Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Notes to the Nitpickers
I was originally going to make this part of every article but it’s too long. So it’s going here and I’m just linking out to it. Response to this series, which I agree has gotten totally out of control, has been varied. Many like it or are at least amused by it. While I don’t mind attaboys or whatever, I don’t really care since I don’t do anything in my life to make anybody happy but me. Like it or don’t like it, I’m doing what I’m going to do. Many wish I’d just get to the point and I will be talking about OL’ing next week, promise.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 12
Ok after going too long in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting Part 11 yesterday, I promise, this is the last piece of background and next week I will move on to look at American sports domination, a couple of odd exceptions and then into Olympic lifting. Today I will finish with my broad stroke generalizations about American sports as a whole by moving from the sports level to the athlete level. Because just as our sports have to fulfill certain requirements, so do our athletes.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 11
We are a more or less ignorant (not the same as stupid) country; worst yet, we revel in our ignorance. Ignorant and proud, USA#1. Some appalling number of Americans can’t find their own home state on a map; most couldn’t locate a country in Foreignland if their life depended on it. Hell, look at my geographical blunders when I talked about the UK. I’m just honest about not giving a damn because whether it’s England, GB or whatever is irrelevant to my overall point. And they are all part of Foreignland ™ anyhow.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 10
While it should go without saying, I’m going to say it anyway: the US is based around a capitalistic democratic political structure. And no we’re not going to argue about whether or not it’s a real democracy, take that crap to Facebook or elsewhere. Capitalism is roughly defined (as Google) as a system where a countries trade and profits are determined by private entities rather than the government. This distinguishes it from Communist and Socialist countries where the government controls things (and usually mucks it up because the system is based around political crap and individual agendas instead of what actually produces results).
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 8
Ok, one last stop on the historical and world-tour of sports dominance before I can spend another 80 weeks talking about the US (it’ll only be like 2 more, maybe). And that’s in Communist china. Because, as you’ll see when I quote some statistics below, the Chinese showed some outright ass-kicking dominance in Beijing in 2008, at least in the handful of sports that they targeted. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 5
So last time, in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 4 I started a discussion of UK Track cycling and how the UK went from also rans to the highest levels of the sport in a relatively short period of time. First I introduce track cycling in general, bored you to death with a bunch of sociocultural crap, talked about some of the events and the physiology involved in success, and then introduced how the UK decided to go from nobodies to dominance, did so in the span of about 10 years and how an infusion of UK lottery money was sort of the ‘key’ to let this happen (I’m sure the idea that money solves everything will make at least one forum poster happy). But there was still a critical factor in all of this.
Categories of Weight Training: Part 8
Summing up that last bit, to a first approximation maximal strength training is generally represented by loads of 85-100% of maximum but there can be some variability in this. Some will use lower loading (but a lot of volume or frequency) and you occasionally see work above 100% for maximal ecentric work. That 85-100% range will typically yield sets of 1-5 repetitions. More on this below. Today I want to conclude maximum strength training by looking at training frequency, volume, rest intervals and exercise selection.
Categories of Weight Training: Part 7
Ok, having finally gotten through the issue of hypertrophy to more or less completion in Categories of Weight Training Part 6, I want to finish up this series this week by looking at maximal strength training. Shockingly, after the endless verbiage I expended on hypertrophy training, maximal strength training is actually in many ways simpler.
Categories of Weight Training: Part 6
Ok, time to wrap up. On Tuesday, in Categories of Weight Training: Part 5 I clarified some things regarding volume and then looked briefly at the issue of both training frequency and a bit at exercise selection. Today I really want to wrap-up on hypertrophy so I can talk about maximum strength next week (and then hopefully have a good race report the week after that). Today is going to be sort of a grab-bag of topics, some of which will hopefully answer some of the questions I’ve seen in teh comments, some of which will probably leave you with more questions than answers.
Categories of Weight Training: Part 5
Forging ahead. On Friday in Categories of Weight Training: Part 4, I continued with the discussion of hypertrophy by addressing the issue of volume. In that article, looking at a recent review paper, I threw out a value of 30-60 repetitions as giving the apparently maximal growth response. Before I get to more issues, I need to clarify a couple of things about Part 4. After that I’ll address training frequency and exercise selection and save all of the ancillary topics for the wrap-up of this topic on Friday.
