Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 4
At a first approximation, muscle mass would seem to be important to OL’ers and it is to some degree. First keep in mind that Olympic lifters compete within rigidly defined weight classes (though they tend to manipulate water to actually make weight). This tends to limit how much muscle mass can be carried within any weight class except for superheavyweight lifters who can be as big as they want (and as often as not the extra weight is blubber around the middle).
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 3
In Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Olympic Lifting Part 2, I gave a primer on the technique of Olympic lifting looking only at the snatch, clean and jerk. Continuing in that vein I want to now look at what physiological factors go into successful OL’ing performance as that will lead into the logical discussion of genetics, who’s the best and all the rest. To save it being too long, I’m going to split this into two parts. First a brief summary of the last two days.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 2
Having looked yesterday in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 1 at the origin and history of weightlifting along with the basics of competition and judging I want to spend today giving a brief overview of the technique of the lifts. Please note, this is going to be extremely general and I will be leaving out a lot of details, much to the chagrin of those who know the lifts.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: OL’ing Part 1
In the past (insert stupid number) of parts of this series I’ve looked at a ton of different sports systems to see if there are commonalities. And certainly there often are. Kenyan running, UK track cycling, the former Soviet Union, the GDR, Bulgaria, Australian swimming, the Chinese sports machine. All had their own approach to the ‘problem’ but approached it or got there in roughly similar ways.In the majority of cases, a combination of large numbers of athletes, access to the sport, incentives of some sort, support, coaching (and often drugs) were part and parcel of consistent sporting success.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 22
Having looked at the sport in general, US dominance (more or less) and a host of other stuff yesterday in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 22, let’s look at the sport in this country to see why we have produced so consistently. This is actually where the true mindfreak is going to come in because the entire setup of the sport would seem to be all wrong. And yet we somehow product. I also want to look at how the US appears to slipping and their current desperation move to try to fix it as this will also be illustrative for when I turn my eye to OL’ing on Monday.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 21
Continuing on with that, I want to look at another exception to everything that’s gone before, the sole winter sport I’m going to examine. A sport which seems to have absolutely everything going against it: it’s niche, unaccesssible, has few members, no incentives. Basically it lacks everything that is usually required for success. Yet has managed to thrive consistently.
