[quote]undeadlift wrote:
Good point. I just wanted to know the history behind the name powerlifting. The discussion could have ended after robo1’s reply, or it could have added and/or confirmed robo1’s reply. It should have never been an argument about which exercise is more powerful than what.[/quote]
Here, hopefully this should put this to rest. I called up an old coach of mine who has been affiliated with the AAU for more than 50 years. Here is how he explained it to me.
Originally there was no such thing as Olympic weightlifting as we know it today. there were just different strength competitions that included a wide variety of lifts, standing presses, deadlifting, bar bending, balancing acts, and dozens of other lifts.
When the modern day Olympics were created they began to whittle down the lifts to a select few to standardize the competitions. In the early 1930s the Olympic weightlifting committees agreed on three lifts, the press, snatch and clean & jerk.
However other types of weightlifting and strongman competitions, continued to go on. These competitions often centered around the snatch, clean, press, jerk, but also included what he called ``odd lifts’’ such as the squat, supine press (which is a bench press without the bench), deadlift as well as other strength feats such as behind the neck presses, arm curls and bar bending.
In the 1950s the AAU Weightlifting committee began recognizing some of these odd lifts'' and started to sanction separate competitions and catalog records. The AAU then changed the name of the events from
odd lifts’’ to Strength or Power Lifts'' and in 1964 the AAU Weightlifting committee gave up control of the
Strength or Power Lifts’’ to a separate committee, which dropped the word strength'' and adopted the
Power Lifts’’ name.
Eventually by the 1970s many of the odd lifts were thrown out and the AAU – and later the newly formed IPF which had also adopted the powerlifting name – agreed that squat/bench/dead would be the only lifts recognized.
The guy who told me all this has been involved in powerlifting for more than half a century and has pretty much seen and done everything that this sport has to offer and I trust anything he tells me. so take this for what its worth.