INTERVIEW: Ikaika Paakaula – Pushing lifting to the next level

Kara Martin 13:12 11/02/2015
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  • Great benefits: Ikaika Paakaula believes Olympic lifting helps develop mental strength as well.

    Competition based on who can lift the heaviest weight has been around forever and Olympic weightlifting, while not among the world’s coolest sports, has been making a comeback in big part (to purists’ slight annoyance) thanks to CrossFit, where technical moves like the clean and jerk are commonplace.

    – PLAY: Sport360 World Cup Stick Cricket 

    What’s also cool is that nowadays as many girls as guys are powdering up to learn more.

    Even before a gain in local interest recently drew triple Olympic medallist Pyrros Dimas of Greece to Dubai for a seminar and weightlifting competition, we heard of ambitious Emirati girls like Amna Al Haddad and Khadija Mohammed, who have both been breaking barriers and competing on the world stage, joining others here with dreams of Rio 2016.

    If you’re thinking of going beyond CrossFit and breaking into the sport, there are now some dependable faces to get to know in Dubai who can see you safely and successfully through.

    One coming highly recommended is American Ikaika Paakaula, based out of 24 Fitness (24fitnessdubai.ae), who has been lifting since he was 10.

    Sport360°’s Kara Martin spoke to Paakaula about Olympic lifting, and its lesser known mental and physical benefits.

    Q. So… kids can do this at ten?
    A. Yeah, people do it at six! So… my uncle back home in Oregon owns a gym and one day this guy came in and asked if anyone was interested in learning Olympic weightlifting, and a bunch of them, my brother, cousins, we all joined this weightlifting programme. 

    My brother was 10 at the time, I was eight, and my mum made me wait two years because she had heard all the old rumours of how weightlifting’s bad for your growth if you start too young, but if you have the right coach… no, it’ll be fine. Unless I was supposed to be like 6’5”, maybe [it did affect my growth] (laughs) but oh well. I’ve been doing it for almost 18 years now. 

    I got into competitions and built up to a really high level of competing, gathered a couple state records and was ranked number one overall nationwide in my age group and weight class. I continued weightlifting competitively but my coach at the time honestly wanted us to dedicate our lives to it. 

    I wanted to be a kid, to go snowboarding, try other sports like American football. In high school and throughout college I played football but still kept lifting…  then some friends moved out here when the fitness community was just getting going, and they were like ‘oh my gosh, Olympic lifting is so young out here’, and I was convinced to come out. 

    What did you like about weightlifting so much?
    Doing something with my brother and cousins… then once we got really good at it we were actually really good as a team and in the northwest we won everything. 

    Thinking back, it really does teach you discipline, gives you a structure, and a drive to achieve anything else; gives you the basic building blocks for life, in a sense. It absolutely shaped me as a person from early on. 

    We would do five days a week, an hour and a half training a day, sort of thing –  school, work out, go home, do homework, do it again. I didn’t really have a life as a kid.

    Growing up with that type of training… anything else I’ve come across since has been kind of easy (laughs).

    It takes a toll on you though, training like that. I mean, the professionals hit their peak in their early-to-mid twenties and by the time they reach their late twenties, they’re old for this sport. 

    You met the legendary Pyrros Dimas here. Was he as you’d hoped? 
    Yeah, he was literally my idol growing up, I was so relieved he was really nice and humble. He critiqued one of my lifts and actually was impressed. 

    He looked at me compared to a couple other lifters that were here (CrossFitters with short, stocky builds, tighter muscle-wise) and he said ‘oh you have a weightlifting body’ – long, lean, flexible etc.

    People assume the former, a bit shorter, stockier, but some of the best lifters around aren’t really that assuming to look at, they look like the average guy in normal clothing. 

    Based on my quick tutorial with you, I gathered that it’s less about arm and upper body strength and more lower body strength…
    In a lot of things, actually – the stronger your legs (and core), the stronger you’re going to be overall.

    Your arms are just following through. That’s why we would do squats every single time we worked out. If you want to get stronger, you’ve got to work them around 4-6 times a week.

    And what else can lifting help in?
    Mental strength, builds confidence. Mentally you’ll be able to start recognising things, your coordination will improve and things will start to fire a lot more, and quicker, in muscles.

    Doing compound exercises where multiple big muscle groups are working at the same time – as they are in lifting weights generally – can burn a lot of fat too, even without doing a lot of cardio.

    You gain a lot of useable strength and explosiveness – most Olympic lifters tend to have a lot of vertical, can jump higher, are really good sprinters… your athleticism goes up a notch.

    CrossFit gave Olympic lifting a boost but you have some thoughts about ‘the sport of fitness’…
    The good thing about CrossFit is that it gets people moving and has made Olympic lifting more open to all, not just elite athletes. There are good CrossFitters out there teaching our moves properly… but not many.

    I’ve heard numerous stories of CrossFitters going into a session having never used a bar before, they get a five-minute demo and get thrown 20-30 reps at a time… it’s bad.

    Power game: Ikaika Paakaula took up lifting at the age of 10 and has never looked back since.

    Seeing the technique of some of these guys in competition makes me cringe sometimes, almost makes me hurt. 

    You need some sort of basic knowledge of the movements before you start putting them against the clock and in multiple amounts. Developing as an Olympic weightlifter, I myself never went over five reps, and that was only during warm-ups; other than that, 2-3, or one. 

    Each lift should be perfect, 100 per cent effort rather than just to get the movement done as quick as you can. I’m a perfectionist. That, to me, is CrossFit’s downside. And the injuries in turn give Olympic weightlifting a bad name.

    Tips for those wanting to go further with weights?
    If you really want to be good at Olympic lifting, stick with it five days a week for a year. We’ve got some good trainers here – Derrick and Gordon [Branford], both from my hometown (Derrick and I used to be on the same team), are great too.

    Get some Olympic lifting specific shoes too, they make a huge difference.
    Mentally, for a beginner, it’s hard because there are so many moving parts so it all comes down to repetition to get that muscle memory.

    That’s another thing about CrossFitters – they want things now, want the heavy weights… but here you have to be patient, precise and disciplined.
    Get in touch with Ikaika for sessions and send your questions at [email protected]

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