US Will Dominate World Weightlifting

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
41

6/6 means you either have an uncanny ability to know exactly what you can do (unlikely) or you left some weight on the platform. In powerlifting and weightlifting, taking risky openers is generally bad strategy and you can bomb out that way. But I think some folks take it too far and won’t take a chance on their 2nd or 3rd attempts.

On the other hand, some of the judging you see in weightliting meets is very strict. Given the choice between a 2.5 kilo meet PR you have nailed in the gym a zillion times and a 7.5 kilo PR you have never attempted to win, very strict judging will often force you to err on the side of caution.

42

[quote]GMH454 wrote:
…
They competed at a time when lifting was anything but “cool”

Compare your history to your present, the US is a poor shadow of itself.

[/quote]

True that… but from what I’ve read back a few decades before I was born the Oly Lifts and their variations were in school athletic programs. Now how many schools, and how widespread was this training across the nation I don’t know… maybe you could tell us. After all I am young and I am an immigrant along with my family.

However GMH454 you do bring a valid point about that Oly W team that trains near you gym. From what you are saying they do suck for not making their lifters strong. I don’t know why you take this group to mean the entire USAW and everyone who is in someway affiliated with it… WHICH, I would remind you, is a very small group in itself. OlyW is not just also overshadowed by football and shit, but Powerlifing as a sport has MANY more members.

What I am trying to explain is that to be able to train OlyW well is very difficult. (1) it isn’t taught anymore in schools and colleges (2) to find a gym with the right equipment and (3) anyone who is good at it and can teach it well, is damn hard.

–for example: I gotta commute 1hr, when my Uni gyms are 10minutes away and are free. (I heard the football team gym in even better but regular students are not allowed to use it). Even then, the coaching I get is from more experienced lifters, guys who can snatch more than 1-1/4(plus) their BW and can jerk almost 2x BW. To see the REAL coaches I have to either (a) miss a full day of class and drive 2(plus)hrs out of state for a max of 2 times per week, (b) miss work and drive 1-1/2hrs.

And I consider myself VERY lucky!

Compound this with the difficulty of the lifts themselves… its frankly not easy.

HOWEVER! at least here on the MD, DC, VA area, the number of Oly lifters is growing!!!

…but moving on…

The IDEA that strength is NOT emphasized to Oly lifters is fucking stupid! (that goes to you LiveFromThe781, tom63, and others)

I’ll tell you how it was put to me recently:
“NeoSpartan, whats holding you back is that you are not training consistently enough and you squat NEEDS to improve. Without it going up your lifts won’t move. On the next cycle you (and everyone else who is a rookie) will be doing the Russian Squat cycle”.
–I had to have the Russian Squat cycle softed up a litte because I was getting pinned on the 1st set of 6X6 with 80%. Which fucking sucks.

I’ll also tell you like it was put to one of the guys I train with:
-guy says: “you know I weigh 80kg, I think I should cut to 77kg and get strong there and compete in that weight class”
-Coach says: “You need to forget about your six pack and gain weight. Nobody in this sport lifts big numbers with Skinny Legs!”

To be good at Oly W, you need BOTH strength and technique. The whole idea of “techniqueing triple bodyweight overhead” is retarded. For that shit you need OAK legs and back (from top to bottom), and joints made of steel. (Along with being really short, only in the light weight classes do you see 3X BW C&Js.)
–Technique allows the already strong lifter to use his strength to maximum capacity (which is the same fucking story with most other sports). Technique is NOT a replacement for strength, just as supplements are NOT replacements for real food.

For LiveFromThe781:
So every motherfucker who starts Clean & Jerking with 110lbs, or less, and doesn’t really know WTF he is doing, make Oly W be a pathetic sport???. Following your train of thought, any sport which someone who doesn’t really know WTF he/she is doing is SHIT because that guy/gal is doing light weights/running slow/throwing short/hitting soft. Genius assessment there bud.

43

[quote]Neospartan wrote:
GMH454 wrote:
…
They competed at a time when lifting was anything but “cool”

Compare your history to your present, the US is a poor shadow of itself.

True that… but from what I’ve read back a few decades before I was born the Oly Lifts and their variations were in school athletic programs. Now how many schools, and how widespread was this training across the nation I don’t know… maybe you could tell us. After all I am young and I am an immigrant along with my family.

However GMH454 you do bring a valid point about that Oly W team that trains near you gym. From what you are saying they do suck for not making their lifters strong. I don’t know why you take this group to mean the entire USAW and everyone who is in someway affiliated with it… WHICH, I would remind you, is a very small group in itself. OlyW is not just also overshadowed by football and shit, but Powerlifing as a sport has MANY more members.

What I am trying to explain is that to be able to train OlyW well is very difficult. (1) it isn’t taught anymore in schools and colleges (2) to find a gym with the right equipment and (3) anyone who is good at it and can teach it well, is damn hard.
–for example: I gotta commute 1hr, when my Uni gyms are 10minutes away and are free. (I heard the football team gym in even better but regular students are not allowed to use it). Even then, the coaching I get is from more experienced lifters, guys who can snatch more than 1-1/4(plus) their BW and can jerk almost 2x BW. To see the REAL coaches I have to either (a) miss a full day of class and drive 2(plus)hrs out of state for a max of 2 times per week, (b) miss work and drive 1-1/2hrs.

And I consider myself VERY lucky!

Compound this with the difficulty of the lifts themselves… its frankly not easy.

HOWEVER! at least here on the MD, DC, VA area, the number of Oly lifters is growing!!!

…but moving on…

The IDEA that strength is NOT emphasized to Oly lifters is fucking stupid! (that goes to you LiveFromThe781, tom63, and others)

I’ll tell you how it was put to me recently:
“NeoSpartan, whats holding you back is that you are not training consistently enough and you squat NEEDS to improve. Without it going up your lifts won’t move. On the next cycle you (and everyone else who is a rookie) will be doing the Russian Squat cycle”.
–I had to have the Russian Squat cycle softed up a litte because I was getting pinned on the 1st set of 6X6 with 80%. Which fucking sucks.

I’ll also tell you like it was put to one of the guys I train with:
-guy says: “you know I weigh 80kg, I think I should cut to 77kg and get strong there and compete in that weight class”
-Coach says: “You need to forget about your six pack and gain weight. Nobody in this sport lifts big numbers with Skinny Legs!”

To be good at Oly W, you need BOTH strength and technique. The whole idea of “techniqueing triple bodyweight overhead” is retarded. For that shit you need OAK legs and back (from top to bottom), and joints made of steel. (Along with being really short, only in the light weight classes do you see 3X BW C&Js.)
–Technique allows the already strong lifter to use his strength to maximum capacity (which is the same fucking story with most other sports). Technique is NOT a replacement for strength, just as supplements are NOT replacements for real food.

For LiveFromThe781:
So every motherfucker who starts Clean & Jerking with 110lbs, or less, and doesn’t really know WTF he is doing, make Oly W be a pathetic sport???. Following your train of thought, any sport which someone who doesn’t really know WTF he/she is doing is SHIT because that guy/gal is doing light weights/running slow/throwing short/hitting soft. Genius assessment there bud.

[/quote]

Neospartan:

Your post was a little disjointed but I picked up on rant in there about strength being important in O-lifting. If someone suggests that (Livefromtheblahblahblah), don’t waste your time addressing it. The pervading point is that Americans, in general, are just not strong in comparison to to Asian lifter, Eastern European lifters, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, run down the line. We just don’t spend enough time getting our lifters strong. Period. It can’t be argued. Other nations observe it and tell our coaches about it. Of course our coaches get pissed and protest (too much). They know it’s true. Maybe a few more powerlifters will come along and make our coaches look like geniuses.

44

[quote]Neospartan wrote:
GMH454 wrote:
…
They competed at a time when lifting was anything but “cool”

Compare your history to your present, the US is a poor shadow of itself.

True that… but from what I’ve read back a few decades before I was born the Oly Lifts and their variations were in school athletic programs. Now how many schools, and how widespread was this training across the nation I don’t know… maybe you could tell us.

[/quote]

I am not actually in the US, and you may have attributed someones elses comments to me. But addressing the above, I do not believe that OL was anywhere but in YMCAs and gyms across the states. Pretty sure if it was in Unis and Schools, Bob Hoffman (Strength & Health mag) would have featured them in his monthly äround the Campus’s which namely showed school weight rooms with footballers doing 1/2 squats and benches.

That said the big difference between then and now was the gym itself. No machines except leg press and lat pull down. Bodybuilders OLed and powerlifting was a small thing done by some bodybuilders. Casey, Hennesy etc…If you went into gyms they had platforms and everyone was exposed to it. Most guys had a go at it.

That said, and I know I sound very old, but guys in those days without gear were stronger to start with, or so it seems to me today. At my globo lots of 200lb guys with great shoulders and arms doing deads with a lot less than I did as a 17 weighing 147lb, and I never thought I was strong at the time (still don’t) lots of guys today should stop posting videos until they are actually lifting some weight.

and Prowl Cat you are right, the lifters in the US in the 60s & early 70’s were on a par with the soviets in most areas of strength.

45

thx man… I hear a lot about people talking about today and yesterday but few actually give examples of how it was.

46

i dont understand how you can say america will dominate weightlifting when europe cant even dominate asia in weightlifting, and weightlifting is pretty popular in europe not just in eastern europe, in the 2008 beijing games all of the gold medalist were asian except for the 105kg, and 105kg+ class, if you think about it,

the notion that eastern european men dominate weightlifting is just pathetic nowadays, china didn’t get gold in the mens 77kg division, but a korean did, so we are rather far from their level, i think its all in our culture, we prefer to watch strongmen competitions,

the biggest and baddest, thats what america’s all about isn’t it, powerlifting competitions, the biggest and baddest benching, squatting, and deadlifting the biggest baddest weights, europe and asia sees a gracefulness in weightlifting, the mixture of brains, technique, and strength,

the world sees america as a big dumbass neanderthal and we definitely act like it with our enthusiasm in strongmen and powerlifting competitions, in europe and asia, their mindset is different

47

[quote]trance4mation wrote:
i dont understand how you can say america will dominate weightlifting [/quote]

hmmmmm…you did read the first post didn’tyou ?

what that post was about is simply, that the US has probably more certified coaches than the rest of the world together.

ever looked at any crossfit website ??? and there are literally thousands of these gyms around, and many / most have a certified OL coach, some have several.

Now most if not all these certified coaches have never competed. Now I know you can have a great coach who did not practice that sport, but actually doing the sport teaches so much.

in my country Australia our OL has gotten into the groove and now sells level 1 certification in Ol to anyone with $600 and a weekend to spare.

I cannot go into the warmup room any more if I am not lifting and one of my charges is because I am not certified, despite years of sucessful comp experience as a coach and lifter…

I personally don’t give a rats toss, whether someone has their cert 1, I want to know what they did…

and if you think Bulgaria but with a really big budget you will work out the Chinese…

the IOC only tests for drugs on the shelf. If you have a $100 grand most good research pharmacy people could give you a drug as good as shelf steroids that cannot be tested as they base all tests on known products.