[quote]ninearms wrote:
I’m pretty much certain the only capacity he’ll be at the Olympics in is as part of the bobsled team, if at all. I don’t think there was ever any intention of competing in weightlifting at that level, and even if there was you don’t get picked for the team without demonstrating consistency at comp level. Big partial lifts in training mean fuck all.
I’m not convinced of the efficacy of bands either. There’s some Russian research that suggests that missed lifts are almost never due to poor bar height, but are nearly always due to poor speed under the bar, i.e. poor reversal of direction (it’s on the Dynamic Eleiko site I think).
As far as I can see, all bands would do is encourage you to pull longer than you should do at the expense of getting under the bar quicker, i.e you get lifters who continue to pull when they have reached full extension.[/quote]
Looks like what you said is similar to what CT said.
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Chains and bands are great for the powerlifts; these movements have an almost linear strength curve in that the '‘higher’'you go (closer to the end of the range of motion) the stronger you are. In that regard the added resistance at the top from the chains and bands are an advantage when it comes to building strength.
For the olympic lifts it isn’t exactly the same motor pattern: the point of maximal force production is not the the end of the lifting range of motion but rather around the middle, where the explosion occurs (normally this occurs when the bar reaches mid-thigh or hips level). At that point there is a powerful and explosive pull that important a lot of acceleration to the bar in such a way that the last portion of the range of motion has the bar traveling under the power of momentum; voluntary muscular force isn’t maximal at that point.
So it really doesn’t make sense to add a source of accomodating resistance that would add up mostly when the bar is traveling under the power of momentum. In fact it would be counterproductive to proper technique and would throw your timing WAY off when performing the ‘‘regular’’ lifts.
What I found is that training the olympic lifts with such apparatus is first of all very dangerous (try to do a snatch with chains or bands, technically it’s almost impossible as the bar rotation is limited) and even if it worked fine it would lead to the development of an ‘‘arm pulling’’ technique: the lifter would learn to rely on pulling with his arms instead of a powerful hip, knee and ankle extension. Why? Because since the chains/bands would add resistance at the end of the range of motion (where the bar normally travels mostly due to momentum) the bar would slow down at that point and the arms would have to come into play A LOT to try and prevent that deceleration. Do this over a relatively long period of time and you will learn to rely mostly on your upper body to clean or snatch the bar, which obviously take away most of the benefits of the movements.
Same thing goes with snatch and clean pulls: you will build a tendency to rely on your arms more.[/quote]