I rarely go on forums any more, maybe about once a month to see what’s popular or questions that lifters have. The other day I was sent a forum thread that tore into the state of USA-Weightlifting and the weightlifting coaches. While by no means does USA-Weightlifting have everything completely solved, we however are moving in the right direction.
This particular post was talking about the ever redundant topic, “Technique vs. Strength”. A majority of the posters were suggesting that all USA weightlifting coaches focus only on technique and not enough on the “bench, deadlift, squat, and press” *ridiculous comment. They also went on to say talk about how our resident director at the OTC, Zygmunt Smalcerz, hasn’t completed anything in his loooong 3year tenure at the OTC…Let’s discuss each point.
USA Weightlifting Coaches ONLY Care About Technique?
I’m not quite sure how anyone can generalize the whole country ONLY focuses on technique. If you talk to a qualified weightlifting coach, the coach will asses the weightlifter’s needs, THAN decide what they’ll benefit from. Generally speaking most weightlifting coaches are looking to concurrently build each skill set.
There are also many variables to take in such as:
- Lifter’s needs and adaptability- how quickly they can pick up coaching cues and positioning.
- Lifters history.
- Time frame before competition.
- Amount of time the lifter can commit to training, per week and per training session.
- Past or current injury.
The point is that it’s not as simple as, strength vs. technique. It’s about the lifter and the lifters needs. If the lifter is front squatting 150k x2, pulling 175k with speed, and pressing 100k but can’t clean and jerk 100k, there is a clear discrepancy here.
3 Years and No Medalists?
Let’s be real here, that’s just absurd. Most people don’t know even know what Olympic weightlifting is. Let’s say they do, we still have to compete with the football, basketball, soccer, baseball, etc… So now the pool of athletes have significantly diminished.
Next point, it takes time to develop a medalist, not just a few but MANY years. I hate using this comparison but many people like to point out the Russians and Chinese, well let’s take a look at their systems. They have a pool of athletes and lifters to pull from at a very young age:
*If this was seen in the US, child services will be called…
These young lifter are then developed through a systematic training process funded by the government. From this point, time will weed out the weak and the “fittest” lifters will be the last ones standing. The key point is TIME (and genetics), while our system isn’t as nearly as developed like many other countries, we are however developing many strong young lifters and moving in the right direction with Coach Smalcerz. I’m proud of our young lifters and wish that more people would stop trying to attack USA-Weightlifting and instead help our lifters stay in this great sport via funding, sponsorships, or some other positive way to help keep their medal dreams alive.
Stay strong,