Month: September 2011

Yesterday, in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 6, I examined the events (culture, etc.) surrounding the US’s brief dominance in the sport of Olympic weightlifting, again spanning a period of 12 years from 1948 to 1960. But as I talked about last Friday in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 5, our dominance rapidly disintegrated. From 1960 forwards the sport took a drastic decline that it’s never recovered from.

So having looked at the events that allowed us to be dominant (tho again some think that the US Golden Age is more a myth, just a function of the competition being lower which allowed the US to get away with what they were doing), let’s look at what was going from 1960 forwards.

Make no mistake that a lot was going on and I can’t possibly cover everything. I’d point folks to Bud Charniga’s 6 part series again for a truly comprehensive look at what was going on in the sport both in America and elsewhere, I’ll just try to hit some high points.… Keep Reading

So on Friday I finally started moving toward a point and actually looked at how the US has done in the sport of Olympic lifting (at least at the Olympic level) in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 5. Somewhat surprisingly, our total medal count actually isn’t that bad, a solid third place although within shooting distance of 2nd and 4th place (Russia is overwhelmingly dominant in 1st).

The big issue, however was one of timing with roughly 98% of our medals being won in this very narrow time frame between 1948 and 1960 and almost nothing since then (we have a handful of medals literally along with the two women’s medals in 2000). I finish by asking the question of what was going on during that time frame that allowed us to be so dominant along with wondering what in the hell happened.

Today I want to look at what might have been going on during that time period, in terms of the same factors that I’ve looked at in other parts of this series (and hopefully I won’t be too wordy about it) that led to the US’s dominance.… Keep Reading

So having finished a look at the sport in general and some of the determining factors in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 4, I want to look at the next issues on the docket. I’ll warn you up front that today may be a bit all over the place (even relative to the rest of this series) as I try to make my point.

Location/Equipment

From an equipment point of view, Olympic lifting is actually a relatively ‘easy’ sport compared to many. You need a proper bar (and OL’ing bars are different than bars for general use or powerlifting in terms of how they flex and spin), bumper plates (special plates that are meant to be dropped and bounce), squat stands and, strictly speaking, little else. In the early days of the sport, the plates weren’t even bumpers; many old school coaches still teach lowering the bar under muscular control for this reason; when they were coming up you couldn’t drop bars or you’d ruin the plates, lifting surface or both.… Keep Reading

Continuing on from yesterday’s discussion in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 3 where I first summarized the goal of OL’ing competition and then looked at the importance of body proportions, technique, flexibility, mobility, movement speed, fearlessness, feel, age and endurance I wan’t to continue today by looking at the often misunderstood roles of muscle mass and maximum versus explosive strength.  Finally I’ll look at how some of these things have changed since the dropping of the press in 1972 in terms of their relative importance and focus among top competitors.

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Muscle Mass

At a first approximation, muscle mass would seem to be important to OL’ers and it is to some degree. First keep in mind that Olympic lifters compete within rigidly defined weight classes (though they tend to manipulate water to actually make weight). This tends to limit how much muscle mass can be carried within any weight class except for superheavyweight lifters who can be as big as they want (and as often as not the extra weight is blubber around the middle).… Keep Reading

In Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Olympic Lifting Part 2, I gave a primer on the technique of Olympic lifting looking only at the snatch, clean and jerk.  Continuing in that vein I want to now look at what physiological factors go into successful OL’ing performance as that will lead into the logical discussion of genetics, who’s the best and all the rest.   To save it being too long, I’m going to split this into two parts.   First a brief summary of the last two days.

Summarizing Olympic Lifting

Lifters compete in two lifts, the snatch and clean and jerk (the press having been dropping in 1972); lifters get three chances for each lift and the goal is to lift the most weight a single time with the lifter’s total for each lift (only successful lifts are counted) determining the winner.  In general, depending on the dynamics of the event, lifters have at a minimum 2 minutes between lifts (only in the situation where they follow themselves); in most situations they will have longer than that.… Keep Reading