Tribute: Vasily Alexeev (1942-2011)

“The ‘Babe Ruth’ of Olympic Weightlifting” is how I described Vasily Alexeev to my wife over the weekend when I learned of his passing. Winning 8 world championships (1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975 and 1977), 2 Olympic gold medals (1972 and 1976), while setting 80 World records, and basically going unbeaten for the eight years at the peak of his career is a testament to his strength, power, and ability in the sport…doing so in a very competitive weight class, while being featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and profiled on Wide World of Sports is a testament to his legacy and fame. 

Photos of Alexeev are available all over the web, but a few from my personal digital collection that I have downloaded over the years are presented below…including a rare photo of an assumed Alexeev throwing the shot put and the often discussed photo of Alexeev performing Cleans in the water; and a video clip of a 230kg (507lbs!) clean and PRESS featured on WWS.

Talent

A fairly popular discussion on the interwebz of late revolves around the idea of talent, or lack there of, and US Weightlifting. 

The US model of talent identification and development might be best described as a talent funnel. In this case, large numbers of athletes are encouraged to participate in a variety of sports, and via the process of natural selection, those individuals with the innate characteristics to succeed or with the innate characteristics needed for success in that particular sport, become better, gain reinforcement, are enrolled in programs with increasing quality of coaching and higher levels of competition. 

Over time, these are the athletes who develop to the highest, and hopefully, internationally competitive level.  Think of this as the youth to high school to college to the professional level seen in most team sports.  In many individual sports, such as weightlifting, the funnel is not as defined due to lack of participants at the wide end and lack of professional opportunities at the concentrated end. 

It is thought that if the number of participants (or talent pool) was to increase, the performance at the concentrated end would improve. The talent pool argument is something I have debated for a long time and something that I am not sure there is an easy answer for or against either way. A greater number of competitors could dramatically improve results and our worldwide standing, but I do not think it is the final answer. 

Marathons have 10s of thousands of participants every single weekend in this country, more than any other country. Currently, our best American marathon competitor Ryan Hall is ranked around 10th in the world. Since the mid-1970s we have had a greatest number of competitive distance runners of any country yet our worldwide standing has remained stagnant. Same argument for soccer; it has been one of the top youth participant sports in the country for at least 25 years. It is a high school varsity sport and numerous college offer athletic scholarships. Our worldwide standing has not improved much in the past 40 years, and for the past 20, it has been said we are on the verge of breaking into the top but it has yet to happen. We could also throw the American past time of baseball into the argument. It is "our" sport but we have lost our status to many of the Latin American countries. 

In all of these sports (Marathon, Soccer, Baseball), countries with less than half our population and a 1/3 of our resources routinely kick our butts in international competition. 

Numbers will definitely, definitely help us improve from the high 20s where we currently reside, but to get in the top 5 and eventually on the medal platform, we need more than just more average lifters.  There needs to be a systematic plan for the development of talent if and when it arrives at in the sport.  Additional thoughts will come in a future post regarding the development of talent specific to weightlifting in the US. 

Overtraining vs Under Recovery

Missed Lift: OT or UR?

I was asked a question on the Pendlay forum over the weekend regarding my thoughts on Overtraining vs Under Recovery.  I have spent the past 10+ years researching the theory of overtraining, Grad School (MS and PhD), the Olympic Training Center, and through trial and error on myself and my athletes, and I can honestly say we; coaches, athletes, and researchers collectively, are just now scratching the surface on the topic.  I have reposted my comments here as I'd like to get other opinions on this topic.

“What are your thoughts on under-recovery vs overtraining? Any key indicators to be aware of to distinguish between the two?”

Great question for discussion and I am very interested in hearing other opinions on this as well.  For the most part, overtraining and under recovery can be lumped together.  They both can lead to the development of the other.  I tend to define them separately, just for consistency and explanation purposes.  Overtraining is fatigue and a decrement in performance due to too much training...or training stress.  Under recovery is the accumulation of fatigue and a decrement in performance due to inadequacy of recovery outside of the gym, which includes restoration, nutrition, sleep, etc. I tend to think of under recovery as life stress.  So, overtraining is strictly from training, and under recovery is everything else.

Overtraining is real, but it is very misunderstood and grossly overstated by most people. 99% of people will never experience overtraining, and maybe only 5-10% of athletes. Now, fatigue is common and a normal response to training. For full blown overtraining to occur that fatigue would have to accumulate over a period of months. Most people will take a few days off, or an overuse injury limits their training, before overtraining develops. If tendonitis flairs up in your knee and reduces your ability to squat, that is not overtraining.  Two separate issue, overtraining and overuse (possibly a future post).  Overtraining is a whole system issue which has effects on the endocrine, neuromuscular, and cardiorespiratory systems.

Competitive athletes are more susceptible because of the demands of competition, desire to win, etc., but mostly the inability to take time off due to their sport.  Think about a post-collegiate athlete who gave up his day job to move to the OTC to train for the next Olympics, which also means lifting well at Nationals in May, Team Trials in August, Worlds in November, and other competitions throughout the year to keep their resident spot and monthly stipend.

Under recovery is a separate and possibly much bigger issue.  Under recovery can effect all trainees regardless of training stress or training status and is caused by things outside of training; lack of sleep, inadequate nutrition, emotional stress, etc. Your life outside the gym has to support what you want to accomplish inside the gym.  Things get tricky because of how we ultimately define or diagnose both conditions...a decrease in performance.  We all know people that training like crap, eat like crap, and still make improvements.  Whereas other people have everything "perfect" and continue to stall in progress.  So, if performance does not drop off is an athlete really overtrained or under recovered? Performance can increase or decrease inspite of many things which makes it all the more complicated. 

Taranenko v. Kurlovich, 1987

Video from the 1987 USSR Championships: Leonid Taranenko and Aleksandr Kurlovich going head-to-head for the gold.  Attempts listed below.  The video is in Russian, and the B&W with the "Terminator" music adds to the drama.

It is not very often you see a 470 kg total (!) finish with a Silver Medal.

Snatch
Gunyashev 195,197.5,200
Taranenko 200,207.5-, 207.5
Kurlovich 205,210,216-(wr attempt)

Clean and Jerk
Taranenko 245,265 (wr attempt)-, 265
Kurlovich 250,260 (total wr attempt), 265 (wr attempt)-
Taranenko won the competition with 472.5 kg total, Kurlovich came in second with the 470 kg

Triple Extension?

Without adding to either side of the ongoing “debate” (to put it nicely) on Triple Extension and its role in coaching the Olympic lifts, here is something to think about…both all-time great lifters, attempting World Record lifts, with very different extension of the hips and knees.

1986 European Championships: Shalamanov / Süleymanoğlu (145.5 kg) and Krastev (207.5 kg). 

 

Figure from Bartonietz, K. Biomechanics of the Snatch: Toward a Higher Training Efficiency; Strength and Conditioning, 1996. Data from Weide, U. Mathematical modeling and movement simulation in weightlifting – Toward the further improvement of the aim technique for the Olympic snatch. Leipzig: Res. Institute Phys. Cult. & Sport (Dissertation), 1989.