Etymology: powerlifting vs. weightlifting

[Christopher Button]

Mr. Rippetoe,

Given the following:

1) Weightlifters train primarily for power production.

2) Powerlifters train primarily in order to shift the largest amount of weight.

The situation with regard to nomenclature thus appears to be pretty ass-about-face. You touched on this in passing in BBT3, suggesting the name 'strengthlifting' for so-called powerlifters.

To concretize: why is weightlifting not referred to as powerlifting, and powerlifting not recognized as weightlifting? Are you aware of any riveting reason for this situation?

Regards,

Christopher

[Mark Rippetoe]

You just get here, Chris?

[Immortal_k]

Things don't always make sense. Although correct in your analysis, it is what it is due to tradition.

[wal]

Chris, to me the difference is this, weightlifting is when the bar is on the floor and power lifting is when I get the plates in the air. I need lots of James Watts these days to move them. A watt is a unit of power therefore this why it is called power lifting. Ha

Seriously, Olympic weightlifting uses different types of lifts as opposed to Power lifting. Both like to lift as much load as is possible. Olympic is weight overhead, Power lifting is Squat, Dead lift and Bench.

Olympic lifts are like using first gear to move a load and power lifting is like using low/low on a 4WD to pull an elephant out of a bog hole. (hmm?) There are a lot more folk around here that can explain it better.

[hamburgerfan]

Weightlifting grabbed the more obvious name several decades prior.

[Christopher Button]

Judging by my tremendous post-count...

[Christopher Button]

But yes, I suppose the answer was pretty obvious. Since both sports arose independently, "weightlifting" is hardly an arbitrary appellation. I guess what I was driving at was where the term "power" specifically came from with regards to powerlifting, but I'm sure even that could be deduced with enough brainpower.

How about that? I managed to answer my own question. I wonder how often that happens in this forum?

[Sean Herbison]

Because that's what it's been called, and that's what it'll continue to be called. It won't change unless there's a very strong reason to do so, and "correctness" of the terms is not a strong reason.

Also: English.

[John Bono]

Chris, to me the difference is this, weightlifting is when the bar is on the floor and power lifting is when I get the plates in the air. I need lots of James Watts these days to move them. A watt is a unit of power therefore this why it is called power lifting. Ha

The real irony, of course, is that in Powerlifting, since the lifts are relatively slow, the lifter goes for maximal production of Newtons first(force required to move the bar), joules second(the potential energy required to lift the bar), and watts least of all(time required to move the bar).

On the other hand, because the Oly lifts require explosive movement, requires watts most of all, then joules, and least of all, Newtons. So we've got the names all bass ackwards.

[wal]

ass backwards JB, like the elephant that got stuck in the bog hole.