Found this article on Jim Wendler's twitter...A little long, but a great read. Makes you think about how you program strength training. Enjoy...
Is Olympic Weightlifting
Strength Training?
by
Mark Rippetoe
© 2012 The Aasgaard Company StartingStrength.com
I have written several times in a couple of different places that most Olympic weightlifters in
this country need a strength coach, separate from their sport coach, like many other sports all over the
world employ. This may seem odd to the large contingent that regards Olympic weightlifting as the
pinnacle of strength sport, so let me now begin my typical protracted explanation of exactly what I
mean by this heresy.
I agree that Olympic weightlifting is an excellent expression of strength through its derivative
quantity power. Power is best understood as strength displayed quickly, and as such, power is dependent
on strength. You know this because it is blatantly obvious that an athlete with a 500 lb. deadlift has
a higher power clean than an athlete with a 200 lb. deadlift. Always true, every time. You cannot
clean what you are not strong enough to get off the floor, and the stronger you are the more you
can clean. The power that is produced when a weight is accelerated is a function of the ability to
recruit the neuromuscular machinery necessary to develop the force to accelerate it. Therefore, another
factor plays a large role in the ability to excel in weightlifting – the ability to make the force develop
explosively. This ability is heavily dependent on the genetic capacity for explosive movement, and to
say that it is predictive of elite levels of performance is a gross understatement.
So, here’s the deal: The snatch and the clean and jerk are not themselves capable of producing
an increase in absolute strength over the long term, and are incapable of continuing to produce an
increase in their own performance when trained in the absence of heavy squats, deadlifts, and upperbody
strength exercises that constitute an absolute strength overload. In other words, programs that
rely solely on the snatch, the clean & jerk, their derivative exercises, and front squats in the absence of
regularly programmed increases in the basic strength movements do not produce international-level
performances for athletes with less than elite genetics or the use of anabolic steroids. Furthermore, it is
quite likely that an athlete cannot reach his absolute potential in the Olympic lifts until he approaches
the same limit in training his absolute strength. Louie Simmons is on record as saying that we lose in
Olympic weightlifting at the international level because we are not as strong as they are. He may be
wrong about some of the details, but he is dead-ass on the money in his general assessment.
Olympic weightlifting in the United States does not have the pick of the best genetic specimens
for strength and power. We’re in line behind the NFL, scholarship sports, and team sports at all levels
Is Olympic Lifting Strength Training?
© 2012 The Aasgaard Company 2 StartingStrength.com
for recruiting these people. If you can’t get the best genetics, you have to make up for that with better
training of the ones you’ve got. We obviously don’t do that very well. Perhaps understanding why will
help.
Force production is the basis of power. Strength is the production of force against a resistance.
Power is the capacity for the rapid production of force against the resistance, the ability to recruit the
maximum amount of contractile force and apply it to the system so rapidly that it causes the system to
accelerate. Acceleration is the rate of change in the velocity of an object, and is completely dependent
on force production to occur, because force is required to produce a change in velocity. The greater
the amount of change in velocity desired, the greater the amount of force required. And since higher
velocity is the measure of acceleration, the quickness with which the force is applied determines that
velocity.
In Olympic weightlifting, the barbell is being accelerated by the entire body as it produces
force against the predictably immovable floor and the hopefully moveable barbell. Both lifts display
a phase during which the barbell must have sufficient upward momentum to continue up during the
shift from being pulled to being caught in the final rack position. The barbell must be accelerated
sufficiently that its momentum carries it from the position where force stops being applied to it, up to
a position where it can be caught at the top. Of course, you have to be willing to get under the damn
thing after it’s there.
Power is required to perform these two lifts because acceleration is a function of power. If a
barbell is to acquire sufficient momentum to “float” through the transition between pull and catch, it
must have a large enough amount of force applied to it in a very short amount of time. Snatches and
cleans cannot be performed slowly, and this is why we use them to both develop and measure power
production.
Now, it is worth noting that not everybody in the S&C business agrees that the Olympic lifts
are good for developing power. There are several papers in “The Literature” that assert a prodigious
lack of evidence that the Olympic lifts produce an improvement in power, that they are only good
for displaying power by people who are already powerful, and that an improvement in strength is the
mechanism by which power display increases. This is probably an extreme view, since the incrementally
increasable nature of the lifts makes them quite suitable for our purposes in training power for athletes.
But to an unfortunately large extent, the capacity for explosion is controlled by the inherent
quality of the neuromuscular system – it is genetically predetermined. The factors probably include
both the ability of the nerves to send the signal efficiently and the ability of the muscle fibers to contract
quickly. The most common and effective method for assessing this capacity is the Vertical Jump test,
the best predictor of neuromuscular efficiency and the capacity for power production we have. It is
dependent on your ability to accelerate your body’s center of mass upward, and the distance it travels
up is a function of how fast it was moving when you broke contact with the floor and therefore stopped
applying force to the system. The momentum generated carries the body upward off the floor.
The main problem with a sport that requires explosive capacity for an athlete that lacks it is
that explosive capacity is very difficult to develop, to the extent that putting 3-4 inches on an athlete’s
vertical jump is considered an excellent achievement in strength and conditioning. (The test is valuable
for what it tells you about the genetics of the athlete, and training to improve the test score is definitely
missing the point.) A vertical jump of 36 inches is a rare find, and indicative of an extremely efficient
neuromuscular system in a very explosive athlete. Whereas it is common to take a motivated athlete
from a squat of 135 up to well over 500 pounds, we can’t even add 30% to an athlete’s vertical, no
Is Olympic Lifting Strength Training?
© 2012 The Aasgaard Company 3 StartingStrength.com
matter what you read on the internet, and this indicates a profound difference in the nature of the
two mechanisms. Absolute strength and explosive force production are interdependent but separate
qualities; Strength can be developed in anybody, but explosion is a gift. Sports that depend on explosion
also depend on genetically-endowed athletes.
If you can’t get these people to play for you, you have to manipulate the interdependent
performance variables of the ones you have: the best way to develop the ability to display strength
rapidly is to increase the strength you want to display. It’s really cool that this works, because that’s often
the only recourse you have, failing the ability to recruit freaks into your program. Many very good
Olympic lifters have gotten that way by being determined to become god-awful strong, but at the
pinnacle of the modern version of the sport, a champion is both naturally explosive and god-awful
strong.
This is why steroids are used by Olympic weightlifters – they don’t improve your technique,
and they can’t alter your genetics for explosion. Androgens do in fact improve explosive performance,
and this is most obviously seen in the differences in average vertical jump between men and women,
even after correcting for differences in LBM. But the mechanism responsible for this may just be the
obvious fact that steroids make you stronger, and this is recognized as important enough that you
risk your career to use them. When American weightlifting coaches remind us that the Olympic
weightlifters from other countries are using steroids and we’re not, they are actually reminding us that
they are stronger than we are.
Remember the previous “duh” observation: an athlete with a 500 lb. deadlift can clean more
weight than an athlete with a 200 lb. deadlift. Always true, every time. In the final analysis, it really
doesn’t matter how fast an athlete can recruit maximum numbers of motor units if those recruited motor
units cannot produce enough force to perform the acceleration. Power is strength displayed quickly,
but if the strength is not there to display, the result is obvious. The difference between two lifters of
the same neuromuscular efficiency (as measured by vertical jump), the same technical proficiency (as
measured by the ability to produce a vertical bar path), and different levels of strength (as measured by
the squat and the deadlift) are quite predictable: the stronger of the two lifters wins.
Why do the snatch and the clean & jerk, in and of themselves, fail to develop high levels of
absolute strength? The glaringly obvious answer is that while they display the aspect of strength we
call “power,” neither of them utilize maximum loads over their range of motion. They do not test or
develop absolute strength because they are not heavy enough to be limited by the simple ability to
produce force independent of the speed of the contraction. A limit deadlift is an event that demands
the complete recruitment of all of the force-production machinery in the muscles, whereas a clean will
not be as efficient in doing so. For most lifters, the contraction in a ballistic movement must happen
so fast that the body cannot call all the motor units into contraction in that very short timeframe.
Remember pushing the merry-go-round as fast as you could and not being able to push it any faster
because your little legs just wouldn’t work any faster? It wasn’t because you weren’t strong enough; you
reached the limit of your ability to apply your strength because of the speed. The Olympic lifts are
similar: the quickness of the contraction limits its ability to be a complete summation of the activity
within the muscle.
This limiting effect of the speed of contraction becomes less an encumbrance as the genetic
explosive quality of the athlete improves. People who can recruit high amounts of contractile force
rapidly – athletes with big vertical jumps – will be more efficient at doing so under heavy loads. This is
why these people make better weightlifters. For them, an explosive contraction is also a more-efficient
Is Olympic Lifting Strength Training?
© 2012 The Aasgaard Company 4 StartingStrength.com
stimulator of absolute force development for more contractile machinery, and is probably why some
international-level lifters can get away with not doing deadlifts in training. They are strong in spite of
not deadlifting, because a clean for them is a more deadlift-like event, neurologically.
Another important factor is the effect of working under a maximal load while maintaining a
solid isometric position through the whole range of motion. Movements limited to the lifter’s ability
to display power will undertrain strength because such movements don’t last long enough to stress
position-holding ability, which is most efficiently developed under heavy weights. Lighter explosive
efforts lack the elements of isometric stress and force transmission capacity for long enough an effort
to train the adaptation, which involves connective tissue strength as well as maximum force production
in the erectors and hamstrings. The ability to maintain a good position out over the bar through the
middle of a heavy clean is much more trainable in a slower, heavier pull. And the ability to stay in this
position produces the ability to use better pulling mechanics in an explosive pull, thus involving more
muscle mass in the explosion.
The pull off the floor in its heaviest form is a deadlift; a clean or a snatch is lighter, and a lighter
pull cannot develop the ability to produce as much force against an external resistance as a heavy pull
can, unless you’re a freak. Most of us are not freaks. A jerk has been started off the shoulders by the
ground reaction of the knees and hips. So even though a jerk is heavier than a press, the jerk does not
test or develop the absolute strength of the ROM like a press does. The clean is usually caught at the
bottom with a ballistic sub-maximal front squat that, again, cannot test or develop absolute squatting
strength.
The squat is used by Olympic lifters for overall strength, and the low-bar version of the
movement more closely resembles the back angle of the pull off the floor (the front squat is already
performed as a separate exercise). The primary advantage of the low-bar version is that it allows the use
of heavier weights, thus developing the ability to apply force against the external resistance provided
by the barbell, for weaker lifters – those most in need of getting stronger. Strength being a general
adaptation, and good athletes being able to use strength accurately when executing their sports-specific
practiced movements, it seems to me that the low-bar version would be the best one to use. But if
you’re doing any style squat with 800 pounds, you’re strong, and strength is the objective, not style.
Again, this is why steroids are used by Olympic weightlifters. From the time they were
introduced in the 1960s up until this very afternoon, Olympic lifters have taken them for one reason
only: they make you stronger. Stronger is important, because if you’re stronger, you have more strength
to display explosively. Steroids make you stronger even if you’re not training for strength, which comes in
handy if your program doesn’t include deadlifts, heavy back squats, and presses challenged for PRs on
a regular, serious basis. Steroids enable Olympic lifters to get away with sub-optimal strength training
programmed into their meet preparation. Genetically strong men with steroids have excelled in the
sport for decades, even under coaches that do not understand their jobs clearly.
The point is that the snatch and the clean & jerk are good at testing strength displayed as
power, but by themselves they cannot develop it unless the lifter is a novice, for whom anything new
acts as an adaptive stimulus. This is related to why most American Olympic weightlifting coaches
think that a program based on the snatch and the clean & jerk, with a few squats and front squats
thrown in as assistance exercises, works just fine for the continued development of the 2-lift total in
competition, despite the quite obvious historical fact that it doesn’t. It has to do with the nature of
team development in this country and in other programs around the world.
Is Olympic Lifting Strength Training?
© 2012 The Aasgaard Company 5 StartingStrength.com
The Gold Standard of team development is the recruitment of interested kids, from the ages
of 11 on up to the high school level. It is thought that age 18 – and perhaps even 16 or 17 – is too
late to start a kid that would have the potential to become a national or international-level lifter. So a
14-year-old kid coming up through the team ranks is a typical athlete working with a typical coach,
in more than just this sport. Such a kid is growing, and growing kids are getting stronger whether the
coach is doing anything to specifically affect their strength development or not. They are also maturing
hormonally, and this is true for both sexes. Like a novice, their normal growth occurs in the context of
training, and a coach that omits specific strength work in the basic exercises may see what appears to be
a strength improvement as a result of the snatch and the clean and jerk, with squats added as assistance
and no deadlifts, presses, or benches at all. What is actually happening is the kid is demonstrating a
strength increase parallel to his normal growth as he trains the two lifts, and as his growth slows, so
does his progress in the sport. I’ve seen it dozens of times, and you have too if you’ve been paying
attention.
We know how to make athletes stronger. The lifts that are limited only by force production
capacity – the squat, deadlift, press, and yes, even the bench press – must be programmed in a way that
results in regular increases in weight on the bar. So, to make a stronger Olympic weightlifter, we must
make a stronger squatter, presser, and deadlifter.
This is the heresy part. Conventional American wisdom holds that since heavy deadlifts are
done slowly and since you want to pull a clean fast, you shouldn’t deadlift. Or even worse, some coaches
actually believe that it is useless to get your deadlift too strong – too far over your clean, because that
represents productive time lost in training the clean. I am really not prepared to argue with anybody
that still thinks a 700-pound deadlift slows down a 525-pound clean, or that a heavy deadlift workout
for PR every two weeks somehow adversely affects the clean, because I don’t know what to say in the
face of such blind illogic. Except to say that a weight that feels light off the floor can be pulled faster
than a weight that is comparatively heavy. And that if you’re not in shape to recover from a heavy pull,
I can’t think of a better way to get in shape that doing heavy pulls. And that if you can keep your back
flat pulling 700, you can damn sure keep it flat when you accelerate through 525. Mischa Koklyaev
manages quite a bit better than 525/700. This fact itself, of course, proves nothing other than that his
850 deadlift certainly as hell hasn’t slowed him down, but it does correlate in a pleasing way.
The same wisdom dictates that pressing for PRs is not useful, since a jerk is not a press.
Apparently being too strong overhead has been a problem at some point in American weightlifting
history, and this new policy has corrected the situation. Thank GOD for that, huh? What idiot ever
thought that getting a bar overhead had anything to do with being strong in that direction? Sneaking
under the bar from the position of a tricep extension with your elbows pointed forward works so much
better.
And squatting is always controversial, isn’t it? We go back and forth about where the bar should
be on the back while we do singles with 440 pounds after our snatches and C&Js, completely missing
the point that 440-pound singles are just not strong enough. And until they get to be about 600, our
time will be better spent worrying about squatting heavier than figuring out ways to break the snatch
into 13 different pieces. Squats for PRs – 5s are always best for getting just plain old strong – develop
the base of strength for pulling off the floor, front squatting out of the clean, and every other aspect of
strength for any barbell activity. Relegating them to assistance-exercise status, as many programs have
done, has gutted our athletes’ ability to compete with lifters for whom a 700 squat is assumed to be
baseline strength.
Is Olympic Lifting Strength Training?
© 2012 The Aasgaard Company 6 StartingStrength.com
Now, it is obvious that some people are naturally stronger than other people, in the same
way that some people are naturally more explosive, prettier, smarter, and better-smelling than other
people. The difference in the Chinese National Weightlifting Team and ours is the caliber of athlete,
as measured by their genetic gifts of strength and power (I don’t know that their coaching is any
better). They have several million lifters to choose from. If your athletes are squatting 750 with a 36-
inch vertical, it doesn’t really matter how or why – steroids or genetics, they’re going to beat weaker,
less-efficient lifters, because strength displayed quickly wins the meet every single time. If your team
can recruit 36-inch verticals on naturally strong athletes, you have a definite advantage. We don’t
seem to be able to do this, and the reason doesn’t matter. It’s a cultural, social, fiscal fact that Olympic
weightlifting in the USA is not a popular sport that rewards its athletes well, and there’s really nothing
that can be done about that, especially in the short term.
So, if your weightlifting teams have been slaughtered in the international arena for 3 decades,
and, partly as a result, you cannot recruit better genetics into your sport, perhaps it’s time to try a
different approach. Right now, we have two women and perhaps no men going to the 2012 Olympics
in weightlifting, and 70% of our current men’s American records in weightlifting were set prior to the
2008 Olympics, so I don’t see what we have to lose, except perhaps some demonstrably unproductive
coaching jobs. What we have been doing for the past 30 years has not been working, so a sane person
would try something different.
How about we do the unthinkable and require our lifters to regularly, periodically improve
their performances in the squat, deadlift, and press, as a programming priority? By that I mean
codifying a regular increase in the basic strength movements with a proven method of doing so, like
sets of 5 squats, deadlifts, and presses approached as more than just assistance exercises done at the end
of the workout if there’s time and the coach is still around. Maybe the coach puts a little more weight
on the squat and deadlift bar each week or two, and the lifter actually lifts it as though it is important
to make PRs in your strength too. We have time right now, since we’re not doing anything much in
London this summer, so why don’t we try this approach for 6 months and see what happens? That will
be plenty of time to find out.
I have been following the activities of USAW’s national program at the US Olympic Training
Center in Colorado Springs since 1985, and at no point in the last 27 years has any national coach
required a PR deadlift or back squat as a regular, formal part of the training program**.
The emphasis has instead been on the snatch and the clean & jerk, under the assumption that
doing these two lifts and myriad variations of them will drive up performances in the lifts at a meet. It
hasn’t. The overwhelming majority of lifters that were strong enough to display their strength quickly
enough to get into the program at Colorado Springs immediately stagnate upon the removal of basic
strength work from their training. The norm is an athlete who makes little or no progress for the entire
time of residence in the program. This is clearly and solely a coaching problem, since no athlete goes
there to fuck around.
Shane Hamman (1008 squat in 1996) told me when he was here for our interview that he
was not allowed to deadlift or squat heavy during his time as a resident athlete. Dragomir Ciroslan,
the men’s national coach at the time, told me personally after watching Shane squat 804 in a pair of
shorts and a t-shirt, that he would only be impressed by this if Shane could turn it into a big snatch
and C&J. His subsequent training involved no heavy weights in any movements except the two lifts,
weights that were not heavy for Shane in terms of his absolute strength. Dragomir apparently failed
to appreciate the fact that Shane had arrived at the OTC without the benefit of the advanced, highlyIs
Olympic Lifting Strength Training?
© 2012 The Aasgaard Company 7 StartingStrength.com
effective coaching found only there, and that perhaps an 804 very raw squat was one of the reasons why
he got there at all. Going into a program in which he was not allowed to develop or even maintain his
squat strength, or deadlift anything heavy, might well have had a profound effect on his perception of
what “heavy” actually was. Shane might have some valuable insight into this problem, but I’m the only
guy that asks him about it? Has it just not occurred to anybody else?
Back in the 1960s when the Unites States was still performing at the international level, our
top lifters did heavy deadlifts, heavy squats, and heavy presses for PRs as a primary part of their
training. None of them had a shirt that said “I don’t bench press” or “I don’t deadlift – I’m much
more athletic than that” or some other such haughty proclamation of imaginary elite-hood. They just
considered themselves lifters, not Olympic weightlifters, because they trained heavy in all the lifts. Most
contemporary American weightlifters do not. Correlation, or causation? You decide.
