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.

Recall from my discussion yesterday the basic nature of the lifts which is to throw a weight explosively so that it can be caught either overhead (the snatch), on the shoulders (clean) or overhead (the jerk). Which means that the critical part of the movement (the ‘weakest link’ so to speak) is how much weight can be thrown to a minimum required height for a legal catch.   That will determine how much is successfully lifted and everything else only contributes inasmuch as it contributes to that part of the movement.  Because none of the rest of the movement is relevant if you can’t get the bar high enough in the first place.

Even there, the snatch and clean and jerk differ.  Because the weights are lighter (again, 20% on average) in the snatch, it’s far more of a speed/explosion/technical lift.  The clean and jerk, relatively speaking, is more of a strength lift.  Even there, how much you can clean is based on how much weight you can throw into the air (and whether or not you can then get under it, get control of it, stand up with it, and then put it overhead).

Continue reading Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 3