Drop Your Bias – Olympic Lifting for Athletes

Crossfit has reinvigorated the use of Olympic Weightlifting, and while I think the sport itself is incredible, they have bastardized it’s use. The same can be said for many Sport Performance coaches. While I have no doubt that you can implement it to develop strength and power, I have to ask if it’s the safest and most efficient way to get from A to B for an athlete. This is where you need to check your bias.

If you’re training athletes, we are all after the same qualities – mainly speed (acceleration and sprint times) and explosiveness (vertical jump, broad jump, etc). If you’ve been doing this long enough, you recognize that there are many ways to improve the two above. The largest increases in speed and VJ I’ve ever had with athletes we didn’t use any Olympic weightlifting. I honestly use it less and less each year.

When proponents cherry-pick their favorite Olympic lift studies, they often use those that perform the full lift (so the clean into a full squat). In those circumstances, is it the clean, jerk, etc. or is it the squat that is leading to transfer and improvement in the Vertical Jump for example? Next time you’re wasting time on instagram, how many are using the full variations of olympic lifts…?

Next, proponents will be like, “Hey, olympic lifters can jump high, so we should O-lift”. To which I can say, basketball players have 40 inch verticals, so go play basketball to train your vertical jump. So can olympic lifts develop abilities to make you explosive? Sure, but so can sprints, jumps, medball throws, and forms of dynamic effort training.

You must also acknowledge how technical the lifts are AND in order to achieve impressive power outputs, you need technical mastery. In Olympic weightlifting, it is THEIR SPORT. It is not a MEANS they use to improve. When working with athletes, exercises in the gym are a MEANS to an END. Athletes we train have to worry about the technical mastery of their own sport, yet you are adding another sport into the mix.

The first form of lifting I ever performed as a young athlete was Olympic lifting. However, I was an overhead athlete, so my shoulders were already taking a beating in my sport. WHY on earth would you compound this in the weightroom? If I’m playing tennis and pitching, why would I be snatching, jerking, and cleaning when I’m not playing my sport? If it’s to make me more explosive, why not give my shoulders a break and do plyometrics? Now, I’m not saying this is why I eventually needed shoulder surgery, but I do know that from that time on, I never stopped having issue with my shoulders.

Our job is to develop the most physically prepared athletes utilizing methods that yield the highest gain at the lowest cost. Think of it like a business. Companies that succeed long-term understand cost/benefit analysis. What is your return on investment? Is there a more efficient/leaner way to get there? Look at all of the unprofitable companies today, how sustainable is that? You can spend 10 million to make 7 million, or maybe you spend 1 million and make 1.2 million. Over time, which will still be standing?

Lastly, think about this. In order to maximize the potential of developing explosive strength in the O-lift, the athlete must be using a very heavy load. So while you grind and miss reps and see ugly reps all to clean more than your bodyweight, I can have someone do a weighted jump in 10 seconds. Then, I can add a strength exercise in that session (a squat for example), and I will have trained all the necessary abilities, faster and more efficient than you…

I used my tendo unit to show this to an athlete the other day. He is someone who can already clean 335lbs and snatch 300lbs (and with good form). I hooked him up to the tendo while we tested Power in watts, then I had him do trap bar jumps the next time. There was no comparison which was higher, he was amazed at the output in the jumps AND way less taxing, no need to “catch it”, no need to improve technique, and took way less time. Power got as high as 4,400 with the jumps (could have gotten higher had we adjusted the load), never got above 3,200 on any of the O-Lifts.

If you’re using the snatch to develop power, is it because your favorite guru uses it or because you’ve used x,y,z with a handful of people, measured the outcome, and determined the snatch yields the best results…..