Controversies in Olympic Weightlifting

[SeanHerbison]

700-400-616 were my best a long time ago, at 242(236), but that was in the era of equipped lifting, except for the deadlift.

Oops, I totally read that wrong. I thought you were talking about Olympic lifting, but you did clearly say PL. I looked at some of your other posts though, and you do seem knowledgeable about OL. Any dabbling there?

[Testiclaw]

700-400-616 were my best a long time ago, at 242(236), but that was in the era of equipped lifting, except for the deadlift.

Oops, I totally read that wrong. I thought you were talking about Olympic lifting, but you did clearly say PL. I looked at some of your other posts though, and you do seem knowledgeable about OL. Any dabbling there?

Eh, not really outside of fucking around, I try to keep myself healthy (I fail at this) and put all of my energy into coaching.

I honestly wish I would've been a weightlifter when I was young and before any injuries and health problems. One of my BIGGEST fears is never being "welcomed" into the realm of weightlifting coaches because I wasn't, and am not, a weightlifter.

[asdf]

put all of my energy into coaching.

This is a tangent, but do you coach full time? If so, do you have your own gym? If so, what sort of gym. I know you coach some weightlifters. Does that pay the bills?

[Testiclaw]

put all of my energy into coaching.

This is a tangent, but do you coach full time? If so, do you have your own gym? If so, what sort of gym. I know you coach some weightlifters. Does that pay the bills?

Full-time? God, I wish. Instead it's more like full-full-time.

Yes, I run my own gym. It's a smaller, private facility. Mainly weightlifting, some powerlifting and general strength, and a handful of competitive CrossFit athletes but I'm getting away from that and only doing supplemental strength work for them.

I'd like to train a thrower from middle or high school into a collegiate program one day, because of my wife. And a jumper.

[damufunman]

put all of my energy into coaching.

This is a tangent, but do you coach full time? If so, do you have your own gym? If so, what sort of gym. I know you coach some weightlifters. Does that pay the bills?

Full-time? God, I wish. Instead it's more like full-full-time.

Yes, I run my own gym. It's a smaller, private facility. Mainly weightlifting, some powerlifting and general strength, and a handful of competitive CrossFit athletes but I'm getting away from that and only doing supplemental strength work for them.

I'd like to train a thrower from middle or high school into a collegiate program one day, because of my wife. And a jumper.

check out olliesgym on the 'grams for some good weightlifting.

[asdf]

Full-time? God, I wish. Instead it's more like full-full-time.

Yes, I run my own gym. It's a smaller, private facility. Mainly weightlifting, some powerlifting and general strength, and a handful of competitive CrossFit athletes but I'm getting away from that and only doing supplemental strength work for them.

I'd like to train a thrower from middle or high school into a collegiate program one day, because of my wife. And a jumper.

Sounds like fun. Good luck.

check out olliesgym on the 'grams for some good weightlifting.

Thanks. I saw a few posts he shared in a snatch technique thread. Will check out more.

[Murelli]

(explosive spazz)

It's a cruel fate.

[cue video of me as a 16 year-old, running full tilt INTO the motherfucking goalpost].

Bent my facemask.

I guess we wouldn't have Montana Method without that, so winning I guess.

Hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision, proprioception, spatial awareness are really good things to have in a Real Athlete™. Running, jumping, throwing and playing with weights are for the plebes.

[Hanley]

I try to keep myself healthy (I fail at this)

Beers Thurs?

[asdf]

@Testiclaw That's a pretty entertaining Instagram account. Looks like you and your lifters have a lot of fun.

You're a saint for putting up with that music.

[Testiclaw]

@Testiclaw That's a pretty entertaining Instagram account. Looks like you and your lifters have a lot of fun.

You're a saint for putting up with that music.

Thank you!

It's a weird little learning experience for me. Having to balance a mix of personalities in a small space, we have a biochemist, a few students, a realtor, a mother, a PT, etc....having to juggle the proper amount of motivation and "soft side" with getting them to move well and compete even better. And having a 14yo is a big change for me.

She has a lot of potential, so my primary goal with her is making sure she enjoys training enough to want to take it more seriously. I've had to be gentle and bite my tongue a lot, but she's moving in the right direction.

The music...oh, the music. So I kicked my last male athlete out a few months, meaning all of the lifters I coach are female. We do have one male PL there, but I don't coach him, he's just a buddy who's coached by a friend. I'm starting to learn the words to CardiB songs.

I just made a deal for the 14yo to not use her phone during main movements, only accessories, and she's been handling it really well, so she's had control of the music for a few weeks.

[ch]

I feel like it's a common assumption that explosive=coordinated, and I'm not sure why. In sports where size/speed/explosiveness were prominent, say... throwing heavy objects, I was awesome compared to my peers. In anything that required skill, like shooting a basket or passing in soccer, I was nowhere near the top.

Right. And once you add endurance into the equation, that confounds things even more. If you have a football-centric worldview, of course explosiveness is going to seem like the most important measure of athleticism. But there aren’t many sports with that high of a rest-to-work ratio.

The consensus best player in the NHL (Connor McDavid) had a sub-20” vertical in the scouting combine (though he did well on the Wingate).

[ch]

It's a cruel fate.

[cue video of me as a 16 year-old, running full tilt INTO the motherfucking goalpost].

Bent my facemask.

In baseball I wanted to be a catcher but settled into first base because I couldn’t throw worth a damn. I once hit the top bar of the backstop trying to throw home once. Never lived that down.

(Turns out I have pretty good reflexes, flexibility, and spatial awareness, so I’ve found my calling as a hockey goalie.)

[asdf]

It's a weird little learning experience for me. Having to balance a mix of personalities in a small space, we have a biochemist, a few students, a realtor, a mother, a PT, etc....having to juggle the proper amount of motivation and "soft side" with getting them to move well and compete even better. And having a 14yo is a big change for me.

She has a lot of potential, so my primary goal with her is making sure she enjoys training enough to want to take it more seriously. I've had to be gentle and bite my tongue a lot, but she's moving in the right direction.

The music...oh, the music. So I kicked my last male athlete out a few months, meaning all of the lifters I coach are female. We do have one male PL there, but I don't coach him, he's just a buddy who's coached by a friend. I'm starting to learn the words to CardiB songs.

I just made a deal for the 14yo to not use her phone during main movements, only accessories, and she's been handling it really well, so she's had control of the music for a few weeks.

Coaching teenagers is challenging, for sure. Sounds like you've got a good attitude and approach.

Was the all-women thing intentional? You seem kind of exclusive. I'm guessing your gym grew by word of mouth?

I'd be curious to hear how you started, your business model, etc. But maybe you don't want to share that stuff on a forum. If not, no worries.

Best of luck with your business and your lifters. Looks like a great life in a great location.

[KyleSchuant]

I'd be curious to hear how you started, your business model, etc.

We do a bit of business discussion in this thread, which would be a good place to post it if not wanting to derail this.

[asdf]

I'd be curious to hear how you started, your business model, etc.

We do a bit of business discussion in this thread, which would be a good place to post it if not wanting to derail this.

If the mods/masses want me to start a new thread, I will, no problem. But I'm not posting in the thread you linked.

[Mkgillman]

(Turns out I am neurotic, constantly twitchy, feel neither fear nor pain, and enjoy jamming people in the kidneys when their back is turned, so I’ve found my calling as a hockey goalie.)

FTFY

[Testiclaw]

It's a weird little learning experience for me. Having to balance a mix of personalities in a small space, we have a biochemist, a few students, a realtor, a mother, a PT, etc....having to juggle the proper amount of motivation and "soft side" with getting them to move well and compete even better. And having a 14yo is a big change for me.

She has a lot of potential, so my primary goal with her is making sure she enjoys training enough to want to take it more seriously. I've had to be gentle and bite my tongue a lot, but she's moving in the right direction.

The music...oh, the music. So I kicked my last male athlete out a few months, meaning all of the lifters I coach are female. We do have one male PL there, but I don't coach him, he's just a buddy who's coached by a friend. I'm starting to learn the words to CardiB songs.

I just made a deal for the 14yo to not use her phone during main movements, only accessories, and she's been handling it really well, so she's had control of the music for a few weeks.

Coaching teenagers is challenging, for sure. Sounds like you've got a good attitude and approach.

Was the all-women thing intentional? You seem kind of exclusive. I'm guessing your gym grew by word of mouth?

I'd be curious to hear how you started, your business model, etc. But maybe you don't want to share that stuff on a forum. If not, no worries.

Best of luck with your business and your lifters. Looks like a great life in a great location.

nvm

[DirtyRed]

The point is, there is still exactly zero reason to ever high bar squat, ever, beyond one's own incompetence rendering them unable to do so.

High-bar back squats allow you to use the exact same stance as your front squats, which if you're a weightlifter is the same as your clean and snatch catch. The advantage is that you can use a lot more weight. The mechanics (torso angle, hip and knee movement) can be very similar to front squats (clean recovery) and hence much more sport-specific. High-bar places zero stress on your shoulders and elbows.

But yeah, other than all that, zero reason to ever high bar.

You know what mimics the snatch catch and the clean catch better than bastardized back squats? Overhead squats and front squats, respectively. Do those if you want to train "specificity."

BUTBUTBUT, HIGH BAR LETS YOU USE MORE WEIGHT!!1!

You know what lets you use even more weight (provided you aren't an incompetent baby and can actually do it)? Low bar squatting! Low bar squatting lets you use more weight than high bar for the same reason high bar lets you use more weight than front squats. Because it allows you a flatter back angle, and thus more hamstring involvement. Which, you may be saying, isn't something you want. Well then, you want front squats.

There is absolutely no logic that can be used in support of high bar squats for "weight"lifters that can't be better used in support of something else. I couldn't really argue against weightlifters never or very rarely back squatting, instead doing deadlifts and front squats for the related strength, and overhead squats to improve snatch recovery. I'd do exactly that if I gave half a shit about competing at weightlifting and didn't base 95% of my self-worth on being halfway decent at squatting.

For fuck's sake, a safety bar squat would have more relevance to weightlifting than a high bar squat. At least the knee action more closely resembles a front squat, and it will spare your apparently incredibly fragile shoulders and elbows. High bar squats are a bastardized crutch for invalids that "can't" lowbar, that does nothing that readily available alternatives don't do better.

I actually really really really prefer low bar. It just works with my body better. I also find resources and coaching for high bar to generally suck- my high bar is just never comfortable in the way low bar is, and everyone is just like "just go down and up it's easy". And if I was really really consistent on doing front squats, it wouldn't matter, but I never am and since I know myself, and due to Olympic lifting peer pressure, I do high bar. But I just don't like it.

If you like low bar and it doesn't interfere with your clean and snatch mechanics, do it!

If doing low bar squats interferes with your clean and snatch mechanics, you shouldn't go outside without head protection. Why does no one ever bellyache that deadlifts interfere with snatch pull mechanics?

Simple, because it's really fucking stupid to say that doing a different thing is going to fuck up something one practices on a very regular basis. In the same way it's idiotic to claim that Brooks Koepka's pitching-with-a-sand-wedge motion might "interfere" with his driver swing mechanics, even though both of those things are considerably more complex than anything you do with a barbell.

I suspect DR snatches and jerks more than almost anyone here.

The potential accuracy of this statement aside, I must insist upon different phrasing.

I would love to know the weightlifters you've trained, I'm genuinely curious. I've gone back and forth with what weightlifters are "supposed to do" and what they can do that works.

I suspect DR snatches and jerks more than almost anyone here. I went to the rankings page to check, but those lifts aren't listed. Anyway, point is, he has probably figured some things out along the way.

Well, sure, of course. Your own development is key when it comes to figuring things out.

But if you have a collection of weightlifters who are all fairly competitive and all sharp lifters, that's when you really have an understanding of things.

This would only be true if you had a significantly large group of lifters you had training low bar to compare with those that trained high bar. If you don't, you're just slinging horseshit around.

Now, obviously, I have not done a fat load of high bar training myself, in order to compare and contrast to all my low bar training and how it affects my snatch and clean&jerk. But I have actually made reasoned arguments based in things like physics, biomechanics, and common sense, and the counterarguments have mostly been either a load of fallacies (mostly appeals to authority) or logic that supports my position better than theirs.

There has to either be a baseline of understanding in the sport I coach, or, evidence/experience/data that's compelling enough to get me curious.

If it's just, "this guy is strong", or, "I'm a powerlifter but here's what I think about programming for weightlifters", man, jog on, I'm just not interested.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kyle, see, THIS is what I mean when I say weightlifters are like nobility. In that they're a bunch of conceited pricks doing stupid shit more for the aesthetics of it and to dismiss others who don't do that shit in order to feel high and mighty, rather than for any good reason.

I dont know if it's a contraversy perse....but I AM thoroughly enjoying the destruction of Ma Strength by the Chinese National team members on social media. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Link or brief explanation, please.

I don't know anything about Ma Strength as an organization, but Ma himself once spent nearly an hour helping me with my lifts. No charge. I just happened to be visiting a gym where he was coaching. I think he arrived early before his team practice. Super nice, generous guy. This was like a decade ago.

Maybe this?

When China complains about "intellectual" "property" infringement of any sort:

Since nobody discussed what I've wrote - what about those lower back fatigue credits? I'm speaking as someone who gets a lot of lower back fatigue from low bar and not nearly so much from high bar. I also hate high bar but it really does get better after you get used to the bar mashing down your traps.

For starters, I'd suggest that things that are fatiguing your lower back with heavy weights are largely accomplishing the same thing.

If you really want to avoid lower back fatigue from squatting, do front squats, and then just deadlift until your lower back is as achy and miserable as it would have been from low bar squats. I say once again that this is a much worse idea for football (among other things) than weightlifting, but it PROBABLY won't kill a football player either way (though if you were an American high school player, I'd recommend focusing greatly on the squat, whatever lets you lift the heaviest, since that seems to be what the college coaches like the most in the weight room), and it's a difference that isn't large enough to greatly matter for the average gym schlub merely trying to stay in shape and not physically disintegrate.

I feel like it's a common assumption that explosive=coordinated, and I'm not sure why. In sports where size/speed/explosiveness were prominent, say... throwing heavy objects, I was awesome compared to my peers. In anything that required skill, like shooting a basket or passing in soccer, I was nowhere near the top.

Right. And once you add endurance into the equation, that confounds things even more. If you have a football-centric worldview, of course explosiveness is going to seem like the most important measure of athleticism. But there aren’t many sports with that high of a rest-to-work ratio.

The consensus best player in the NHL (Connor McDavid) had a sub-20” vertical in the scouting combine (though he did well on the Wingate).

Congratulations, this might be the stupidest thing you've ever posted. Golf, weightlifting, powerlifting, baseball, probably cricket since that appears to be just baseball for third worlders, curling, pretty much all "field" events, archery (don't yell at me, yell at the IOC), and skeet shooting (see archery) all have higher rest-to-work ratios than football.

Also, Connor McDavid isn't the consensus best player in the NHL. He's a very good, standout player on an abortion of a hockey team, making him even more standout, and likely the most "potential" having player in the league. Ovechkin still scored more goals, and more goals per game.

I'd also argue that, specifically for ice hockey, than the wingate is more relevant than vertical leap.

FURTHERMORE, "explosiveness" can't be trained to NEARLY the extent strength or stamina can be. Thus, it's MUCH more important as a recruitment metric for any sport. I'd see this even in golf. Coaches would fall over themselves to get someone who could hit the ball really far, but was a crapshoot on whether they'd break 70 or fail to break 80 in high school, figuring that, over 4-5 years, they can learn how to hit the ball straight and stop four putting. It's hard to teach Long, especially since college golf coaches are complete morons with regards to ANY sort of effective physical training for golfers.

[Testiclaw]

This would only be true if you had a significantly large group of lifters you had training low bar to compare with those that trained high bar. If you don't, you're just slinging horseshit around.

Well, sure, which is why I was interested in who you've trained. Do you have a group of lifters you've trained with low-bar that you can offer us?

Or are you just saying that weightlifting coaches aren't training or programming correctly without having developed lifters yourself?

I don't think it's coincidence that the powerhouse weightlifters around the world use high-bar squatting as their go-to for leg strength, especially with how the quads and knee-extension are involved in several phases of the snatch and clean and jerk.

You say they're wrong, appealing to authority, or acting like nobility.

[KyleSchuant]

Kyle, see, THIS is what I mean when I say weightlifters are like nobility. In that they're a bunch of conceited pricks doing stupid shit more for the aesthetics of it and to dismiss others who don't do that shit in order to feel high and mighty, rather than for any good reason.

Well, I can't argue with that. But that doesn't mean they're wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

I just see a lot of stuff in weightlifting that reminds me of Topol raising his arm in the air and singing, "tradition!" I split vs squat jerk's an obvious one, but there are lots, really. I think a lot of it was simply that for many decades, weightlifting just didn't have a lot of people involved in it, half the coaches had been trained by the other half, and nobody wants to experiment with the training of a guy who got gold at the last Worlds. In this respect, all the Crossfit retardery is good - most of the coaches are too dumb to know anything about the history of the sport, so they'll discover some useful new things simply by accident, like random DNA mutations in evolution - most just give you cancer, but 1 or 2 turn out to be helpful.

I don't know the best way. But I don't think most weightlifting coaches do, either. Certainly not here in Australia, since even at the Commonwealth games we get beaten by five square miles of pterodactyl shit in the Pacific, a country so clueless they used their sovereign wealth fund to build a golf course and put on a London musical about Leonardo Da Vinci. But they got Paul Coffa to come and train everyone who wandered into the hall, so they got some people who were good. Greg Everett's American Weightlifting documentary, he obviously didn't intend it that way, but it shows this very well - there's one high school coach who trains everyone who shows the slightest bit of interest, and there are a bunch of other crusty old ones who sit in their basement gyms whinging that nobody cares about weightlifting.

Main thing is, in the Western world we're mostly shit at recruitment. Testiclaw's story of how he runs his gym is telling: you have to interview with him to come lift. So the guy who squats 140kg on day one never having done it before but is an arsehole is knocked back, and the charmer who struggles with 60kg is let in. For a country to be successful at a sport, they have to let zillions of people try it out and find out who's naturally good so they can make them better. A gym or club being exclusive is great to be part of, but it's not how you grow a sport. To grow a sport or business you have to be professional, and "professional" is another word for "working productively with people you hate."

Next to that, I don't think high vs low vs front squat are terribly important.