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The U.S. sucks at Olympic Lifting! That is not just my opinion, I have stats to back it up. From 1904 to 1968 (nine Olympic games) the US won 38 metals, of which 15 were gold. From 1972 to 2008 (nine Olympic games) we won 3 medals and none of them were gold. (Seriously if you are putting up the “women medaled” as a defense I just feel sorry for you as a man). When basketball only got bronze in 2004, it was all over the media and our country was pissed, but basketball got a medal in every Olympics they have competed in. So apparently no one in this country cares about Olympic lifting since we have sucked so bad for the last 40 years and no one says shit about it. Well as a fan of everything strength and a proud American, I’m saying something about it!
When I’ve asked the top Olympic-lifting athletes and coaches why we never win they always look at me with this strange look. Then they fire back about the other countries cheat and take “supplements” that they can’t. Well if I’m not mistaken USADA (United States Anti Doping Assholes) tests all of our athletes and our other Olympic sports athletes seem to win gold medals. Then they follow with the lame excuse of “no youth program, lack of money in the sport, lack of popularity in the U.S. for Olympic lifting.” I then point out that powerlifting has even less money/interest/youth program and no popularity, yet American powerlifters seem to win world championships all the time. This dose of logic usually produces a pissed off “you’re fat” kind of childish response that ends in them stomping away.
The real problem our Olympic lifters have is the way that they train. I lived in Colorado Springs for a summer in college (yes it had to do with a girl) and had access to Olympic lifters and coaches at the OTC (Olympic Training Center). My girlfriend’s sister was training there to try to make the Olympics in Olympic lifting. Back then I didn’t know shit about training, but I copied down all the programs that they had for her and some other guys that I got to know (all really good people). They were training twice a day and 80 percent of their training revolved around doing the actual movements. Back then I thought “Hey, these are the Olympic coaches, they are the best in the country,” but what I know now is that these coaches haven’t brought home any medals – ever – from the Olympics. So like I always say, don’t take diet advice from a fat person, or financial advice from a homeless person, why does 99 percent of our Olympic-lifting club teams follow what the head Olympic coaches are doing when they aren’t winning?
Tommy Kono, who was the last great Olympic lifter for the U.S. always talks about the “Seat of Power,” also known as the posterior 
chain. This is one of the reasons why he was so good, he knew the posterior chain had to be extremely strong to move big weights. Later in his career he worked a lot on technique, but for some reason his messages have been switched. The club coaches and head Olympic coaches push technique above all else. It’s like the guy with perfect bench form on a 100 pound bench, unless you’re 13 years old, who gives a f&*%? You are still weak as shit. One time a big name Olympic coach came into Westside with his new prodigy and the guy was showing off his “perfect technique” on a max snatch when Chuck V. went over threw the weight over his head in an awkward, I’ve never done this shit before fashion, and said “what’s so hard about that?” The lifter and coach were amazed. It’s not amazing, it’s called strength. Get some!
In the Olympic lifting practices that I’ve seen since figuring out “my ass from a hole in the ground,” I’ve witnessed people who couldn’t squat their own weight and the coach has them spending all of their time on technique, with a broomstick or PVC pipe. I’ve also witnessed Olympic lifting coaches “fix” a lifters technique with a broomstick over four weeks. The only problem with that is the lifter got a crap ton weaker. The best part is they look at this “technique improvement” as a success, when his numbers just went down. It’s ridiculous. To me it’s simple, follow a proven, effective plan that has shown to produce winners. That system is the Conjugate System. Just like a football team doesn’t play a game every practice, neither should Olympic lifters only do the lifts. We all know what would happen if football players played a game every day, they would get beat up, never improve and get worse. This is how our Olympic lifters are being trained.
Every lifter has a weak link that limits his strength. As a coach, our most important job is to identify that weakness and bring it up so it isn’t a limiting factor. This can never happen if all you are doing 80 percent of the time is the clean and snatch. In the Conjugate System, 80 percent of the time is spent bringing up weakness, not doing the competition lift. A perfect example of this from my training is when I deadlifted 760 pounds in a meet. Six months later I pulled 804 pounds without doing one conventional deadlift from the floor between meets. What I did was work on my weaknesses and get a lot stronger. That’s what is missing from our Olympic lifting programs. The Conjugate System was adapted from Olympic lifting for powerlifting by many great contrib
utors to the strength game. So I’m not quite sure why I always hear that it only works for powerlifting.
The bottom line is that we suck at Olympic lifting and unless there is a major shift in training paradigm, that trend will continue. It makes me feel really bad for the athletes who train their hearts out only to be set up to fail. It also makes me feel bad as a proud American because we get our ass whooped every game by countries that I’ve: 1. Never heard of and 2. couldn’t even begin to pick out on a map. We are the United States, home of the free and apparently land of the weak. So please call your Senator and demand an Olympic lifting medal and maybe something will start to change because I just can’t take us losing in the premier strength sport in the Olympics anymore.
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Crossfitters are the most functional and strongest athletes in the world. They use all the Olympic lifts in their training and will become the grassroots spring board for the next round of gold metal Olympic lifters. They also have more “certified” Olympic Lifting coaches than any other organization. They also have more “certified” Powerlifting coaches than any another organization. If anybody can turn this around it’s CrossFit.
Karim Lamin – I definitely agree that the peak age of a powerlifter is much later and it’s b/c of the nervous system demands. I don’t believe that powerlifting is any less technical that olympic lifting it’s just that the technique happens at different speeds, thus a younger person, ie-nervous system can do better at olympic lifting. The lack of kids programs for ol’ing is a huge problem, and one that unless the gov’t throws money at won’t change. Motor patterns are 99% learned by age 13 and since not too many of our youth have learned ol’ing by this age we get screwed to a certain extent. Although motor patterns are transferrable if in similarity, their isn’t much being put into our phys ed programs that can transfer to the olympic lifts.
I think crossfit has done a lot to expose people to the classical lifts but the trolls saying it is gods gift are retards and probably hate crossfit and are trying to make it look bad anyway cause no one who wanted to see it prosper would say such stupid things.
LASTLY, out of all the comments, some agreed, some really disagreed as to why we suck at Olympic Lifting, but even the most ardent of haters and agitators didn’t argue the main point of this article and that is WE SUCK AT OLYMPIC LIFTING, and I hope that it at least made people stop and think about how we could do a little better. There are some great olympic lifting coaches and athletes out there (in the US) and I hope that we can all open up dialogue with each other to better our countries chances of being on top. Some say if you think you could do better do it, but that is not realistic, I have chosen my path, I can’t stop paying my bills (child support) and go on a quest for olympic lifters, but I can offer my insights to other coaches and athletes and hope it helps them in their pursuits. We are all after the same thing, but like powerlifting as a sport, we seem more interested in arguing with each other then helping each other grow. Maybe that will change some day.
In all fairness JL, crossfit may expose people to the oly lifts, but they certify people with no background in a weekend. Yet ANY olympic lifter (especially kono, who is not a crossfit fan because of how they treat the oly lifts) will say it takes years to learn the basics of these lifts.
None the less, I really enjoyed your article, it got my whole gym talking, and Im assuming that was your intention.
Just read your comment about last names so here ya go…
JL
My initial comment to your article was a bit rude and I apologize.
The problem with this article is it a Louis Simmons article from 15 years ago and although I respect Louis I believe it is simplistic and inaccurate.
Read Rob Macklem’s 10 year old post on Goheavy which has been reposted by Rob Conte.
I believe strength is obviously very important to olympic lifters, but we have coaches who are still teaching incorrect technique, as well.
This is, more than anything a cultural issue. Pay people millions to lift and the USA will be competitive.
It’s a numbers game. Vic Davy
I agree that are most powerful athletes are going to excel at a sport that is more lucrative in our culture ;however, I don’t believe you are going to find many of our freaks from the NFL with the abilities to be olympic level lifters. The best o-lifters have limbs that give them a distinct advantage over other lifters. Football physical characteristics like a big wingspan, etc. disqualifies most from being the best of the best of o-lifts. Great genetics along with many years of skill development are determining factors for success in most sports. It still amazes me how many strength coaches waste time on perfecting o-lifting techniques when the time could be used to develop skills in the sport an athlete plays… not to mention better methods to develop power! Stevan
This article glosses over the “supplement” issue. No other olympic sport directly benifits more from anabolics than weightlifting. I appreciate bringing the emphasis to what our American team can do rather than simply reemphasizing the difficulties. But, the issue is that in Europe and other countries (among the top medalists) their governing bodies almost facilitate the seasonal use of anabolics. In short, team members are tacitly given warning when they will be tested. In some countries they can join a more lenient association for a time then switch back to the more stringent oly lifting association. If someone is unable to extrapolate how anabolics can be used favorably with no detection then perhaps they have not been in the iron game long enough, or less charitably put, they are blathering idiots. Among the top trainers, such as Burgener and Greg Everett, you will find dedicated individuals who pour themselves over every aspect of training. The posterior chain emphasis is a controversial point that seems to have been put to rest, in compelling arguments, by Greg Everett.
This issue isn’t as simple as this article pretends. Then again, it may be: simply dose up our team with anabolics. We’d medal in every competition, including the Olympics.
The Olympic lifts are SO much more dynamic than the big 3, that they MUST be practiced day in and day out. Watch the guys at Cal Strength and Avg Broz Gym, everyday they are doing the same lifts over and over and over. Guess what? They are improving! Look at Naim aka Pocket Hercules…his training was 6 days a week, 2 sessions a day and he will forever go down as one of the best lifters of all time.
Lifts like the deadlift can improve without practice, but that’s not the case with the Oly lifts. Naim could barely deadlift more than he clean and jerked- the explosiveness and picture perfect technique got that weight overhead.
oh, and LOL @ Crossfitters…. they may be the ‘fittest’, but nowhere NEAR the strongest or fastest. “The more you do, the less you’re good at”…this holds true for the CF world
Ive got lots of hope for Pat Mendes over at average broz. Alot of his success could be attributed not just strength but support. What John Broz is doing is whats needed. Success comes not only a shit load of work but the mindset from a good gym.
Love the chuck V story. ‘sure…Talk shit in my gym’ but lets face it: no Louie, no Westside, no Chuck.
Olympic style gyms are JUST starting to pick up in the US. Lets hope some of the bulgarian style gyms get the support they need… dedicated athletes.
now if there was someway for Andrei Aramnau’s knees to hit crowbar or something. that kid is going to OWN weighlifting for a long, long time. he might best Zakharevitch then go after Taranenko. Insane speed.
Some of you may of heard of Bill Starr. ( Google him.) Back in the 70′s he said the same thing.
GET STRONG. Technique and flexibility are important but limiting. An example he gave was of Ernie Pickett ( by the way a very good powerlifter back then) who was VERY strong, had poor technique, took a while to improve his technique and his lifts went down.
I am 15, and hope to oneday I lift PL/OLY. I will win. America needs change, not poltiical shit, we need real change. Maybe a gold that truly matters could help that.
there is no system, there is no secret, there is no conjugate method, there is no bands or chains, there is no special exercises, there is no special drugs, there is no Westside special training, there is no big deadlifts or big good mornings. the truth is that to be a great weightlifter, one must train full snatch, clean & jerk and front squat at 90%, 95% and 100% with high frequency, one must touch the bar 365 times per year, one must have the guts for getting under the bar, one must have pain tolerance and have a strong mind for survive. But powerlifters don’t know nothing about this, because they don’t need to get under the bar.
hey are improving! Look at Naim aka Pocket Hercules…his training was 6 days a week, 2 sessions a day and he will forever go down as one………….WRONG. He was training 7 days a week, 6 sessions a day, from 8am to sometimes midnight. FACT
There seem to be some incorrect assumptions in this article. One is that we don’t have strong Olympic lifters, or that our best are not as strong as the best in the world. Let’s look at a few weight classes.
Let’s start at 94kg. We have a Junior (19 years old) lifter who back squats 250kg for a triple. One of the lifters who was near US record levels a few years ago had a 290kg front squat. Obviously there are many more examples, but these two are sufficient to demonstrate that our best lifters in this weight class, both junior and senior, do not lack in strength when compared to the strength levels of lifters who win medals at the Olympics. The Author of this article might take note of the fact that we have several lifters in this class who can out squat Kolecki, the polish 94kg world champion. Of interest also might be the fact that the current top US athlete in this class, Jon North, is not a big squatter, although we are working hard to turn him into one. He regularly defeats lifters who squat 20-40 kilos more than him.
Let us move down a weight class to the 85′s. Kendrick Farris our top lifter in this class, and Matt Bruce, our second best lifter, can both out squat, out front squat, and in Kendrick’s case out deadlift the vast majority of European athletes, and the majority of athletes who defeat them in international competition.
Moving down again to the 77′s, we have, or recently had, Lance Frye. I am going to say that his “strength” numbers, again, were probably better than at least half of the top 10 lifters in the world in his weight class. Even so, he was regularly defeated by Chad Vaughn here in the USA, who had much less impressive squat numbers.
Going further, we arrive at the 69kg weight class and Caleb Williams… I believe currently our second best athlete. Although he has been regularly defeated in the past by another lifter from Georgia who squats much less, his squat and front squat numbers are, once again, as good as any, better than m ost in his weight class on the international level. Caleb is an ex-powerlifter, a world champion I believe, who is truly gifted in the strength arena, but his great squat and deadlift do not allow him to defeat European lifters who squat less but snatch and clean and jerk much more.
Should we continue to move down in weight class, and talk about Tim McRae, who probably outsquatted ALL of his competitiors on the international stage? Or should we move up in weight class and talk about Mark Henry or Shane Hammon? What about Wiley Webster who pulled an 800lb deadlift in high school at the 220lb weight class but was entirely unsuccessful in weightlifting? What about Pat Mendez, could the author of this article match his 800lb squat without a belt or wraps?
The fact is that although not all weightlifters are super strong (neither are all powerlifters) the USA has certainly had a number of folks in the past 20 years with truly world class strength on the “slow” lifts.
A second assumption seems to be that the OTC isnt worried about strength. This assumption usually comes from those outside of the OL community, because within the weightlifting community, the knock on the OTC is usually that they concentrate TOO MUCH on strength, endless squatting and pulling and pressing, and not enough on the competitive lifts. The list of athletes who have gone to the OTC and made huge progress on their squat numbers but negligable progress on the competitive lifts is certainly long.
A third incorrect assumption is that OL coaches in the USA don’t care much about strength. I am an OL coach in the USA, and I know that I care deeply about increasing the strength of those I am coaching. And, in my interaction with other coaches, I have yet to meet anyone who wouldn’t do pretty much anything to put another few pounds on their lifters squats. OL coaches, the majority at least, are obsessed with squat numbers and go to all lengths to improve them.
And last, there is the assumption that we have not tried any of the methods espoused by Louie Simmons or the “conjugate” method. Many have. I have. I drove all the way to Westside from ‘Wichita Falls, Texas with two of my lifters just to learn what I could from Louie. I have talked to louie off and on on the phone since around the early 90′s, when I first started incorporating his methods into m y own training.
The problem is, no one, including myself had yet been able to get it to work. For a time I tried implementing things exactly as Louie described, with disastrous results. Then I modified it in ways my experience as an OL coach told me it needed to be modified with slightly better results… but in the end, I was never able to make it work as well as the method the Europeans and the others who are defeating us use, namely doing the competitive lifts heavy and often and squatting a LOT.
I have a lot of respect for Louie. I have taken valuable things from him that I use to this day and am grateful for. But as far as the system as a whole, I have tried it as have others, and no one had yet to be able to make it successful for OL. Great for getting the squat up, but that doesnt matter when the snatch goes down at the same time.
I have been told that the author of this article is a very impressive lifter. I can certainly respect him for this. I am sure that he has a great deal of knowledge about training and getting stronger, and I do not wish to denigrate him or attack him in any way. But I do think that he has started his though process with the incorrect assumptions that I have pointed out. Whether this is because he has been exposed to some personal experiences that are not representative, or because he has listened to the wrong people, or a combination of the two, I am not sure.
One example of a lifter who went down the path of chasing strength by de-emphasising the competitive lifts in training and trying anything to get his back squat and deadlift up.
Donny Shankle is one of the better known American weightliters. He did 165kg snatch and a 201kg clean and jerk in competition within his first 3 years of training. This was done with a front squat of about 230kg, and a back squat of about 250kg. He also deadlifted around 230kg At one point, after some frustration he decided to pursue a program of only doing the snatch and clean and jerk once a week, and trying very hard the rest of the time to raise his squat and deadlift. Using various methods, he increased both his back squat and his deadlift to over 300kg over the course of about 18 months. Oddly enough, he could NOT make personal records on the competitive lifts. Fast forward a couple of years, and he is back to training the snatch and clean and jerk in the European manner, meaning constantly, and has made a 210kg clean and jerk in training, a 204kg clean and jerk in competition, and a 173kg snatch in training, all new personal records. His front squat is back around 230kg.
His venture into the world of pursueing maximal strength at all costs wasted about 2 years, which is a lot of time for a guy in his mid-twenties who is in a sport that favors the young. The lesson? More strength is always good, but if you want it to be applicable to OL, it has to be gained and be able to be maintained within the framework of a decent OL training system. This is a lesson that has been learned time and time and time again by various weightlifters. But still, those outside the sport continue to propose that de-emphasizing the lifts in training and concentrating on strength more will lead to some sort of magic. We all want to squat more, but it has to be done within the constructs of a training system that favors the lifts and makes one good at them, or it is not much use.
We are not doing as well as we want to in USA weightlifting, this much is true. But this article, in my opinion, did not outline a realistic approximation of what the problem is, or how to fix it.
After I re-read this, I had to comment on just one more thing. The Author makes the following statement.
“So like I always say, don’t take diet advice from a fat person, or financial advice from a homeless person, why does 99 percent of our Olympic-lifting club teams follow what the head Olympic coaches are doing when they aren’t winning?”
This statement demonstrates maybe better than anything else in the article the complete, COMPLETE misunderstanding of the situation in USA weightlifting by the author. The fact is, to my knowledge, NO ONE outside of Colorado Springs has been following the programs of the last few head coaches at the OTC. To say that 99% of the clubs follow what they say is absolutely, completely WRONG. Just about every team has their own unique training program. Some are similar, for instance myself, Jon Broz, Mike Burgener, Steve Gough and some others follow programs that are similar to the Bulgarian method, all these coaches have their own particular take on things, and all the programs are different, but they could probably be classified as similar. Pete Roselli runs a very, very different program, based on the book by Russian coach Medvedev, really a completely different type of program. Don McCauley has his own unique program, but it is probably influenced most by the Koreans. Kyle Pierce and Gayle Hatch both have their own unique training philosophies and both produce a lot of really STRONG lifters. I could go on and on with a long list of coaches, each having arrived at his or her own unique program via trial and error and experience. And we could probably group these programs into loose groups based on the general characteristics of the program but to my knowledge NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, copies the program at the OTC.
To say that 99% do just demonstrates a complete and total lack of knowledge of the situation. I want to say again that I have no beef with the author, and given his accomplishments and strength levels am sure that he has a high degree of training knowledge… The problem is that it does not seem like he has much knowledge of what is going on in OL in the USA at this time. And, I am not sure why he would, evidently he is not involved in our sport. I don’t know how the current best milers or marathoners program their training… no big deal. But it is going to be really hard to try to find a solution to a problem if your understanding of the current situation is seriously flawed.
I just watched Max Aita, weighing about 95-96kg, squat 250kg (550lbs) for 5 sets of 5 reps Olympic style, well below parallel and completely raw, no belt even. He did that a few hours ago, this very afternoon. Having been involved in Powerlifting, and having some knowledge of how much equipment can add to a lift, I believe that there are a LOT of powerlifters with huge squats, using the conjugate system, who could not reproduce what Max did today under the same condiions, drug tested, totally raw, weighing around 200 lbs and within a training program that means he was pretty fatigued in the legs and hips before he even started the workout. BTW earlier in the day he had worked up to and missed a 290kg single, a lift he should have made but he was obviously tired.
If what I just described constitutes not being strong or trying hard to get strong, then, well I don’t know.
everybody try to find a magical way of getting better and stronger in the olympic lifts, but in the end everybody finds that the classical lifts are the only way of getting stronger in OL. I am from Brazil, and all the kids in my country is playing football without any special training, the kids are just playing football everyday over and over, and the result is that Brazil is the most powerfull country in football all over the world, and nobody in my country is using chains or bands.
Just some advice for Mr. Holdsworth. Whenever you read what should be a reasoned argument and you start reading locker room language, a giant red flag appears. It signals flaws in the argument and the writer feels the need to bolster his argument with emotion, which is what locker room language really is. Wisdom has never come from a locker room. In fact the opposite is true.
I think there is a reasonable consensus among people who have been around and who know the sport’s history as to why the US has not fared so well in Olympic weightlifting. Essentially you can partition weightlifting’s history into two epochs. Epoch one begins with the first Olympics and ends about the mid-1950s. Epoch 2 begins at about that time and continues up through today.
When weightlifting began, it was a true amateur sport made up of individuals who competed on their own. Essentially, there was little organization. That all changed in the 1930s when Bob Hoffman came on the scene. Hoffman loved Olympic weightlifting, was a shrewd promoter of the sport, invested in and subsidized the sport, and brought a degree of organization to it through his York Barbell Club. Hoffman’s work brought results. The US did well in world competitions. The important thing to realize is that there were no other Bob Hoffmans in the world. Weightlifting outside the US was largely unorganized, much like it had been before 1930.
In about the mid-1950s, things began to change. Part of the change was within the US, but most of the change was outside. Within the US the weightlifting scene began to splinter. Bodybuilding was becoming the dominant weight game. Powerlifting was beginning to emerge. At the same time sports in general within the US were expanding. All of this meant there were many other sporting avenues for people to pursue.
The biggest change occurred outside the US. The Soviet Union and Eastern European countries began participating in the Olympic Games. With respect to weightlifting, they essentially did what Bob Hoffman had done in the 1930s, but on a much grander scale. These countries brought science, organization, and huge resources to weightlifting. Though Hoffman was well off financially, he was no match for any one country, let alone many countries. He and the US simply couldn’t compete.
With the collapse of the European Communism, weightlifting knowledge disbursed to other regions where it remains today. Meanwhile weightlifting in the US has shrunk. The US weightlifting federation’s budget is slightly less than that for the Tae Kwan Do federation and less than a quarter of that of the wrestling federation. If you don’t think things like organization and resource matter, especially in relation to the world, you are like the person who thinks that in baseball, this year’s Pittsburgh Pirates have an excellent chance of winning the World Series. Way back in the 1970s the Soviet championships were more competitive and of higher quality that were the world championships. Compare Russian results with world results now.
One last comment. There is not a coach of any sport in the world that doesn’t know that an athlete needs to work on his or her weaknesses. The question is always how to do that.
“So like I always say, don’t take diet advice from a fat person, or financial advice from a homeless person”
And don’t take olympic lifting advice from a powerlifter!
Crossfit is nothing even close to Olympic Style Weight training at the intermediate to elite levels of the sport. To say crossfitters are the next generation of Olympic Lifters is nonsense. Although crossfitter do use the olympic lifts, they do so in a dangerous manner through the repeated use of high reps on lifts designed to test a combination of technique, strength and speed.
Training for strength and technique is not what crossfitters do. They train to look lean, but I have never seen a Crossfitter that actually looks strong, or compared to his bodyweight is truly strong. I will say I have seen Crossfitters perform way too many power snatches for reps to the point where technique and form are gone and danger sets in. A funny sight actually.
USA weightlifting does not really suck from a historical point of view – Ken Paterra, Bruce Wilhelm, and many others coached by the likes of Jim Schmidtz. I will say that most Americans dont even know what the sport of Olympic Lifting is all about, or its history. I’ll bet nobody that read this ridiculous article actually even knows why there is knurling on the center of barbells.
My friend is a crossfitter for the past two years. He looks great for sure and is very fit! However, he still cant beat me rep for rep in dead hang pullups and i weight 10 pounds more.
Powerlifting technically has nothing to do with power, defined by physics. In a deadlift, you aren’t trying to complete the lift in the shortest amount of time possible. It could take 5 seconds to complete the lift. A snatch is constrained by time because the 2nd pull is immediate and explosive. If it’s not “popped” high enough, you can’t complete the lift. From a physics standpoint, OL is “power” lifting, and powerlifting is “force” lifting.
To deadlift 170kg in 2 seconds requires 454watts of power. To snatch that same weight requires 1600watts.
It’s not even a close call.
Then to be able to control 170kg from the floor to the very narrow channel to get it to stop overhead requires more technique than the author of this article realizes. All the power lifting movements require short ranges of travel, in essentially a linear path. In snatch, the bar moves towards you, then away from you, then back towards you again. From the side it looks like a very tight question mark. Once you can snatch your bodyweight, then you are more in a position to understand the technique involved.
To answer the question of why we don’t tend to medal in weightlifting while we medal in basketball and powerlifting is very simple. The US doesn’t widely teach OL. The rest of the world does. Clearly, in the US basketball is very popular, and the odds of finding greatness is very high. The rest of the world finds soccer players left and right. In the US, given the same probability to have great soccer players, to FIND them is hard. We have an endless number of sports they can play. The best soccer player the US might very well be playing tennis. He may have never touched a soccer ball in his life. If he grew up in Brazil, he would have been discovered at age 9. In the US, our best olympic lifter is likely doing something else. Probably football. You can get no money or publicity doing OL, or be on national TV every week in college playing football.
Bottom line: we don’t suck. We just have a lot more athletic options.
Good article and note, many of those Oly lifters of the past that medaled in past bygone Olympics did so on own time and money. Also Al Oerter, who won 4 golds over 4 olympics (discus) did so on own time and money, sure he got some endorsements, but he had to work just like everyone else!
Please allow me to make the following two comments, actually make a comment and ask a question, as an amateur interested in powerlifting and Olympic lifting. I repeat, as an amateur, I don’t pretend to be something I’m not.
1) In my humble opinion, whether one agrees, in whole or in part, or not, with J.L.’s article, he nevertheless accomplished something great: he managed to stir things up with his provocative, almost Socratic style and to get the debate going, not just within the confines of the Olympic lifting community. I really appreciated (most of) the comments too, esp. from Mr. Pendlay and I learned a lot and they made me think about a lot of things.
2) I have a sincere, perhaps naive, question for Mr. Pendlay and other Olympic lifting coaches who might be reading this: is the Bulgarian method, or variations thereof, truly the only method guaranteed to produce results? I know it has worked well for Bulgaria and other countries and has produced many medalists, but I wonder if anyone has looked into how many athletes burned out because of the Bulgarian style of doing the same lifts over and over again at maximum intensity? We only focus on the medalists it produced, but do we know how many other athletes it destroyed in the process? And what about the more rounded old Russian school? Is it considered outdated nowadays? Didn’t it produce many medalists? Didn’t Alexeev train that way and Taranenko and other greats? Isn’t there a way to be more rounded in one’s training and train for strength too and still transfer those gains into the lifts themselves? In other words, strike some form of balance in one’s training?
Again, J.L., thank you for your article and I apologize in advance if the naivete of this amateur annoyed some of your readers, but I’m sincerely interested in and would appreciate a reply.
Thanks and regards to everyone at EliteFTS.
Yanni Kilmore-
Please tel me you are joking? Yes crossfit athletes are some of the stronger OVERALL athletes in the world but I’d be willing to bet my entire bank account that I can take the strongest player in college football and he will OUT LIFT any single cross fit athlete in OLYMPIC lifts. Crossfit is exactly what its called…crossfit…a cross of different workouts incorporated to make an athlete as overall fictionally strong as possible. Above average at everything but not excellent in one thing. Olympic strength coaches, college strength coaches, personal trainers…most of them are in positions not because of what they know but WHO they know. At my current college the strength coach didn’t even have his masters or his CSCS! How do you get TWO D1 positions and not have both of those aspects….its because its a flawed system for the most part. Best strength coach I have ever had the pleasure of working with was a dIII strength coach…who is currently an assistant for a D1-aa program….only because he didn’t have his maters yet. Just another reason the profession is Fu$Ked
anni Kilmore
Posted March 27, 2011 at 3:39 PM
“..Crossfitters are the most functional and strongest athletes in the world…”
There’s absolutely no scientific basis to that statement what so ever. If the assumption is that Crossfit will contribute, to a greater extent, to the pool of potential talent, by increasing awareness of Olympic lifting, I would agree.
“…They use all the Olympic lifts in their training and will become the grassroots spring board for the next round of gold metal Olympic lifters. They also have more “certified” Olympic Lifting coaches than any other organization. They also have more “certified” Powerlifting coaches than any another organization. If anybody can turn this around it’s CrossFit….”
Who is certifying these organization?? And what does that mean? Oh, by the way, the Russians are cleaning up in powerlifting as well.