Athlete Interview: Olympic Weightlifter Maddison Pannell
California Strength athlete Maddison "Mad Dog" Pannell has been on the team for just over a year and continues to get better every day! Today we sat down with Maddi to talk about training, where she comes from and where she wants to go in the sport of weightlifting!
QUESTION & ANSWER
Which do you prefer: Snatch or Clean and Jerk?
My favorite lift between Snatch and Clean and Jerk is both. I like them both equally the same. In competition, the Clean & Jerk just because I feel like in the Snatch I’m like, “oh, am I going to make it? And Clean & Jerk you're like, oh, I'm going to make it.”
What are your competition bests?
My best Snatch in competition is 76kg at Nationals as a 55kg lifter. As a 49kg lifter, my best Snatch is 71kg and best Clean & Jerk is 94kg in competition. Any competition it would be 98kg and in practice 100kg.
What has your training focus been lately?
My focus has been on gaining strength. My technique is okay but I'm weak. I’ve just been working on consistency and just getting stronger at a lower body weight. It's honestly different every day. It's just like what my body is feeling like. Like last night it was the start position and other days it's mostly power position. Like where is my power position and how I have to start to get into that correct power position and to stay slightly over the bar.
What is your athletic background?
I did gymnastics since I was nine years old until I was 17-18 and then I didn't do anything for awhile. Picked up CrossFit here and there, dabbled with it. Wasn't that great at it. And then I found weightlifting through CrossFit pretty much. I did CrossFit for about like three years, but I wasn't any good.
What was your favorite competition to date?
My favorite competition was American Open Finals, my first one ever. And that's because it just, it really got me into weightlifting and it transitioned my passion over from nothing to weightlifting.
What's something you struggle with in weightlifting?
Coming into weightlifting, I struggled with strength and it was recently after I cut to the 49kg weight class and then went two for six, pretty much almost bombed out. And then I came back into the gym and I was like, okay, well, your technique's not bad. You're just weak. Like you got pinned by the clean because you're weak and it was a 93kg clean… It was the heaviest thing I've ever felt.
And I was like, there's no way I was going to stand this up right from the pull with my confidence and everything. So we went on a six week strength cycle after that and just got super confident with back squats and front squats. And then I just kept PR’ing after that. That was in December, 2019 and since then to now, I've been on this strength cycle and I've been PR’ing my squats like every week.
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