Category: Training

Continuing from the altogether too long discussion of Kenyan running that took all of Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 3, today I want to switch gears (ha ha, this joke will make sense in a second) and look at an example of another group that jumped from relative anonymity to dominance in what is a fairly niche sport in a relatively short period of time.   The sport is track cycling and the ‘country’ is the United Kingdom (technically this includes NORTHERN Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain).  And this discussion will only be marginally too long.

As with the Kenyan runners, I’ll look a bit at the sport and then try to examine what the UK did to achieve dominance (and more importantly how they went from doing nothing on the world stage to kicking absolute ass in a relatively short time period), to see if there are any commonalities or what have you.… Keep Reading

In Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting Part 2 I looked at some of the factors potentially to Kenyan dominance in distance running.  This included looking at some potential physiological issues that might give them an advantage, the issue of genetics (in a general sense) and then briefly looked at sociopolitical factors and finally their training (where I spent the most time). Shockingly, I was only half way through.

Today I will wrap up this discussion and look at a bunch of other relevant factors.  Again, I’m only spending this much time on this particular group once; the other groups I’m going to look at will get one part or less.  Mainly I’m going into such depth here to give you some idea of the complexity of this topic in terms of what is required for sports success.

I finished up on Wednesday by talking about Kenyan training and what it entails. … Keep Reading

In Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 1, I introduced the topic that I wanted to discuss and defined some end points that I was going to use in the discussion.  I also introduced the first group/sport I wanted to talk about which was Kenyan distance runners.  If you want the details, read Part 1.  For now just accept that starting in about 1970, Kenyans rose from total anonymity to what amounts to simple overwhelming and absolute dominance in the men’s distance events.

And a question that has been posited since they started winning is why this is the case.   And the answer is not simple.  Demonstrating that, to look at this in the detail I want, it’s going to take me today and Friday to cover factors ranging from physiology, sociology, economics, incentives, and who knows what else.   This should give you some idea of what I’m going to try to address in this series as a whole to answer the original question.… Keep Reading

Ok, as promised, this is the mega-series that I’ve been working and reworking.  I almost delayed it another day but I’m going to save that little post for recovery after this.  Be forewarned, this is a monster.  I had originally planned to do it in 6 parts across 3 weeks but it made some of them monsters so I’ll be subdividing some of them (like today’s) even further and running every other day until it’s done.

As with previous mega-series, I’m going to turn off comments until after the last piece simply because it will save pointless arguments or questions about stuff that I will almost invariably end up covering before all is said and done.  And then I expect comments and debate and argument in the last section to go totally batshit. It’s the nature of this issue.  And with that introduction out of the way, away we go.

Introduction

Fairly recently, I read a fairly humorous thread on a training forum examining the issue of why the United States continues to suck at Olympic Lifting at the world stage; it was the utter stupidity expressed in that thread that spurred me to bother with this. … Keep Reading

Ok, I’m going to pick up where I left off yesterday and move straight into a quick discussion of when we use punishment at the Austin Humane Shelter.  As I’ve noted, we ideally avoid this but the examples I’m going to provide are relevant as a segue to some more general comments and wrapping this up by trying to look at a whole shedload of different stuff. It’s going to be long today, had I planned better I would have done this across multiple weeks or every day this week but that’s not going to happen for scheduling reasons.  So…grab a drink and get ready.

The Role of Positive and Negative Punishment

Using approaches that revolve around reward methods work only when there is some behavior to reward in the first place.  With dogs this usually isn’t too hard since they generally want approval and usually do stuff that you can reward to shape their behavior.… Keep Reading