Category: Training

A question that comes up quite often is whether there is a best way to squat.  The answer, as usual is that it depends on context.   One issue is how the trainee is built but, as importantly, their actual goal plays a huge role.

Types of Squats

If you ask someone what the best way to squat is, invariably their answer will be: the type of squat I choose to do, like to do, am built for.  There’s a lot of proximity bias here and people think the best way to squat is the way they do it.  If only it were that simple.

While I’m sure you can find people with more lists, there are generally considered to be three primary “types” of squats:

1. High-bar/Olympic squat
2. Generic Power Squat
3. Geared powerlifting squat

The Olympic/High-Bar Squat

The high-bar/Olympic squat is done with the bar held high on the traps and the goal is generally to keep the torso as vertical as possible; this is usually facilitated by wearing shoes with a slight “heel” on them as this lets the lifter get the knees further forward.     … Keep Reading

Ok, this will be the finish no matter how long it takes; and it will be long but I have to move on to other things.  Coming straight out of Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Ol’ing Part 9, I want to shift gears.  Because most of what I covered over the past two days had mostly to do with why the sport is as small as it is: a lack of facilities, coaching, incentives and, ultimately, interest.

But in that way, OL’ing is not terribly different than a lot of marginalized sports in this country that exist under literally identical conditions of few athletes, no access, etc.  And yet in some we succeed brilliantly; in others we medal sporadically (even one of our rowers won in Beijing and that sport is as niche as it gets).  Clearly if all the problems with OL’ing were related to the issues of the last two days it would cut universally across all niche sports and it does not. … Keep Reading

Picking up directly from where I left off yesterday in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 8, I want to start by looking at another place OL’ing this country has a huge problem in terms of getting people (especially our large underclass of potentially amazing power athletes) into it.  Again, I’ll point out exceptions and look at proposed solutions and I’m still leaving out two specific names and one specific group as recent developments in the sport that at least have the potential to change things going forwards.  Back into the fray and today and tomorrow will likely be overlong as I try to wrap up once and for all.

A Lack Of Incentives

It’s hard to say what problem to Ol’ing is THE biggest problem but certainly this is one of the biggies, especially given the nature of sport in America, the nature of who enters our sports and the nature of their drives to do so. … Keep Reading

We’re almost done as my goal is to wrap this up by Friday.  Yesterday in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 7, I looked at a bunch of factors that took the US from it’s dominant heyday in the 40’s and 50’s to almost rans almost overnight.  Certainly the rise of the Eastern European countries was part of this but it wasn’t all that was going on.

The sport had changed due to a rules change along with the dropping of the press (in 1974) and Americans, still fascinated with maximum strength and muscle size hadn’t changed.  Other changes in the gym culture of the day, the rise of bodybuilding, machine training and other strength sports (powerlifting, strongman) along with the big three starting to throw stupid money at its athletes just further diluted any talent that might have pursued OL’ing.

The sport, never more than a niche to begin with had begun it’s downward spiral. … Keep Reading

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