Why we ACTUALLY Suck at Olympic Lifting

Biotest Anaconda 1lb 13.7oz $85 See what all the buzz is about!

Prowler: Econo Prowler Regular $279 / On Sale $249 The best tool for conditioning just got more affordable.

Below is a list of the U.S. Medal Count in the major Olympic strength sports, with the exception of the shot put. Also listed are the world rankings for track and field events during the 2010 Outdoor Track & Field season.

Discus (4 of top 30 2010 Rankings)

• Gold – 1
• Silver – 2
• Bronze – 2

Hammer (2 of top 30)

• Gold – 0
• Silver – 1
• Bronze – 0

Javelin (0 of top 30)

• Gold – 0
• Silver – 0
• Bronze – 1

Weightlifting

• Gold – 0
• Silver – 2
• Bronze – 1

The above figures certainly show that the U.S. isn’t performing at the top levels of those events over the last 4 decades. There are a myriad of social, cultural and athletic reasons why this is happening, enough to fill a book. Below, I’ll discuss some of the most important ones.

1.     Money Sports – Dwight Howard, World Discus Champion; Michael Vick, Olympic Gold Medalist in the Javelin; Patrick Willis, World leader in the hammer throw; James Harrison, World Record Holding Olympic weightlifter; if these athletes had been born in Europe or Asia, these titles wouldn’t be far fetched at all, instead though they are earning millions of dollars in American professional sports. America certainly loses its top potential throwers and lifters to big money sports like football and basketball. Some argue that the U.S. has many more people though than some other countries who excel in these areas (Belarus, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Norway, Finland, etc.) that we should still be able to dominate. Quantity, though, isn’t what is needed to win medals – quality is. A country like Lithuania doesn’t need to have as many top athletes as the US, because they aren’t getting spread out between football, basketball, track and field and weightlifting, because you only need one Virgilijus Alekna (7 Olympic and World Championship medals over an 11 year span) to dominate an event. If the 6’8” 290-pound Alekna, who possesses a 7’3.5” wingspan, had been born in the U.S., he certainly would have been groomed for NFL or NBA stardom. Conversely, if Lebron James had been raised in Estonia he would be setting new standards in the discus.

2.     Drugs – It is naive to think that drug use doesn’t exist at the top levels of professional and Olympic sports, in America and elsewhere. While I’ll wholeheartedly believe that there are upper-level U.S. athletes who are doping, though I don’t have evidence to back this up, the regulation of doping is still much more stringent here than it is elsewhere. Top level U.S. throwers and lifters can be subjected to drug testing on a monthly, or more frequent basis. While these athletes in other countries often only face testing during their national championships and subsequent international competitions. This provides a window of time for athletes to use drugs that are longer acting/clearing and provide gains that are long-term.

While the above reasons are large factors why the U.S. doesn’t excel in these Olympic strength sports, the primary reasons lies in two very intertwined factors; training and youth development. In this article, I’m drawing parallels between Olympic weightlifting and the throwing events, not Olympic lifting and powerlifting because of their similarities in terms of speed and technical demands.

Lets first examine the need for youth development programs to succeed in these sports. I see the need for youth development programs as 3 fold…

• 1.) Exposure to the sport.
• 2.) Technical Development.
• 3.) Neural pathway development.

Exposure to the sport - If an athlete doesn’t know a sport exists or has never tried it, they aren’t going to excel in it, obviously. Also, if an athlete doesn’t receive proper exposure to the sport, they will not enjoy it and want to pursue it further. American youth’s only exposure to Olympic weightlifting is often power and hang cleans in their high school football’s off-season program, where the technical development and exposure to competition is extremely limited. While the shot put and discus are high school events in every state and many athletes compete in it, the quality of coaching is still sparse. Conversely, in Finland where Javelin could be considered the national sport (7 of the top 20 in the world in 2010); there are an abundance of camps where youth athletes are being coached by current and former Olympians and World Champions. Also in Hungary, which produces top athletes across all throwing events on a yearly basis, athletes from youth to world elite levels training under the same systems at the same facility in Szombathely. Below is a video of a Chinese Olympic lifting training camp, where a 95 pound 8-year-old clean and jerks 165 pounds.

Here there are dozens of youth athletes being exposed to the highest levels of coaching and are priming themselves for success in the long run.

Technical Development – Many argue that the U.S. doesn’t succeed in Olympic lifting and the throws because their athletes aren’t training from pre-adolescent age. It is certainly beneficial to begin learning techniques at a very young age, but it certainly isn’t necessary. There are plenty of American athletes who develop into the best baseball pitchers or quarterbacks, both very technical endeavors, while only beginning to train as high school athletes. I think it is certainly possible to develop the technical skills necessary to excel in Olympic weightlifting and the throws while only being exposed to proper technical coaching from 18 years old and beyond, though it is certainly more ideal to be exposed at a younger age.

Neural Development – This is the most important factor in why youth development programs are necessary for America to succeed in the strength-speed dominant sports of Olympic Weightlifting and the throwing events of track and field. The speed necessary to excel in these sports is extremely high and it is important that the young athletes train at the necessary velocities to one day move their implement of choice at a world class level. During a young athlete’s development, their neural pathways is much more plastic than later in life and it is during this time that they must develop the speed and wiring, that will one day make them a champion.

On a personal note, as a young athlete (ages 7-13) I was never the big kid and I competed in soccer, track and field (as a shot putter and sprinter) and basketball (as a point guard), all at a club or national level. This experience, particularly in the sprints, gave me the speed and explosive power necessary to help me succeed in track and field and powerlifting as an adult.

It is a common practice in European countries to have their youth athletes throw light hammers (beginning as low as 1kg) until they can achieve a given distance with that weight. Hence, a young athlete will throw a 1kg 80m, then a 2kg 80m, then a 2.5kg and so on and so forth, because an athlete’s body must learn the necessary velocity that must be imparted to the ball to throw elite distances. It is during these formative years, that athletes develop the proper motor patterns to one day reach Olympic glory.

Conor McCullough is an example of a U.S. athlete who has built the proper foundation of nervous system and technical development to experience long term success in an Olympic strength sport.

The need for youth development programs to help the U.S. succeed in these Olympic sports is apparent, but there is still one other important factor, training.

There are many critics of the current U.S. Olympic training model for Olympic lifting, some say that we spend too much time on the competition lifts, while others suggest that we should adopt a style of training more similar to that of America’s powerlifters, as they are much more successful in international competition than their Olympic counterparts, while others still think we need to strictly model our training after the top Olympic lifting countries, all of these assertions I believe are incorrect.

J.L. Holdsworth recently criticized the U.S. Olympic lifters lack of maximal strength, as their downfall, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The point of diminishing returns from maximal strength development in the Olympic lifts and throwing events comes much sooner than many powerlifting advocates would like to think. Shane Hamman and Mark Henry are both perfect examples of this. Hamman squatted RAW well in excess of 900 pounds, but couldn’t finish better than 7^th place at the Olympics.

Hamman was also able to perform a standing back flip and possessed a near 40” vertical, physical traits that would allude him to have ample explosiveness and athleticism to excel in the Olympic lifts. Hamman was too late to the Olympic Lifting game to develop the necessary motor patterns and technique to medal. Another perfect example of a tremendously strong American lifter who couldn’t translate his maximal strength to Olympic weightlifting glory is Mark Henry. Henry squatted 950 raw and pulled over 900, but couldn’t reach the medal stand in either of his Olympic appearances. When you compare Henry and Hamman’s maximal strength to that of other top super heavyweight competitors, they far surpass their foreign counterparts. Below is a video of Rezazadeh, world record holder in both the snatch, clean and jerk and total, front squatting 617 pounds for an easy double. While an impressive amount, it would be a paltry sum for either Hamman or Henry. There are certainly current U.S. powerlifters who could match the number as well, but can’t even begin to imagine the power necessary to match Rezazadeh’s 581 pound clean and jerk.

Some proponents of the need for U.S. athletes to increase their maximal strength to improve performance in Olympic strength sports, will try to cite anecdotal evidence of powerlifters snatching or cleaning impressive (by non-Olympic standards) weights. Others still will say that if an athlete has such a huge deadlift or squat, that 450 pounds in the snatch will become so light to them, a weight they’d use for dynamic effort work, they will perform it with ease. These people are wrong! Rezazadeh’s world record clean and jerk  of 581 pounds, represents a paltry 59.6% of Benedikt Magnusson’s 975 raw deadlift record. Why then wouldn’t Olympic lifters just try to build massive squats and deadlifts and by doing so make their snatch and clean and jerk weights, such insignificant percentages? The answer is because Olympic lifting isn’t like dynamic effort training for powerlifting, because all the Olympic lifts are dynamic in nature. Will taking your deadlift from 600 to 750 pounds make you more able to clean 550 pounds? Yes. Will taking it from 750 to 900 continue this trend? No. Once an adequate level of maximal strength has been achieved, everything becomes about speed and technique.

European and Asian athletes are able to achieve more success in Olympic weightlifting, discus/hammer/javelin throw, not necessarily because of superior training methods, drugs, support, or athlete selection, but rather organization. American athletes seem to fall into 1 of 2 traps when it comes to Olympic strength sports.

1) They come to a sport late with high maximal strength levels and then need to develop technical motor patterns, but have too many neural wiring issues to do so properly at that stage of development, to achieve the degree of success necessary to win Olympic medals.

2) They develop proper technical skills at the sacrifice of maximal strength, in an attempt to avoid the issues of problem 1, and in doing so do not develop the necessary strength levels to achieve success.

This problem can only be rectified by properly sequenced training, that starts from early adolescence, but because of the problems created by big money professional sports, improper youth development programs and a host of other social and cultural issues, this seems to be an impossibility and leaves American Olympic strength sports with the same problem that exists now.  So maybe the solution is this for Americans…be genetically gifted, find a mate with similar traits, have a child that you pass these traits along too and in raising them decide to forgo the lure of millions of dollars and fame to instead have them compete in obscure sports that may bring them personal satisfaction but won’t yield them any monetary success or improved social standing.

Print PDF

Be Sociable, Share!

•