Blind People

**Joao.Silva** · 08-22-2013, 01:46 PM

Just out of curiosity, do you think blind people can train the lifts?

**Mark Rippetoe** · 08-22-2013, 02:30 PM

I don't know.

**Tom Lang** · 08-22-2013, 03:03 PM

Yes: http://www.ibsasport.org/calendar/44...-championships

We have a kid at my gym going (United Gym in Seattle).

**Mark E. Hurling** · 08-22-2013, 03:20 PM

I'll go out on a limb here and posit that maybe some could.

As I see it, such teaching would involve engaging their kinesthetic sense of body placement and positioning much like Rip advocates for real hard cases in getting the lower back to function properly through hand placement there and pressing to activate the desired result. Plenty of sighted people learn that way all the time and some can only learn that way. In other words they have to feel what the right position would be by either assuming it serendipitously, being verbally coached into it by stages, or being physically placed into it by the teacher or coach. I've never had occasion to try to teach anyone blind, but it doesn't seem like it would be that different than some of the less motor gifted children and adults I have taught.

It's never wise to generalize I suppose, but I would imagine many of the blind have had to develop that kinesthetic sense simply to function and move safely through their everyday lives.

**elVarouza** · 08-22-2013, 04:00 PM

Yes they can. At the meet I did a few weeks ago there were a few blind lifters hitting good numbers. One of them benched an American record. There was an article about it here: http://gazette.com/blind-powerlifter...rticle/1504104

**Hawkpeter** · 08-22-2013, 05:03 PM

Blind since birth would a slightly different scenario than those who become blind later in life but Malek Chamoun competed at the 2011 Worlds in the 85kg and he is legally blind.

This is a link to the IWF article on him.