A 15-year-old weightlifting prodigy
wsj.com
wsj.com
The explosion of Crossfit is exposing a lot of people to Olympic lifting. However, Crossfit's programming can be incredibly dangerous - encouraging Joe Sixpack to do such complex and technical lifts "AMRAP" (As Many Reps as Possible) is a recipe for serious injury. Source: I got rhabdo and was nearly hospitalized.
https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-sec...
Cult of Work Past Exhaustion = Injuries.
And this isn't just at local small shitty gyms which couldn't find decent trainers and are run by a novice trainer...
I mean if you want to laugh and cry and watch a slightly offensive video, check this out: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22p3g0_deadlifts-from-the-...
If you have no time, just check the single lift that starts at 2:30, and consider that the judges passed it, and that they passed it according to the rules of the crossfit event. I mean that's criminal negligence if you ask me!
That said, if you can get the technique down (internet coaching or otherwise) it's a wonderful feeling to rack a power clean.
EDIT: It also really annoyed me to see how they described power lifting vs. oly. As if you don't need core and leg strength and for deadlifts and squats. And for that matter most power lifters will practice additional lifts like overhead press too (or power cleans..)
For power lifters, the measure of an athlete is how much he can bench
press—something not included in Olympic competitions.
In 2016, very possible. He's definitely well on his way. I think the main thing to know is that he's not just a US nationals champ at his age (a country who won 0 WL medals at the olympics in 2012, i.e. not super significant). But rather that at his age, he is the nr 1 ranked in the world by the international weightlifting federation. 20 people lift more than he does, but they're all older by at least 1 full year (and others well into their 30s by now). One can wonder if he has what it takes to increase by 35-40kg in the next 5 years. He added as much over the last 12 months, but of course it gets exponentially more difficult as you go up. On paper it looks like he can do it but 5 years of dedication is a long time, and it's likely that he'll have to jump a weight division as he grows into an adolescent body. We'll have to see!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v8OexNKrug
At the age of 14. Most people can't deadlift that. This kid's a prodigy.
The thing worth keeping in mind that people forget when questioning whether kids should lift, is that kids lift, or try to lift large percentages of their body weight to failure all the time during normal play. They have a training capacity and recovery ability that makes me insanely jealous as someone who's turned 40.
If lifting the weights they are physically able to is dangerous for them, then so is a lot of their regular playing.
Power clean is similar to the first part of the clean and jerk (where he pulls the bar explosively upwards and catches it), but in power clean you drive the bar further up into a near jump, and catch the bar much higher up (in a clean you drop down pretty much in squat position when catching).
In clean type movements you can generally fail by pushing yourself and the bar apart so the bar crashes to the floor. Similarly when putting a bar overhead - your main priority is to ensure the bar clears your head, and frankly that's not all that hard as no matter what grip you use, making the bar clear your hands is likely to get it mostly clear of your head.
My scariest experience - once in 10 years of doing power cleans into press position to do my overhead presses - was on a 1RM attempt where I started feeling dizzy halfway into my press, and felt I had to ditch the bar. Even then, worrying I'd faint, it took just a little nudge to get the bar far enough out from me to crash to the ground without touching me. Only caveat was that my fingers didn't clear totally, so I was pulled down after it and ended up dazed and confused on floor, hands still on the bar, but unhurt other than some slight bruises.
I've failed to complete part of the movement (usually the press at the end - you can usually power clean much more than you'll be able to overhead press) many times, but usually you'll know when it's not going to work and can maintain enough rigidity to put the bar down in a controlled way.
But yeah there've been some really tragic accidents. If you put your hand on the bottom of your neck and you feel your spine, some people have dropped the bar on there and couldn't walk for the rest of their lives. Which is why there's quite a bit of hate for Crossfit from the oly/powerlifting community because a substantial portion of their activity isn't safe. (where at times, either the exercises, or the guidance are inadequate for safety).
Generally though it's pretty easy to move the bar/body when you fail in the movement, and a proper trainer would let you go through those movements first so you get a feel of how to 'escape' a failed lift. The only danger is if you're inexperienced with this, or if you weren't watching your breathing properly and faint during the exercise. (that kind of training/experience is usually extremely solid if you do olympic lifting or powerlifting under guidance. You'll be hard pressed to find an olympic weightlifting trainer who doesn't know what he's talking about. Crossfit hasn't matured as much and there's just too many trainers out there who are novice lifters and teach lifting, and focus on ridiculous amount of volume, and it's dangerous)
As for diet, the vast majority of a professional athlete's diet comes down to getting enough protein and carbs, with minor tweaks for individuals around things like meal timing, micronutrient content and fiber content. A great place to start for a 200lbs male is 220g protein/250g carbs/50g fat/30g fiber.
Sorry I know that's a disappointing answer, but I can tell you the real answer isn't that much more interesting. Elite level athletes certainly work incredibly hard, but great genes are still a prerequisite.
It's almost like there might be multiple ways of doing this stuff and that a lot of it doesn't matter nearly as much as people think, especially in a population that has to play a ton of their actual sport.
A lot of this IMO stems from confusing two populations, to wit: "elite athletes who are already beastly strong and conditioned, and training skills on a near full-time basis" and "the pool of perennial beginners/intermediates who make up the vast majority of sport science study populations, internet fora and personal training $$$".
> It's almost like there might be multiple ways of doing this stuff and that a lot of it doesn't matter nearly as much as people think, especially in a population that has to play a ton of their actual sport.
This is certainly true especially in skill sports like basketball and even to an extent like football. In strength sports like weightlifting and powerlifting you don't actually see a ton of variation in program design.
> A lot of this IMO stems from confusing two populations, to wit: "elite athletes who are already beastly strong and conditioned, and training skills on a near full-time basis" and "the pool of perennial beginners/intermediates who make up the vast majority of sport science study populations, internet fora and personal training $$$".
I think there's a lot of truth in that, but I still hold to my point that a lot of pro athletes are doing demonstrably suboptimal programming and winning in spite of not because of their programming.
Hu? I know Dan Riley does not like squats, but he uses several different alternatives and still says that they can be effective if you're built properly for them.
In one piece[1] Dan says things like "To minimize shearing forces on the knee, we ask our players to keep the knees over the ankles in the squatting position."
This demonstrates (along with many other idiotic things he says in that piece) a relatively massive misunderstanding of biomechanics and is kind of disgraceful to hear coming from someone who is a strength coach for people paid millions of dollars a year.
http://assets.houstontexans.com/assets/fanzone/installment48...
Also, you can get incredibly strong just on 3 squares and water and sleep. Either you have the genes and do the work, or you don't.
Anyway I think the original point wasn't so much the people who obsess over diet that he's perhaps referring to. Rather the fact I can name you a dozen top athletes from the top of my head who pretty much lived on McDonalds, drank 2 litres of soda a day or ate multiple candy packs a day. Changing something ridiculous like that to merely a sensible, normal diet, can actually help, and it's different from obsessing about replacing legumes in your diet with quinoa which probably isn't going to give you any gains whatsoever.
Here's the scene:
The writer's analogy is much more accurate. MJ is widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time. To say someone is the MJ in a sport is saying that someone is the best in history for that particular sport. This kid doesn't even have a single gold medal.
Lebron James, on the other hand, was extremely hyped up as a high schooler. Everyone pretty much said he was going to be the next MJ. The potential for LBJ was limitless; same goes for the weightlifter.
Also one has to point out, this is an article on the WSJ, whose majority of readership would likely know who Michael Jordan was.
These sorts of comparisons have happened long before "click baiting" was a thing.
In this case, I believe the original title should be restored to it's original, even if it is premature.
My questioning the title was specific to mentioning Lebron, while the article mentions Michael Jordan instead.
In no way this is related to what this site is about. There're hundreds of site where stuff like this is supposed to be posted and discussed.
I wouldn't care if I wouldn't need to read to all those cs and startup unrelated headlines.
I've been powerlifting for the last 2 years with the goal to be stronger at 40 years than I was at 30.
Now my 1RM squat is 192.5kg / 424lbs and my knees never give me trouble any more.
I think quite a few of us get into lifting partly because we need something to counteract the damage office jobs and sedentary lifestyles out of work do, and partly because it's something that fits the hacker mindset - weight lifting, whether oly or powerlifting or body building, lets you endlessly tweak programs and diets and measure results fairly precisely.
Most times when someone has a fixed idea of what this site is supposed to be about, they get it wrong. HN is supposed to be about literally anything, as long as it's intellectually interesting. We don't mean that in a highbrow sense—topics not traditionally thought of as intellectual are welcome. This story is perhaps borderline by HN's criteria, but at worst it's not far off, and the thread is substantive, so we decided not to call it off-topic.
Story diversity is super important here. No one would call Rust off-topic, yet we don't want a front page of all Rust stories. At least most of us don't!