Stronger Athletes
December 10 "If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat." -Herschel Walker
The trend is slowly but surely turning away from training athletes using Olympic style lifts such as the power clean, hang clean, snatch etc... Why perform dangerous lifts when it doesn't make our athletes better at sports? Lets look at one important fact: the Principle of Specificity rejects the idea that weight room movements simulate athletic movements like throwing the shot, blocking or tackling for example. Therefore how could these weightroom movements be beneficial to the strength training athletes. Traditional athletic guys will have a hard time even listening to this line of reasoning because they have been so ingrained to think clean, jerk, snatch... But go back and ask your football coaches and lifting coaches why you did those lifts... They can't answer you with reason and logic.
It must be noted that StrongerAthletes.com respects other coaches' and authors' opinions on strength training for athletes. We understand that all people in this field have a common goal: To improve our athletes' strength which will in turn improve their performance in their prospective sport. It is our intention to share ideas whether contradictory or not, with other coaches. It is not are intention to discredit anyone's beliefs. We here at StrongerAthletes.com have very strong opinions about how a coach should train their athletes. We firmly believe that coaches owe it to their athletes to provide the safest, most efficient and productive program possible and we believe we can provide that program.
We believe schools that incorporate Olympic lifts in their program should consider this alternative. It is our belief that if the top high schools and colleges that do the these lifts were to take them out of their program, provided they did the correct movements such as squat, bench, dead lift etc. that they would still be top teams. There are top programs that do not do these lifts as it is. We challenge the Olympic lifting schools to take them out to see if their success changes as their weight room injury rate falls.
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