Ilya Ilyin is arguably one of the greatest weigthlifters of all time and for good reason. Recently he's started training for the 2016 Olympics in Rio, looking to keep his undefeated in international competition streak going and in the process, he's ramped up his social media with some amazing training footage.



Specifically, here he is with a 200-something kilo clean to power/squat jerk, which he wonderfully refers to as "Chinese Style". The last time I spoke with Ilya (no seriously that's a real thing) he was saying that he felt the squat jerk was more effecient but that he didn't feel it was necessary for him to change his technique because he was still able to comfortably split jerk the weights he needed to to win and set world records.

Now that's he's set the bar high (likely reaching for a 250kg clean & jerk at Rio), one might think he's probably playing around with the squat jerk to see if it's a good solution for the inefficiencies inherent in the split jerk, but...



He clearly doesn't have a problem split jerking 250kg. Yes, he's weighing in at 109 which means he'll have to cut a little for the Olympics, but nearly every weightlifter trains slightly higher than their competition weight and 4kg isn't a lot to lose.

The takeaway is that Rio is going to be freaking awesome. Between Iyla Ilyin, David Bedzhanyan, and Ruslan Nurudinov we're going to have an amazing battle for the gold and we'll likely see some world records fall as well.