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. Realize that this is not a new topic: I’ve seen it being bitched about and debated nearly as long as I’ve been in the field and it was assuredly going on before that. It’s an issue that most have some sort of opinion on and many have offered fairly simple singular answers to the problem/question of why the United States suck at Olympic lifting.
Now, in the case of this particular thread, the forum moderator, a simple man with about one tool in his toolbox, gave a very simple answer: American OL’ers need more strength. That’s it. We fail to medal and have done so for the past 30 years because our lifters simply aren’t strong enough.
Nevermind that OL’ing at one point did recruit a guy (Shane Hamman, a 1000 lb squatter) with more strength coming out of one leg than most have in their entire body and he still couldn’t medal. Make no mistake, he held his own at the highest levels but being strong as all hell didn’t put him on the podium.