want to take a second to say we’re incredibly thankful that you listen to this podcast. If you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the BarBend Podcast in your app of choice. Now let’s get to it.

Meredith, thanks so much for joining us. I have to say that the first time I ever came across your name was at the RVA Open back in 2016. Since then, you’ve made quite a lot of progress in the sport of weightlifting, not that you were too shabby back then.

Congrats on all of the hard work and success over the last five years. If folks aren’t aware, what body weight class do you compete at? What are some of your most notable accomplishments, or at least your favorite? What kind of numbers have you put up recently on the competition platform?

Hello. Thanks for having me. I compete at 71 and 76. I did bounce around in the 63 class a couple of times back in the day, but we stopped doing that real quick.

Not a lot of fun to have to do the six kilo cut before every competition.

No, never again. [laughs] My favorite accolades would be the Pan Am championship. Obviously the most recent, that was a lofty goal of mine. It was crazy to get it at my first ever senior Pan Ams, especially on the open and clean and jerk. That blew my mind.

I also like the sixth place as senior worlds as a junior was really big for me. Then the second place that junior worlds was also pretty big.

I still have trouble believing — I had to double check before this — that it was your first senior Pan Ams because you’ve been competing internationally for a number of years. I was looking back, I was like, “Oh, I think she’s probably got a couple Pan Ams medals,” and no, but hey, you’re one-for-one on championship, right?

[laughs] Yeah, that’s a good record to keep. We’ll try to keep it up.

What is it like winning an international, like a continental championship on your open and clean and jerk? You go out there, you make your opener, then how do you and your coach decide what to take for a second and third attempt? You’ve already got gold in the bag? What goes through your head?

It was really how do we get to the third attempt? There was a variety of weird, different goals for this meet that we could get to depending on how things went. Obviously, snatches didn’t go great. That eliminated a few things.

I think the heat and the humidity was getting to me. My legs felt a little more fatigued than they normally would .I was getting a little lightheaded after my cleans, which I don’t usually.

We were trying to get to a couple of different numbers. The second attempt was that stepping stone to the third attempt, which didn’t make it but would have been a couple of different things for me that were significant. It would have been cool, but…

It’s always interesting to talk to weightlifters after they had a “not the day they wanted, but they still came away with gold.” It’s a bit of a consolation prize. Yeah, that level. [laughs]

Let’s talk about traveling internationally because as things started to open back up, I’m not going to say we’re post-COVID because it’s not like COVID has disappeared yet. You start to compete internationally again. International competitions are happening.

I’m always curious what your routine is when you go to a new country, maybe there’s a time zone difference. Maybe it’s someplace that’s a lot different than where you live and train. What are some of the adaptations or strategies you use to get comfortable and in a completely new environment that might be halfway around the world?

Sleep is going to be the most important thing for all of us. If we can get there early enough to acclimate to a sleep time, I’ll take melatonin if I can, or trying to stay up. I remember one time when we went to Rome last January, I couldn’t sleep on the flight over and then had to spend the entire day awake because it’s an overnight red-eye.

I was miserable. That was one of the most uncomfortable times I’ve had, was just trying to keep my eyes open. Then to go to the training hall. It was really miserable. But yeah, making sure you can really get that first night of sleep acclimated. Then hopefully after that, it helps. Obviously, the bigger the time change, the longer it takes.

Aside from that, my weights are usually pretty good because we don’t get a lot of opportunities to eat. We get the three-meal at the times where I’m used to eating all day. My weight drops a little bit naturally. Being in the new training hall is weird. I like to get in pretty much as early as I can and get a few good sessions and just to feel normal after all the travel and everything again.

What are some of your favorite places that you’ve competed? It could be in the US, it could be abroad.

I really liked Germany. We were there twice for training camp and then for the Cup of Blue Swords. I really liked both times. I just like the country a lot. I really like training and competing in Tokyo because it’s always very clean and professional.

Competing in Turkmenistan was amazing. I don’t know if you ever saw the actual setup of a competition, but it was huge, and it felt so professional and real with the ESPN cameras and everything.

It’s always interesting to see because sometimes you’ll go to an international venue and the layout will just be different than what you expect. The training hall would be really far away or it’ll be uncomfortably close to the stage. You can hear the training weights while people are actually trying to compete on the stage.

For you in leveling up from being a great local, then national, then international competitor, what are some of the main differences that you think people might not know between a big international meet, as far as what it takes to really bring your A game and a local meet that a lot of listeners may have competed in or been to?

I find local meets to be the hardest to compete in. I tend to do really badly. They’re very stressful for me because of how chaotic they can be. At internationals, you are assigned to your warmup platform, nobody talks to you, nobody approaches you, everybody just does their own thing.

At local meets, it’s usually in a smaller area. There’s people everywhere. There’s people right in front of you where you’re lifting. When you’re competing, the judges are eye-level. The lights are just on. You can see and hear everything, and that’s all very, very distracting for me. I find local meets to be really stressful.

Interesting. I’ve never competed in weightlifting internationally. Surprise, surprise. For anyone who’s ever seen me attempt to lift, not a huge surprise there. Being able to calm the nerves. I’ve watched you compete internationally a few times and locally a few times. You have a very set routine. You’re clearly very focused on your goal.

You can put…I don’t know if it’s putting the blinders on or just focusing in and tuning everything out. Are you someone who’s listening to specific music when you’re warming up and about to head out to the platform? What is your routine to just get in that headspace?

Yeah, I like to listen to usually the same song. It doesn’t really matter what song but I will take a song and listen to it over and over again. Just so it’s not distracting, but it’s enough to keep everything else from being distracting.

It’s like a natural blinders when I get up there. I just don’t hear and see things, usually when I get up there. Sometimes, like at Pan Ams if I am nervous, I get distracted really easily, and I forget. My first snatch in Pan Ams, I pulled it off the floor and I blanked. It was basically a Clark. I just completely blanked on how to snatch and I was like, “What? I have no idea.”

It feels like I can’t even feel the lift anymore. If I can just listen to my music and not worry and keep myself having fun instead of nervous, that tends to help me. Then just going up there and trying to repeat the same thing to myself of whatever technical cue or whatever encouragement I’m giving myself that tends to help.

Talk a little bit about your coach. I know who your coach is right now, but I’ll let you just clarify for folks who might not know. How has your relationship evolved since you two have been working together?

Danny Camargo is my coach. We have been working together since the end of September and October. It’s been a few months. In the beginning, I guess we were both a little cautious, but we always immediately got along. He immediately changed my technique, which I was grateful for.

Our relationship is funny because it just seems like every single day, we are more and more on the same page. Ideologically with our technique, with programming, with just lifting in general, we seem to be always on the same page. I’ll say something and he goes, “Get out of my head. I was just thinking that.” We’re like that all the time.

It’s a very, very natural relationship for us. Almost like there was no onboarding process. There is. We are more comfortable now than we were before, obviously, since we know each other better. It has always been like we’re pretty much on the same page we get along, and that’s that.

I’m curious because I’ve seen your lifts evolve over the last few years, over the last five years. They’ve gone up but, I don’t have the keenest eye for technical elements like an international coach like Danny Camargo would. What are some of the technical changes that you all have been making to your list?

The big two are mostly in snatches. The emphasis on the first pull. I wasn’t ever super taught technique, step by step, in the lifts. I came into it very quickly, lifting big numbers already. By the time I got to the international stage, I hadn’t been taught technique very much.

It was a weird thing. We immediately looked at the first pull, since that was something that hadn’t been emphasized in my lifting. Putting the bar a little forward instead of back, and pushing through the whole foot instead of leaning back into my heels. That was a big issue for me, and pushing on my legs a lot more.

Then in the jerk, we widened my grip. I’ve had a strong jerk for most of my career, but the wider grip made it a lot snappier, faster, and easier.

I would say so because you’ve been putting up some absolutely massive rack jerks on social media. What’s your current rack jerk PR?

153.

153. When you started weightlifting or when you were weightlifting, say five years ago, and just competitive locally and nationally, is that a weight you ever imagined hitting?

No. I still remember being excited to jerk like 128. I think it was like a junior record at the time. Even then, I still remember not even being able to deadlift that. It’s just like before I hit the 153. I think I texted Danny before going into a session like, “This kind of weight is stupid. It doesn’t even make sense that I can put that much weight overhead.”

How long until you…just jerking it is a lot easier, not to say it’s easy. It’s weird saying that. I don’t want to use the word easy there, but it’s not clean and jerking it. Is that a number that you now have in sight to put together for the two lifts?

I know there are a lot of lifters out there, a lot of fantastic lifters that never come close to clean and jerking their jerk PR. It’s totally OK, but I’ve got to ask the tough questions. What are your long-term goals as far as numbers in this sport?

I would love to hit a double bodyweight clean and jerk at 71. 142 is my first stop. That’s where I want to go. Then 145 is very cool to me because that was my first total.

In my head, 150 is like a steering point where I’m like, if I can get to 150, that’s just insane. That would be huge. If I could do more than 150, great. I don’t want to stop myself there, but 150 is definitely like a dream number for me.

What about the snatch?

I think given the perfect conditions, I could get to 120. I don’t know how long that would take, or when, or what it would take. I think given how shockingly repeatable 110 felt, and how my training has been leading up to Pan Ams, I think 120 isn’t entirely unreasonable for a lifetime massive PR. [laughs]

Let’s talk about broader goals in the sport. You’re still very young. You’re not a junior anymore, but you still have a lot of weightlifting ahead of you. What are your goals in the sport in a broader sense? Given ideal circumstances, and we all know that doesn’t always happen, the ideal circumstances, how long would you like to be competing for?

I am pushing for 2024 and that’s been the goal. Even like in the last [indecipherable 15:20] , 2020 wasn’t always wasn’t a goal. I kept accidentally qualifying. Making the first senior worlds, that was the qualifier, and then continuing to make internationals.

I continue to maintain my eligibility just to do so. 2024 is the real push. Then if I’m still…ideal conditions, healthy, everything is still in the Olympics, then 2028 probably. If I’m still loving it, and still healthy enough to do it because I’ll be 30.

It’s not that bad. You say 30. We’re only using the audio for the podcast so folks can’t see the face you made. I’m over 30. It’s OK. I promise. Life still happens.

I know. Jason Bonnick just medaled at 39.

Chad Vaughn was one small step away from winning a Senior American Championship at 39. It was like a month before his 40th birthday. There’s a lot of weightlifting ahead of you, so it’s OK.

Into the next quad because 71 is not the bodyweight…You have to bounce between bodyweight classes because it’s a little confusing.

There are more bodyweight classes in weightlifting now than there are Olympic bodyweight classes because of the reduction in quota. Are you planning on making a permanent shift up and bodyweight for the next quad or will you still be kind of bouncing back and forth?

I have no idea. We haven’t even gotten to talking about that yet. Then I’m hearing, ” [indecipherable 16:51] , we know that Paris has less weight classes.” It’s just whatever comes out.

I’m pretty confident I will never go lower than 66 would even be maybe hard. I don’t think I’d go any lower than like 69, 68. Whatever is around the 70 area. Then if I have to go up, then I guess I will, but we haven’t even talked about that yet.

It’s very tough as you progress in your weightlifting career, in any strength sport, and you move up in weight classes, cutting back down. It’s difficult because you have to lose weight. Losing weight is tough. The body is not designed to lose weight that easily.

You just get used to being in a bigger frame, having more muscle mass, getting comfortable in those positions. It makes it not only difficult to lose weight from a physical perspective, but mentally, you have to deal with the fact that you might lose some strength. It’s kind of a mental toll.

It’s super weird. I find eating to be a pain. [laughs] If I ever come back from a competition and then don’t eat for a week or whatever, I get lean and skinny and I feel I look sick. Going to a lower body weight might freak me out a little bit. [laughs]

That’s what my mom says every time she sees me. She’s like, “Are you eating? I don’t feel like you’re eating right.” She’s very Midwestern.

Maybe there’s something there. I only know that feeling in that realm, not as an elite strength athlete.

Let’s talk about the sport in a broader sense. Is there anyone that you look up to in the sport? It could be a coach, official, another athlete, anyone that you’ve for a long time been like, “Wow, that’s someone who’s a really good ambassador or a representative of the weightlifting community.”

I respect and look up to…I said it to Cheryl and Chad in a different podcast, but the OGs. Danny, Cheryl, Chad, Vernon, my old coach. That generation of weightlifters that came before we did that really made a name for the US in weightlifting, back in the day going to the Olympics, getting those top rankings and medals and what not.

They are who I feel is a really good ambassador for USA weightlifting and who I’ve looked up to. I’ve felt like they even mentored me in my career over the years.

It’s interesting because a lot of those names you mentioned, you mentioned Vernon, you mentioned Cheryl, Chad. Chad’s Olympic days were a little bit later on, but a lot of these folks were just becoming elite weightlifters in the 1990s.

Danny, that’s when he was competing internationally, I think. Danny, if you’re listening to this, I’m getting your age completely wrong. Please don’t get that mad at me. That’s a lot of numbers to keep straight.

That crop of lifters in the ’90s and early 2000s became the next wave of coaches in many ways. Is there anyone internationally that you’ve either competed against or you’ve seen compete and you’re like “Wow. That’s a lifter who I really respect their game and I really respect their skills”?

Really almost all of the early women in my weight class that I’ve competed against. They have always been so nice and supportive in the back. Everybody is so congratulatory no matter who wins. It’s like we’re all trying our best.

It’s just fun and an honor to get to compete with them because everybody is so kind. We all love the sport. Nobody is really trying to tear each other down or anything.

Who’s your favorite person to compete against? If you can have a competition, it’s just you and them head-to-head, lift-for-lift, who would it be?

Oh, that’s interesting. I really love Neisi Dajomes. She would destroy me because she’s amazing. She is a full weight class ahead of me now. Yeah, I love her. If I could get up to her numbers or we could go like tit for tat like that, that would be awesome.

Where’s she from? For those who might not know.

Ecuador.

There are a lot of amazing women in South American weightlifting. It’s a deep in this hemisphere. Some would argue — I’m going to get in trouble for saying this — maybe deeper than the men’s pool in this hemisphere.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I’m not completely far off there. Is there anyone in weightlifting that you haven’t met or got into work with, that be on a coaching level or something? Could be domestically, could be internationally, at some point in your career, you’d love to work with, whether it be as an athlete.

If I’m lucky enough to loop you in on color commentary and an event when you have some downtime or something like that, just someone you love to meet and to work with.

I’m obsessed with Tian Tao.

Oh, my cousin.

Yeah. [laughs]

We’re not actually cousins. I just want to clarify, David Tao and Tian Tao, two different branches of the Tao family.

Yeah, I’m just really obsessed with his movement. Whenever his videos show up, I watch them over and over again.

I like Ali Hashemi from Iran, but he hasn’t been competing. I think he got injured. I like his tenacity. He always just throws himself under the bar, no matter what weight it is or what it looks like. Those two are my favorite international lifters.

That’s going to be a dream international commentary team, although there might be a bit of a language barrier, Tian and Meredith. We’ll see if I can set that up. Here’s the problem. I have to pair up with another squat jerker, so you’d have to convert over to the squat jerk.

I did like 50 kilos the other day.

Have you ever gone heavy in the squat jerk? Is that something you’ve ever tried?

I’ve pushed up to 95-100 kilos. It’s been a long time. I did the 50 kilos squat tricks the other day, and my teammates said they looked great and that I should max it out. Danny said I’ll get a chance before nationals so we’ll see. [laughs]

I don’t have the mobility to squat. I never had the ability to squat jerk. I was a split jerker through and through. I didn’t even have a deep split. Come on, I wasn’t even that mobile. It is terrifying to watch someone attempt it, but there is just nothing more breathtaking than if someone…

If you see someone jerk, you don’t know they’re squat jerker. They completely shock you with a squat jerk. It takes your breath away.

Yeah, for sure.

Anyone else that you love seeing their movement, you love seeing them lift? Could be on the men’s side, the women’s side. Tian Tao is a great answer. No one is going to disagree with that.

[laughs] I don’t know. I’m so picky, and I also don’t pay a ton of attention to the internationals. I guess I do, but everybody loves Kuo. I love her too. I love watching her. I don’t know. Yes, I like American lifters. I like Hayley Reichardt’s movement. I love watching her lifts.

I was watching Jourdan Delacruz. I like people that are smooth and fast. Then on the other side, I like people that are tenacious and aggressive. [laughs] It’s a weird spectrum of what I like to look at.

You like the extremes. You don’t like anyone who’s just right down the middle. They have to be…

Yeah. I feel I’m pretty right down the middle. I watch my own lifts and I’m like, “Ugh. I wish that was not like that.” [laughs]

If you haven’t seen the folks…I don’t know. If the folks who haven’t seen you do heavy jerks off the rack, with your new jerk technique, wider grip, and just a very quick dip, it’s pretty tenacious. It’s pretty entertaining.

That’s true. Somebody did ask me once, “How are you not scared to get under that weight?” I don’t know. You [laughs] got to just dive under it and see what happens. I guess tenacious and aggressive definitely characterize my style a little more.

When you’re jerking over double bodyweight, you don’t have time to be scared. You really don’t.

Right.

All right. What is the best place for people to follow along or where is the best place for people to follow along with your training, upcoming competitions, especially as we head into…I say the next Olympic quad. We’re already in the next Olympic quad because the next Olympics is less than four years away.

As we progress toward Paris, where’s the best place for people to follow along with you?

Instagram, for sure.

What’s your Instagram handle?

My Instagram handle is just my name. It’s just @meredithalwine.

Easy enough. Where are you based out of?

I am based out of Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Excellent. Meredith, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate getting to catch up and wishing you the best in training. I should ask, when are you planning on competing next internationally?

 Internationally, I know that there is supposed to be 2021 Pan Ams. I have heard they’re supposed to be Worlds as well, both in the fall. I know there’s a lot of rumors about one’s canceling or they’re both going or whatever, but in one of those.

You could be the first person to ever win Pan Ams twice in the same year.

That would be pretty awesome.

That’s got to be a goal in the back of your mind. Meredith, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate your time.

Thank you so much.