Adarq.org
Performance Area => Strength, Power, Reactivity, & Speed Discussion => Topic started by: LBSS on September 13, 2011, 01:20:12 pm
-
For those of you that follow him, no, this is not a post about Lyle's interminable amateur anthropological examination of sports success and failure. I love the guy's writing and he knows a shit ton more than I ever will about training and nutrition but god damn, is that series a waste of time.
Rather, this is to link to a 6-part article that Lyle links to in one part of his series, entitled "There Is No System" and written by Andrew Charniga, Jr. It's here: http://sportivnypress.com/documents/51.html
Lot of food for thought about training methodologies, especially w/r/t isometric and general strength/bodybuilding training for athletics.
Enjoy.
-
U.S sucks at olympic lifting because
1. it's not a major interest of athletes, coaches, or athletic programs in the US
2. usa doesn't screen youth & force them into olympic lifting camps to develop them
3. it doesn't pay well
4. most every gym (high school, college, commercial) doesn't have real olympic bars, bumpers, & platforms
5. "powerlifting" and strongman are much more "fun" & popular in the u.s.
:F
-
lack of popularity hurts, but it doesn't explain why we rapidly went from dominant in the 30's, 40's and 50's to completely irrelevant starting in the mid-60's.
i repeat: interesting articles are interesting.
-
That site needs a major redesign and readability isn't working. Will attempt to read despite eye pain.
-
That site needs a major redesign and readability isn't working. Will attempt to read despite eye pain.
true and true.
-
US sucks at any sport because the best athletes play football or basketball, for the most part
-
US sucks at any sport because the best athletes play football or basketball, for the most part
i hope you're joking.
-
US sucks at any sport because the best athletes play football or basketball, for the most part
i hope you're joking.
Look at US performance in athletics. The man is just telling the facts as they stand. I mean, first and third in long jump and second in 400m is pathetic!
-
We can't be good at every sport. I bet we don't even have our "potentially" fastest athletes in sprinting. And I agree with bball2020. I don't see how you think he's joking unless you are reading what he is saying incorrectly. He's not saying we suck at any sport besides basketball/football, he's saying if we do suck it's because our top athletes are playing other sports.
-
We can't be good at every sport. I bet we don't even have our "potentially" fastest athletes in sprinting. And I agree with bball2020. I don't see how you think he's joking unless you are reading what he is saying incorrectly. He's not saying we suck at any sport besides basketball/football, he's saying if we do suck it's because our top athletes are playing other sports.
i hope you're both trolling me because it's almost working.
-
None of the best athletes play basketball. Except nate robinson I guess?
-
With the exception that USA PEOPLE don't even really exist. To take true American people to participate would mean to take those from Cherokee and Sioux indian tribes.
You're basing the success of your country pretty much totally on imigrants and former slaves and you're proud of it. Nicely done :highfive:
-
and everyone from every european country can link their lineage fully back to where they currently reside?
but seriously football and basketball take ALOT of the best athletes.
-
U.S sucks at olympic lifting because
1. it's not a major interest of athletes, coaches, or athletic programs in the US
2. usa doesn't screen youth & force them into olympic lifting camps to develop them
3. it doesn't pay well
4. most every gym (high school, college, commercial) doesn't have real olympic bars, bumpers, & platforms
5. "powerlifting" and strongman are much more "fun" & popular in the u.s.
:F
I don't think it's just that but the kids who would be good oly lifters don't just miss out on getting exposed to the sport but get filtered out of highschool sports because they often don't really suit anything else. Especially the REALLY small ones. A lot of guys who would be really good middle to heavyweightlifter lifters will also suck at anything that involves running. Chad Vaughan for example has a club foot. Didn't stop him clean and jerking over 90% of the world record for his weight class.
lack of popularity hurts, but it doesn't explain why we rapidly went from dominant in the 30's, 40's and 50's to completely irrelevant starting in the mid-60's.
i repeat: interesting articles are interesting.
The sport changed. Up until that point the US had a comparatively large number of guys lifting and had access to enough food. Other countries didn't until later. Somwhere in these years doctors were saying lifting heavy things is dangerous and Add in the rule changes in the mid 60s to allow the bar to touch the thighs and suddenly the snatch and clean and jerk mattered a lot more. It's really damn hard to snatch/clean and jerk without the bar brushing the thighs and suddenly someone with more lower body strength and better pull mechanics could lift a lot more. Training became a lot more specialized and sophisticated. With the press being dropped in 1972 it almost completely changed the sport.
US sucks at any sport because the best athletes play football or basketball, for the most part
You're successful in a lot of other sports despite that. It's the exposure and talent identification.
We can't be good at every sport. I bet we don't even have our "potentially" fastest athletes in sprinting. And I agree with bball2020. I don't see how you think he's joking unless you are reading what he is saying incorrectly. He's not saying we suck at any sport besides basketball/football, he's saying if we do suck it's because our top athletes are playing other sports.
Have a look at the guys dropping some of the lowest 40 times who also ran 100m in college. They're not running 9.58 any time soon. Fast over 40 yard with dodgy timing does not make you fast against olympic sprinters over 100m with full electronic timing.
-
and everyone from every european country can link their lineage fully back to where they currently reside?
but seriously football and basketball take ALOT of the best athletes.
How many 4'10 56kg lifters did football and basketball steal recently?
-
wasnt specifically talking about lifting but yea obviously not many
-
None of the best athletes play basketball. Except nate robinson I guess?
Based on what? NBA players jump just a bit lower than NFL players for standing vertical jumps (reach isn't deflated as much because reach/wingspan is much more important than jump in basketball), and for running jumps nba players probably jump higher. Speed wise you can't really tell because football kids are practicing 40 yard dashes since they are 13, basketball really just suicides and moron coaches have players run miles.
Just because Kelly Baggett said football players are much more athletic doesn't mean it's true.
And you're right LBSS, we send our best athletes into figure skating. Lyle Mcdonald is case and point.
Are you seriously disagreeing that the best athletes in america are pushed into and play football and basketball?
-
Based on what? NBA players jump just a bit lower than NFL players for standing vertical jumps (reach isn't deflated as much because reach/wingspan is much more important than jump in basketball), and for running jumps nba players probably jump higher. Speed wise you can't really tellbecause football kids are practicing 40 yard dashes since they are 13, basketball really just suicides and moron coaches have players run miles.
Huh???
Just because Kelly Baggett said football players are much more athletic doesn't mean it's true.
What does he have to do with this? NBA players aren't nearly as strong as NFL players, don't have faster 40's or 60's, or maybe even 100's, don't have as high SVJ and I'm assuming RVJ also since they run faster too....
Are you seriously disagreeing that the best athletes in america are pushed into and play football and basketball?
No. Many of the best atheletes go to play football and basketball, some make it into the NFL, and few make it into the NBA. I'm assuming here that skill is "more important" in basketball than football (meaning you can rely more on your athletic ability for football).
-
This might give us one clue.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/specials/fortunate50-2011/index.html
Greater fame another.
Why aren't sports such as Olympic lifting/professional cycling not popular.
Very hard work for little reward.
-
Based on what? NBA players jump just a bit lower than NFL players for standing vertical jumps (reach isn't deflated as much because reach/wingspan is much more important than jump in basketball), and for running jumps nba players probably jump higher. Speed wise you can't really tellbecause football kids are practicing 40 yard dashes since they are 13, basketball really just suicides and moron coaches have players run miles.
Huh???
Just because Kelly Baggett said football players are much more athletic doesn't mean it's true.
What does he have to do with this? NBA players aren't nearly as strong as NFL players, don't have faster 40's or 60's, or maybe even 100's, don't have as high SVJ and I'm assuming RVJ also since they run faster too....
Are you seriously disagreeing that the best athletes in america are pushed into and play football and basketball?
No. Many of the best atheletes go to play football and basketball, some make it into the NFL, and few make it into the NBA. I'm assuming here that skill is "more important" in basketball than football (meaning you can rely more on your athletic ability for football).
Get equal testing and I bet the average vert for an nba player would be about the same as an nfl player, and running vert would be higher. Just because they run faster (in your opinion) doesn't mean running vert would be higher. That's nonsense. That's like saying Usain Bolt would be the best high jumper.
And for speed its subjective because if you read what I said before, football players practice straight line 40/60s their entire life. Basketball players don't do that. It's unfair to say "nfl players are faster because they have better 40 yard dashes".
So it's not fair to say NFL players are "much more athletic" than NBA players.
inb4 you use combine stats to try and prove me wrong because you're a moron.
-
inb4 you use combine stats to try and prove me wrong because you're a moron.
After you said this I realized there's no winning with you.
No point in discussing with this guy.
-
The average VJ for NFL would be higher than in the NBA simply because they train differently (more strength oriented training) in the NFL whereas in the NBA they are doing sissy bosu ball lunges and shit like that.
True strength training occurs in the NFL and not in the NBA where it's mostly injury prevention stuff.
-
has more to do with basketball as a whole and not just the NBA
football players have been squatting and sprinting since the 7th and 8th grade, basketball players might never do a squat until college, if then. Still this is changing and lifting is catching on for basketball.
-
Where are people getting "NFL Players jump higher than NBA Players" from?
The NFL combine measurements are a joke, and anyone with a brain can look at their reaches and tell how inflated the verts are. I doubt there is any player with a legit 40 inch vert in the nfl.
-
It's not really necessary to compare the numbers of the NBA and NFL players. NBA players play 82 game long seasons (well prob not this year) on 12 man teams where injury prevention is much more important than standing vertical jump. The point is not that NFL or NBA players are great athletes in so far as their vertical jump or sprint speed but that the NFL and NBA take attract a large percentage of talented youth who could otherwise go on to find success in athletics or weightlifting. This is indisputable. Reggie Bush was a mid 10 100m runner, Nate Robinson was a talented 110 hurdler, Javhid Best ran mid 20.x in the 200m, all in high school. I ran against some of these guys. The showed promise, but I guarantee none of them could outperform their high school PR's today. That's because the NFL and the NBA don't make you better at running 100m or 200m or hurdling. They are great athletes because they displayed impressive times at a young age and with limited training. It's impossible to say which of them would have gone on to world-class performance because you really never know... In athletics some people peak at 18 some people at 36.
However, it's not a reach by any stretch to say that a great many athletes who are either in the NFL or NBA (or attempting to make pro-careers out of basketball or american football) could have gone on to great careers in athletics. The US has an incredible amount of ethnic diversity, areas with great weather, lots of money for sports, and well over 300 million people. If the US had the type of cultural focus on athletics that Caribbean countries have you wouldn't see a country with 2.8 million people (Jamaica) out-representing the US in the 100m and matching in the 200m.
-
^^^^^^^^
Apparently you have to be joking/trolling according to LBSS, but I agree.
-
every nfl combine has some legit 40" SVJ's, these guys are also broad jumping 11'+ and running 4.2-4.4x 40 yard dashes.. db's are benching 225 20+ times, most nba guys struggle with 185.. i would guess the 'reach discrepencies' attribute to this.. nfl athletes probably have slightly shorter reach/wingspan for a given height, it would only make sense.
basketball athletes are in general, lanky and much weaker.. they are nowhere close to the athleticism of top performer's in the nfl.. perhaps nate/lebron/rosedwight/prime shaq would be able to compete, but the majority of the nba would not.
in pure tests of power/strength/speed, nfl destroys nba.
-
It's not really necessary to compare the numbers of the NBA and NFL players. NBA players play 82 game long seasons (well prob not this year) on 12 man teams where injury prevention is much more important than standing vertical jump. The point is not that NFL or NBA players are great athletes in so far as their vertical jump or sprint speed but that the NFL and NBA take attract a large percentage of talented youth who could otherwise go on to find success in athletics or weightlifting. This is indisputable. Reggie Bush was a mid 10 100m runner, Nate Robinson was a talented 110 hurdler, Javhid Best ran mid 20.x in the 200m, all in high school. I ran against some of these guys. The showed promise, but I guarantee none of them could outperform their high school PR's today. That's because the NFL and the NBA don't make you better at running 100m or 200m or hurdling. They are great athletes because they displayed impressive times at a young age and with limited training. It's impossible to say which of them would have gone on to world-class performance because you really never know... In athletics some people peak at 18 some people at 36.
However, it's not a reach by any stretch to say that a great many athletes who are either in the NFL or NBA (or attempting to make pro-careers out of basketball or american football) could have gone on to great careers in athletics. The US has an incredible amount of ethnic diversity, areas with great weather, lots of money for sports, and well over 300 million people. If the US had the type of cultural focus on athletics that Caribbean countries have you wouldn't see a country with 2.8 million people (Jamaica) out-representing the US in the 100m and matching in the 200m.
all true. still doesn't answer the question of why we suck at olympic lifting, although the lack of cultural emphasis is certainly part of it.
-
Yup , the key for a nation to do well at a specific sport is cultural emphasis IMO , somehow cultural circumstances lead to creating a 'school' at a sport. It might be genetic advantage towards that sport ( see former USSR lifters ), might be a random huge success at that sport ( see Greece at basketball after winning Eurobasket 1987 ), could be a few players making great deal of fame and money in anti-capitalistic countries ( see Serbia in all sports ) , many other reasons. Since the 'school' is established , there will always be good athletes production at that sport. Until cultural circumstances again cause the school/interest of the sport to degrade.
Otherwise , medals/achievements in each sport would be almost proportional to the nations populations ( and i am using almost and not directly because financial status plays a big role too ).
PS : Countries mentioning is random , don't go crazy , just wanted to give a few obvious and easy examples.
-
It's not really necessary to compare the numbers of the NBA and NFL players. NBA players play 82 game long seasons (well prob not this year) on 12 man teams where injury prevention is much more important than standing vertical jump. The point is not that NFL or NBA players are great athletes in so far as their vertical jump or sprint speed but that the NFL and NBA take attract a large percentage of talented youth who could otherwise go on to find success in athletics or weightlifting. This is indisputable. Reggie Bush was a mid 10 100m runner, Nate Robinson was a talented 110 hurdler, Javhid Best ran mid 20.x in the 200m, all in high school. I ran against some of these guys. The showed promise, but I guarantee none of them could outperform their high school PR's today. That's because the NFL and the NBA don't make you better at running 100m or 200m or hurdling. They are great athletes because they displayed impressive times at a young age and with limited training. It's impossible to say which of them would have gone on to world-class performance because you really never know... In athletics some people peak at 18 some people at 36.
However, it's not a reach by any stretch to say that a great many athletes who are either in the NFL or NBA (or attempting to make pro-careers out of basketball or american football) could have gone on to great careers in athletics. The US has an incredible amount of ethnic diversity, areas with great weather, lots of money for sports, and well over 300 million people. If the US had the type of cultural focus on athletics that Caribbean countries have you wouldn't see a country with 2.8 million people (Jamaica) out-representing the US in the 100m and matching in the 200m.
all true. still doesn't answer the question of why we suck at olympic lifting, although the lack of cultural emphasis is certainly part of it.
I think the reason's the underwhelming performance in olympic lifting are actually less about overall culture of sport and instead come down to two things: the US olympic weightlifting program, and the parents of american kids. Olympic lifting is essentially a fringe sport for the entire world. As I explained above, most of America's best potential athletes focus on American football or basketball. Most of Jamaica's best athletes focus on athletics. However, countries which succeed in olympic lifting do not have that same level of cultural focus on weightlifting. In Bulgaria, Greece, and Iran (all successful at producing weightlifters) most of the best potential athletes focus on soccer. You could make the argument that the entire world is under performing in weightlifting in comparison to athletics and team sports.
The fact is weightlifting will always be a fringe sport because of it's technical difficulty. Children can race or play football or soccer in the schoolyard... But you won't find kid's doing clean and jerk and drop snatches at recess. To perform well in weightlifting children have to begin at a young age with excellent coaching and resources. The best comparison to olympic weightlifting is gymnastics. In the US the sport system usually involves: schoolyard play as a young child, competitive local competition and minor training as a teenager, and more advanced training as a college athlete. This model does a good job in sports like american football and basketball where the need to develop skills within a team is important and the simple physical development required prevents most athletes from being able to become elite professionals until they reach an older age. The model also does not hinder performance in athletics that much because athletics require less time devoted to developing technical prowess and requires a lot of recovery (ie 100m sprinters cannot and should not train 8 hrs a day like gymnasts). However, this model completely fails when it comes to developing athletes to perform well in individual highly technical sports such as tennis, gymnastics, etc. Here, the American emphasis on school and college sports simply wastes years for the athlete when they could be focusing 100% on their individual skills for their sport.
The best way to produce great athletes in a sport like tennis, gymnastics, or weightlifting is to take very young children who show glimpses of athletic potential (or have parents that found success in sport) and have them to train many hours a day every day in their sport. The sheer technical difficulty of these sports requires that the children have constant coaching rather than hone their skills against each other. If they train without coaching it will in fact be detrimental as they will develop poor technical skills which will effect them negatively at an older age. This is why you can find great soccer players perfecting their game in the streets but you will never find young tennis players with one-handed backhands unless they have coaching. Obviously, the inorganic development required to succeed in these sports means that, given the choice, most children will not voluntarily decide to attempt to be elite gymnasts or weightlifters. Thus, in a democracy where the state cannot select children to train at specific sports, given the choice, almost all children will choose to play schoolyard team sports like basketball, soccer or football with their friends.
Why then is the US able to produce competitive gymnasts but not weightlifters? Well, in a democracy the State will not force the children into the rigorous training... but that doesn't mean the parents won't. And in the US there are a great many gyms where parents devote long hours to encouraging (ie forcing) their child to perform the necessary training to become a great gymnasts. That's why most elite American Athletes in these sports have stories about the role of their parents in their development. For example the Williams Sisters were pushed by their father, Andre Agassi by his father, Shannon Miller's (arguably greatest american female gymnast) mother took her to Russia at age nine to train in gymnastics, etc. In contrast you don't hear stories about Michael Jordans parents pushing him to be great at basketball.
So until you have either 1) The govt placing value on american weightlifting and encouraging/forcing young children to do it or 2) significant number of American parents decide they really want a weightlifting champion for a child, the US will continue to under perform other countries.
Point #1 is not going to happen for obvious reasons. Point #2 is also unlikely because while parents can justify forcing their children into tennis or gymnastics because of the possibility of a college scholarship (a joke, because most kids who earn tennis scholarships had parents who sunk in 10x the cost of their education on expensive tennis training) or possibly money when the child becomes successful... there are no scholarships for weightlifting and almost no money in it's success.
However, that doesn't mean their still won't be a few crazy parents who want a kid with a 600lb clean and jerk. Maybe the child of someone from Brozknows will end up the next great weightlifter... We will have to wait and see.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
LBSS, are you doing Olympic lifting competitively?.
If not, why not?.