Author Topic: why the us sucks at olympic lifting  (Read 9718 times)

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LBSS

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Re: why the us sucks at olympic lifting
« Reply #30 on: September 16, 2011, 06:50:37 pm »
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on the soccer thing: sure, most kids in the world who like to play sports and probably lots that don't grow up loving soccer. but soccer requires a narrow range of body types and a very specific set of athletic characteristics for elite performance. weightlifting requires a very different profile. so it's not like soccer is stealing away all those kids who go on to become hossein rezazedeh.

on the gymnastics thing: you're putting the cart before the horse there somewhat, i think. there are lots of gyms for gymnastics but not as many for weightlifting, therefore more parents send their kids to gymnastics. but why are there more gyms for gymnastics in the first place? gymnastics is, if anything, more technically difficult than weightlifting and definitely more restrictive of body type than soccer.

i don't think lifting is a fringe sport in places like bulgaria and greece. anyway, it's less of a fringe sport in those countries than it is here, anyway. it's not fringe in iran, where rezazedeh is a national hero whose wedding was broadcast on state tv.

the us has more than enough athletic people to support a world-class weightlifting team. sure, lots of our top athletes go on to play professional football and that shrinks the pool. but throwing is a fringe sport in this country and we still manage to produce world-class throwers, who are football-player-sized and might otherwise be offensive linemen.

part of the problem with the "better alternatives" argument is that half of the weightlifters in the olympics are women. last time i checked there's never been a single female football player in the history of the NFL and maybe one or two in high-level college (as kickers). so why do our big girls suck at lifting, too? there has to be something else going on.

i don't know why we suck at olympic lifting, but i suspect it has to do with a combination of
1. lack of interest/availability of more appealing alternatives. that is, basically what everyone has said. more little athletic kids DO end up as gymnasts and more big athletic kids DO end up playing football.
2. several decades of incoherent and often stupid training methodology throughout sports in general and for weightlifting in particular. (this is primarily what the cherniga series is about.)

i'm rambling and not entirely sure that was all coherent. it's an interesting question.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2011, 06:52:08 pm by LBSS »
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undoubtable

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Re: why the us sucks at olympic lifting
« Reply #31 on: September 16, 2011, 07:26:06 pm »
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That's a good point about U.S. women also not being very good at olympic lifting.

But I'd just like to say that soccer features a wide variety of physical specimens. You have short players (Messi) and tall players (Crouch) and also a variety of stocky and lean individuals. Having 11 players on the pitch gives you the option to play with athletes who possess different physical qualities. Some of the slowest athletes like Zidane are among the games greatest because of their ability to control the game. Then of course you have your faster individuals who typically play out on the wings.

Just saying that soccer doesn't require a specific set of athletic characteristics at all, especially when compared to the more strictly performance sports like athletics and olympic lifting.
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T0ddday

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Re: why the us sucks at olympic lifting
« Reply #32 on: September 16, 2011, 07:52:29 pm »
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on the soccer thing: sure, most kids in the world who like to play sports and probably lots that don't grow up loving soccer. but soccer requires a narrow range of body types and a very specific set of athletic characteristics for elite performance. weightlifting requires a very different profile. so it's not like soccer is stealing away all those kids who go on to become hossein rezazedeh.


The narrow range of body types is not really true.  In Peter Crouch, Adriano and Lionel Messi you have 6'7 and extremely skinny, 6'2 ~ 200 pounds, and 5'6 and stocky.  However, even if it is true you are missing the point.  The point is not whether rezazedeh succeeds in soccer but it's whether or not his interest in soccer precludes him from becoming a weightlifter.  If you could have been a great bowler but instead became a horrible basketball player, basketball still "stole" you from bowling.


i don't think lifting is a fringe sport in places like bulgaria and greece. anyway, it's less of a fringe sport in those countries than it is here, anyway. it's not fringe in iran, where rezazedeh is a national hero whose wedding was broadcast on state tv.

the us has more than enough athletic people to support a world-class weightlifting team. sure, lots of our top athletes go on to play professional football and that shrinks the pool. but throwing is a fringe sport in this country and we still manage to produce world-class throwers, who are football-player-sized and might otherwise be offensive linemen.


Weightlifting is most definitely a fringe sport in Iran.  Rezazedeh is mixed up in politics but that's not a good indicator of whether or not the sport is fringe.  If you walk down the street in Tehran with a broomstick and ask 100 young men to perform a clean and jerk with it 99 of them will have no idea what your talking about.  However, they can all explain to you the offsides rule in soccer and nowadays a few of them know the basics of basketball.   I will give you that *maybe* it's less fringe than it is in the US, but it's fringe just because the vast majority of the population has never had any chance to test their potential in the sport.   

Also, do we produce world class throwers?  In the Shot, discuss, javelin, and hammer we produced zero mens medals in the world championships.  We had one female bronze.  I wouldn't say the US is up to it's standards in the throws.  Also, remember that while I would also define throwing as fringe it has WAY more exposure to american athletes than weightlifting.  Every highschool track team encourage their big kids to go out for track and throw.  So if your a big american boy who has the potential to throw it's quite likely it will get discovered.  The same is not true for olympic weightlifting. 
 

part of the problem with the "better alternatives" argument is that half of the weightlifters in the olympics are women. last time i checked there's never been a single female football player in the history of the NFL and maybe one or two in high-level college (as kickers). so why do our big girls suck at lifting, too? there has to be something else going on.

i don't know why we suck at olympic lifting, but i suspect it has to do with a combination of
1. lack of interest/availability of more appealing alternatives. that is, basically what everyone has said. more little athletic kids DO end up as gymnasts and more big athletic kids DO end up playing football.
2. several decades of incoherent and often stupid training methodology throughout sports in general and for weightlifting in particular. (this is primarily what the cherniga series is about.)

i'm rambling and not entirely sure that was all coherent. it's an interesting question.

Well bringing women in to this really opens the argument to so so so many other things that I don't have time to get into it right now.   Remember though the point is not that the athlete becomes an NFL football player instead of a weightlifter.  It's that the athlete focuses on football (and probably fails) rather than becoming a weightlifter.  For our big girls it could be as simple as our big girls focus on not wanting to be big girls.   Also, women's programs are often extremely underdeveloped in other countries due to sociocultural reasons (one reason why our female soccer team is so good) so the comparison with men really is hard to do.  And finally you can't talk about women without talking about drugs.  Drugs are 100x more helpful for female competitors than male competitors, so to determine success you have to look at doping regimes as well. 

Finally, I understand your point, I just think people really have a tendency to point to the training and totally underestimate how massively important culture is when it comes to a large population.  Fact is extremely gifted athletes are very very very rare events.  But they happen.  You could have had my grandmother train Usain Bolt and he still would have won the 200m at the olympics in 2008.  He ran a 20.5 as a incredibly weak fifteen year old kid!  Just growing up would have put him under 20 seconds!    An athlete that gifted will find success if they have pretty terrible training.  The fact is the 300+ million very diverse population of the US will provide an edge in the number of rare event gifted athletes for weightlifting.  If we weren't training them right you would see them 1) Putting a huge numbers and then getting injured or 2) Putting up huge numbers in the junior ranks but then never progressing and settling for bronzes and out-of-medal finishes.  However, you don't see them at all.  Which is evidence that it's not how we train our extremely gifted olympic weightlifters that explains the dearth of american success in the sport but the fact that those born to be extremely gifted olympic weightlifters.... are not weightlifters. 

LBSS

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Re: why the us sucks at olympic lifting
« Reply #33 on: September 17, 2011, 11:27:34 am »
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i'm not denying the impact of culture. i'm acknowledging that it's very important while saying that sometimes people take that argument too far, and neglect to acknowledge the impact that shitty training approaches have. and, definitely, point taken about the dictatorial state grabbing kids and forcing them into the grinder to see who comes out. but it's not either/or.

good points all around, really. i understand what you mean about football or soccer "stealing" an athlete away from something he or she might be good at and turning them into a crappy football or soccer player instead. but that's still not enough for me, somehow. everyone everywhere plays soccer when they're little.* but lots of people turn into elite basketball players or T&F athletes or gymnasts or even fencers. why not weightlifters?

on the thrower thing, in 2011:
women's shot put: 3 of the top 5 performers were americans
women's discus: 3 of the top 11
women's hammer: 2 of the top 11

men's shot put: 3 of the top 5
men's discus: 1 of the top 5
men's hammer: 1 of the top 5

we do suck quite a bit at javelin. the point wasn't that the US dominates throwing and everyone else is playing catch-up, it's that we're competitive at a world level. i'm not saying i think the us should be number one at everything, just that it's a shame that we suck so very, very badly at a sport we used to beat everybody at, and it's interesting to look at why that might be. some combination of cultural factors and training factors is no doubt the answer, but what combination?

damn it, all i wanted out of this thread was for people to go read that article series, and it seems like no one has.

*for the love of god, please don't take this literally.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2011, 11:31:06 am by LBSS »
Muscles are nonsensical they have nothing to do with this bullshit.

- Avishek

https://www.savannahstate.edu/cost/nrotc/documents/Inform2010-thearmstrongworkout_Enclosure15_5-2-10.pdf

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Re: why the us sucks at olympic lifting
« Reply #34 on: September 17, 2011, 11:15:11 pm »
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LBSS, are you doing Olympic lifting competitively?.

If not, why not?.