Built,
not given.
Strength isn't handed out. It's built — from a specific diagnosis. We find whether capacity or skill is limiting your lift, and then we build that.
Three lessons: the method applied to your own lifting. Not a newsletter.
You already know what to do. Knowing was never the problem.
The internet handed everyone the information. What it can't do is tell you which part of it applies to you, this week, at this weight. That gap — between knowing and doing — is where progress actually stalls.
Closing it takes someone watching your lift closely enough to say what's limiting it, and then building that. Everything here is that, at four levels of closeness.
The limiting factor
Three lessons, by email. Not theory — the first genuinely useful coaching step: how to work out what's holding your lift back, using sessions you're already doing.
How to tell which one is holding your lift back — from two sets you already do.
What a missed lift is actually telling you — and what it isn't.
Turning the read into next week's training, instead of collecting more cues.
Capacity + Skill → Results
There are only two places a bigger lift can come from. Everything we coach is one of them, chosen deliberately.
Capacity
The physical qualities the result requires: strength, positions, speed, tolerance for the work. What you have to spend.
Skill
Organising that capacity and expressing it reliably — under load, under fatigue, on the day. How well you spend it.
Results
The lift you want, when you want it. We work out which of the two above is limiting it — and build that one first.
A missed lift shows you where it broke. It doesn't tell you why. Chasing the break is why most lifters collect cues for years and move the same weight.
Everything leads
to Ultimate Start
The free lessons above show you how the method works. This is where you actually learn it — properly, in the right order, with one technical review from Mike.
Ultimate Start
Learn Olympic weightlifting in the right order, from the start — and submit one lift for a technical review, so you see the diagnosis done on you.
Haven't had the free lessons yet? Grab those above first — Ultimate Start is what they lead to.
Already lifting, and stalled?
Everything above is built for starting right. If you're past that — a total that's stopped moving, the same lifts missed — you don't need the course. You need the diagnosis applied to where you are: capacity or skill, which one is holding your next 10kg. That's the 1:1 work.
The reason to trust any of this.
Mike Causer has spent thirty years in Olympic weightlifting — as a Team GB lifter with ten national titles, then as the coach in the back room at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
If you're nervous about starting, this is the point: the person teaching you the first pull is the person who coached it at the Olympics. Nothing about the method changes between those two rooms.
Ramiro Mora
An Olympic platform, where the whole result turns on one made lift.
Capacity to tolerate the loads the final required, with skill work narrowed to the positions that were actually limiting him.
7th place at 102kg — including an 11kg personal best.
Louise Oldman
The training held. The competition didn't — nerves were costing her lifts she already owned.
Skill under pressure rather than more strength: expressing a known lift on demand, on the day.
Her first competition medal — bronze at the Southern Masters 2024.
Alex Jamieson
Plenty of work going in, no single thing being built.
A year of training pointed at one limitation at a time, in the order that made each next block possible.
Qualified for the English Senior Championships within a year of focused training.
“I'd been lifting for three years and felt completely stuck. Within two months I finally understood what I was missing. I feel like a different athlete.”
“The structure changed everything. I wasn't just going through sessions anymore — I understood the intent behind every single rep.”
“I came in completely new to weightlifting. Mike met me where I was and built me from the ground up. I competed within 12 months.”
Coached, not sold a programme
You want to be told what's actually limiting you, even when it isn't the answer you hoped for.
You'll train the unglamorous thing for six weeks if it's the right thing.
You want a coach — not a file you run on your own.
You're shopping for a programme to run alone.
You want a guaranteed number by a guaranteed date. Nobody honest can sell you that.
You'd rather keep collecting cues than fix one thing.
Find out what's
limiting your lift
Three lessons, free. The first useful coaching step, before you spend anything.
Ultimate
Start
How to start Olympic weightlifting properly — the whole first stretch, in the right order, from the coach who took an athlete to the Olympic Games.
Self-paced, online, start the day you buy. One technical review by Mike included.
What's inside
Six parts, in order. Each one builds the capacity or the skill the next one needs — which is the whole method, run as a path.
Before the bar
What you're actually building, and how to tell which of the two is limiting you.
Positions
The handful of shapes every lift is made of, and how to own them under load.
The snatch
Built from the top down, so the first rep you do is already the right shape.
The clean & jerk
Two lifts, one sequence — where beginners lose the most kilos, and why.
Capacity
Strength work that feeds the lifts instead of competing with them.
Your first twelve weeks
The plan written out — what to train, what to leave alone, and what to change when.
One technical review, on your lift
A course can teach you the method. It can't watch you. So you get one of these: film a lift, send it in, and Mike sends back a single read — capacity or skill, which one is costing you, and what to build first.
One read is enough to feel the difference between information and coaching. If you want it continuously, that's what the rungs above are.
One set, filmed from the side. Three reps is plenty.
The diagnosis in writing: what's limiting the lift, and the one thing to build next.
A list of fifteen cues. One thing, in priority order, is the point.
You're new, or self-taught, and want to start the right way round.
You'd rather get going now than wait for a coaching spot.
You want the method in your own hands first.
You've already been lifting a while and are stuck.
You want someone watching every week, not once.
You have a date in the diary to be ready for.
The
Executive
You're already wired like an athlete at work. This is that drive pointed at a barbell, with the thinking taken off your plate and direct access to the coach.
It starts with a profile, not a sales call. You'll have a first read on what's limiting you before we ever speak.
Executive places are capped. Applications are reviewed in the order they arrive.
What the top rung buys
Access
Direct time with Mike — the coach, not a coach. Few clients, on purpose.
Decisions removed
You don't need to understand the plan. You need it to be right, and to know what today's session is.
Continuous diagnosis
Every block re-read against your actual lifting, not the plan we wrote in January.
Built for a real diary
Travel, late finishes, three sessions instead of five. The plan bends; the direction doesn't.
Three steps, one journey
Build your Athlete Profile
Eight short steps, about five minutes. Where you are, what you want, what you think is stopping you.
Receive your Initial Diagnosis
A first read on whether capacity or skill is the likely limitation — written by Mike, not generated.
Book your Strategy Call
Thirty minutes on the read and the route. If it isn't a fit, you'll be told — and you'll keep the diagnosis.