Rip's New Article: Is Olympic weightlifting strength training?

[AriSuper]

Arms aren't used much in weightlifting at all.

defintley, why don't we all send a group letter to this mans trainers and tell them they are all wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPxwuGUZBY

Grip in general is not a problem for weightlifters.

why wouldn't you want the biggest possible surplus off grip strength you can have - now, I'm not a pro weightlifter, but even from an everyday perspective, when is your grip ever "too strong"?

This discussion is, in some off its parts, becoming tedious.

[williamlexcrawford]

http://youtu.be/SU7ShngqkA0

I think this helps illustrate your point.

[Damien Thompson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SWr5jz7EjE

Started doing a few cleans after hurting his lower back. 300kg deadlift obviously translates ok after just a few months of oly work.

[ihatemoney123]

defintley, why don't we all send a group letter to this mans trainers and tell them they are all wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLPxwuGUZBY



why wouldn't you want the biggest possible surplus off grip strength you can have - now, I'm not a pro weightlifter, but even from an everyday perspective, when is your grip ever "too strong"?

This discussion is, in some off its parts, becoming tedious.

Klokov badly tore his shoulder (don't remember what part) when he was younger. He said he was lucky enough to recover. They put presses into his training immediately to strengthen that area. This is why he presses and push presses more than his opponents. He seems to jerk a lot of weight off the rack but CJ significantly less in competition. He can CJ over 260kg off the rack, but doesn't seem to CJ more than 235 in competition. Rezazadeh's trainers used to joke around that he would be able to jerk 290kg off the rack but never needed to because he no one would beat him anyway. Reza did clean 270 or 275 and it looked relatively easy allegedly. For some reason they programmed presses a lot more for 105 and 105 plus guys who seem to have a much narrower split.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Every time you post, I'm always left wondering what you actually said.

[shepard]

He can CJ over 260kg off the rack

I once clean & jerked off the rack. It made baby Jesus cry, so I stopped.

[RRod]

This is kinda what the article is about, Jamie. There should be NO WEAK LINKS in a lifter. Arms aren't used much if they aren't strong. If your coach teaches you that you don't use your arms and that you don't need arm strength, I suppose you learn to get by without it. And it works well enough to win the Nationals. Have you seen Kurlovich jerk? Pisarenko? Dimas?

Or this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeTqu...D5DF2A59A87373
His left lat looks like it has its own left lat growing inside of it!

When we see a person who can't do a pullup still do well in lifting, we must be cautious to avoid the generalized conclusion: "ahha, lifters don't need to be able to do a pullup." What we see simply means that THAT PARTICULAR lifter doesn't have to do a pullup. And it also doesn't mean that the lifter wouldn't improve if they could do a pullup.

Every body structure will give a lifter advantages and disadvantages in a given movement. The two lifts occur over such a large range of motion that pretty much any feature (save maybe short femurs) tends to be both a blessing and a curse. The process of optimizing a lifter thus involves finding these curses and accounting for them.

For instance, long forearms make the 1st pull easier but give you more distance to cover overhead. As such, lifters with long forearms might do well to have stronger shoulders and arms than their shorter-armed counterparts, who probably need more strength in the back and lats.

And say a lifter does need more strength in the lats; how do they get it? Well, you can have them do heavier pulls and focus on keeping the bar close... or you could have them do pullups. In the heavy pulls, maybe they are keeping the bar closer, maybe they aren't; maybe they're using more force in the lats, maybe they aren't. But if they go from being able to do 1 pullup to being able to do 10 pullups, their lats got stronger.

[Randy Hauer]

Shane not being "allowed" to squat heavy at the OTC: Matt Foreman recalls watching Shane casually squatting 365kg after a tough workout, no gear. Shane in an interview in 2003 with BFS said he lifted heavier at the OTC than he did at home. I recall a photo of Shane at the OTC from the old USAW magazine front squatting around 300kg (for sets of triples). Maybe there is some disagreement about how heavy "heavy" is.

Foreman also points out that Shane didn't start O lifting until 1996 when he was 24. Rezazadeh had been lifting since he was 13-14 and had snatched 200kg in 1999 when he was 21. Hard to believe any amount of additional squatting and deadlifting would have made up for head start Rezazadeh had in sport specific skills and strength. In the end, Shane was simply extraordinary to get as close as he did.

The assertion that snatches and clean and jerks don't build strength is just flat out wrong. There are many examples I could point to, but I'll use my own since it is illustrative: when I moved down from 94kg class to 85kg class over the course of a year I lost 10kg on my back squat but picked up 12kg on my snatch. C/J stayed about the same. In WL, if the lifts go up and the total goes up, you got stronger. No? My squats recovered somewhat but my O lifts did not move up with them.

Pressing. The clean and jerk records have continued to move up since the press was retired from competition. One might reasonably expect that clean and jerk results would decline without the requirement to practice the press. If the press is important to jerk results that is.

Patera could press 500lbs. That was his best clean and jerk too. Alexeyev had a few more kilos on the press than Patera, but his best clean and jerk was only about 20kg more than his press. This close relationship of press to jerk holds in all the weight classes for records during the triathlon period. The presses were amazing feats of strength, no doubt about it. But it is hard to say what effect it had on jerking competency.

Olympian Cheryl Haworth once told me her best press was 70kg. At that time her best jerk from the racks was 170kg. This is, I think, instructive about where the power and strength comes from in the jerk.

Pressing, squatting and deadlifting (pulls) are all part and parcel of any program I've ever seen, especially for beginners. The last time I was at the OTC (last spring) on a training day, everyone was squatting and pulling. Zach Krych was doing bottom start front squats with well over 200kg. 58kg Jackie Berube hit an easy 160kg squat and finished with heavy pulls. Bottom line, I don't know if Rip's article is just stirring the pot for the sake of stirring the pot, but in my estimation it is just setting up one straw man after another to knock over.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Shane not being "allowed" to squat heavy at the OTC: Matt Foreman recalls watching Shane casually squatting 365kg after a tough workout, no gear. Shane in an interview in 2003 with BFS said he lifted heavier at the OTC than he did at home. I recall a photo of Shane at the OTC from the old USAW magazine front squatting around 300kg (for sets of triples). Maybe there is some disagreement about how heavy "heavy" is.

I suppose you know what Shane told me better than I do. But the fact is that heavy squats and deadlifts have not been in the USAW's OTC program since 1985. The workouts have been posted in this thread. Look at them.

Foreman also points out that Shane didn't start O lifting until 1996 when he was 24. Rezazadeh had been lifting since he was 13-14 and had snatched 200kg in 1999 when he was 21. Hard to believe any amount of additional squatting and deadlifting would have made up for head start Rezazadeh had in sport specific skills and strength. In the end, Shane was simply extraordinary to get as close as he did.

I was at one of Shane's first meets in 1997, coaching my lifter at the Oklahoma State meet. The remarkable thing about Shane was and always has been his strength. He racked all three cleans without his hands, reset his grip, and jerked. He made up for a lack of technical ability by being very strong. Strong is good. Stronger is better.

The assertion that snatches and clean and jerks don't build strength is just flat out wrong. There are many examples I could point to, but I'll use my own since it is illustrative: when I moved down from 94kg class to 85kg class over the course of a year I lost 10kg on my back squat but picked up 12kg on my snatch. C/J stayed about the same. In WL, if the lifts go up and the total goes up, you got stronger. No? My squats recovered somewhat but my O lifts did not move up with them.

By your logic, you should immediately drop to 77kg and become even better on the 2 lifts as you get smaller and weaker. Everybody knows that smaller, weaker lifters do heavier weights than bigger, stronger lifters. But your example does not represent the experience of most lifters. Your technique may well have improved on the snatch in this instance. I suggest that you go up a weight class next time and see what happens. Perhaps your experience will benefit you more this time.

Pressing. The clean and jerk records have continued to move up since the press was retired from competition. One might reasonably expect that clean and jerk results would decline without the requirement to practice the press. If the press is important to jerk results that is.

If you remove the heaviest strength-dependent movement from the meet, performed prior to the C&J, it is logical to expect the unfatigued C&J to go up. Bolton deadlifts more if he doesn't squat first. The fact is the 266 was overhead twice in 1988 and has not been done since then in a competition.

Patera could press 500lbs. That was his best clean and jerk too. Alexeyev had a few more kilos on the press than Patera, but his best clean and jerk was only about 20kg more than his press. This close relationship of press to jerk holds in all the weight classes for records during the triathlon period. The presses were amazing feats of strength, no doubt about it. But it is hard to say what effect it had on jerking competency.

It is easy to observe that if you have to clean & press before you have to C&J, the C&J will be done under a different set of conditions than having only snatched beforehand. I hope you understand this.

Olympian Cheryl Haworth once told me her best press was 70kg. At that time her best jerk from the racks was 170kg. This is, I think, instructive about where the power and strength comes from in the jerk.

You are again making the common logical error that you and the guys in your little circle of friends keep making in order to justify your methods: the observed phenomenon is described, and that is assumed to be the optimum situation because that's what happened. The fact is that, since she wasn't strong in the press and didn't train it effectively, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED HAD SHE DONE SO, because she didn't. Yet you assume that her 170 rack jerk is the best it could have been BECAUSE she didn't press. This is fuzzy thinking, and it is wasting everyone's time when time is a precious commodity.

Pressing, squatting and deadlifting (pulls) are all part and parcel of any program I've ever seen, especially for beginners.

Repeat it often enough, and you'll become even more convinced? Pressing, squatting and "pulls" done as assistance exercises that do not generate programmed PRs in these lifts themselves are not what I'm suggesting. That's what has been done, and it hasn't worked. WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW DOES NOT PRODUCE INTERNATIONAL-LEVEL PERFORMANCES. Can you not see this? Or are you guys like women with anorexia, who look in the mirror and actually see a fat person?

The last time I was at the OTC (last spring) on a training day, everyone was squatting and pulling. Zach Krych was doing bottom start front squats with well over 200kg. 58kg Jackie Berube hit an easy 160kg squat and finished with heavy pulls. Bottom line, I don't know if Rip's article is just stirring the pot for the sake of stirring the pot, but in my estimation it is just setting up one straw man after another to knock over.

Look, we have posted the programs. Open them and read what they do. I know what happened at the OTC, and you kiddos can laugh amongst yourselves all you want to, while intentionally missing the point, because you cannot be this dense. USAW manages to win the USA Nationals every single year, that's true. But that isn't going to be good enough for the USOC much longer, and you are witnessing and contributing to the end of your program. If what you have been doing has not been working, maybe you'd better stop slapping each other on the back long enough to think about a new approach, before your small pond dries up and the big fish in it get a sunburn. But as long as you guys are willing to pretend that nothing is wrong, nothing will improve.

But let me ask you a question, Randy. You are a low-level competitor in a sport with not many people participating in it. I have been coaching Olympic weightlifting since 1988. You think your opinion and that of your buddies is perfectly justified, but that I need to shut up and sit down, right? You don't even know what a straw-man argument is. Why do you think I bring this shit up from time to time? You think I make a lot of money making fun of Olympic weightlifting in the United States? You think that I am advancing my career bashing a sport with fewer participants than curling has? You think my time is being profitable spent typing this shit AGAIN? What might better explain my motives? And why should I continue to give a shit about this when the almost universal response from people like you would lead a sane person to believe that you are not worth worrying about?

[Mr_Rogers]

At least curlers have stones ;-)