Category: Training

Finishing with Part 13 and  having bored you to death with too much information about the culture, etc. of the USA (#1) all of last week I will finally move towards a more detailed look at sports in the USA in more specifics.  Some of it will be more sociological rambling, all of it is background that I feel is relevant to this series.  And since it’s already out of control, I might as well go all the way and make it totally out of control.  I am an American and we have to do everything to the extreme.

Today I’m going to look at some general ideas about sports (both in universal terms and in America) along with some more great American sports hypocrisy.  Then I’ll finally look at the US and its sports dominance (such as it is) to lead into tomorrow and Wednesday’s discussions.  Before I can do that, however,  I need to make a quick return trip to the Land down Unda’ because this is funny as hell.… Keep Reading

I was originally going to make this part of every article but it’s too long.  So it’s going here and I’m just linking out to it.  Response to this series, which I agree has gotten totally out of control, has been varied. Many like it or are at least amused by it.  While I don’t mind attaboys or whatever, I don’t really care since I don’t do anything in my life to make anybody happy but me.  Like it or don’t like it, I’m doing what I’m going to do.   Many wish I’d just get to the point and I will be talking about OL’ing next week, promise.

But there is another category of responses that I want to address in detail because it’s going to make me buy a high powered rifle and start murdering people.

What This Series Is About

A point I’ve made once or twice but apparently need to address again is this: I am attempting to write a series on the issue of Olympic Lifting in the United States, building up a tremendous amount of background to a sport that is, for anybody who bothers to read the article series title, Olympic Lifting.  … Keep Reading

Ok after going too long in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting Part 11 yesterday, I promise, this is the last piece of background and next week I will move on to look at American sports domination, a couple of odd exceptions and then into Olympic lifting.  Today I will finish with my broad stroke generalizations about American sports as a whole by moving from the sports level to the athlete level.  Because just as our sports have to fulfill certain requirements, so do our athletes.

I finished yesterday by pointing out why we don’t like soccer and mentioned that one of the biggest reasons (along with the others) was that soccer can end in a tie.  This goes against American mentality and especially American sports mentality.  The point of sports is to establish who’s the best, who’s the worst, who’s the winner and who’s the loser.  But in America it goes further than that. … Keep Reading

And if everything I talked about in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting Part 10 weren’t true, it gets even worse. Again, no summary from last time, just read it if you didn’t already.  Back into the fray about America as a country finally moving to sports.

Big, Dumb, Loud and Just Intensely Proud of It

Americans are not, by and large, a nuanced people. We like stuff, big, dumb and loud. Like our country, like our people. Like a Michael Bay movie. I was only half joking when I said that our culture is based around mom, baseball, apple pie, rampant obesity, Michael Bay movies and breast implants. It’s not really a joke.

We are a more or less ignorant (not the same as stupid) country.  Worse yet, we revel in our ignorance. Ignorant and proud, USA#1. Some appalling number of Americans can’t find their own home state on a map. … Keep Reading

Continuing from Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 9 I’m going to continue the discussion of overall US culture by looking at politics and attitude, tomorrow and Friday I’ll actually start talking about sports.  No need for summarizing, hit the link and read if you didn’t already.  Let’s get to it.

Quick note: I’m quite sure that someone with a background in economics will get really upset about the next section, being concerned that I over-generalized some factor or left out some incredibly detailed nuance of the system that is just critically important to their mental health that I discuss in detail.  Just keep in mind what I’m doing here which is NOT trying to write the be-all end-all series on Capitalism.  Or America.

Or a whole bunch of other topics that folks have been busting my nuts for skimming details on because they can’t seem to keep in mind what my actual topic is. … Keep Reading