[quote]OGuard wrote:
I do not dismiss cleans, however from my experience, most high school athletes have pitiful form on the squat, bench press and deadlift. Those three exercises are much less technical than doing a clean or snatch correctly. If in a rare case a kid is advanced enough for them, give it a shot. When i interned at a major DI football S&C staff i would say a good 1/3 of the team couldnt clean with good technique. Pure Westside is not the best way to train athletes, when i applied it to my own training as a football player, i still incorporated snatches and cleans, i also did a whole lot of upper and lower body plyometrics. The westside system is not exacly what the soviets use or advocate, rather it was information taken from their literature and applied for powerlifters. Also i suggest you look elsewhere in terms of what top US Olympic strength coaches advocate. We have been getting our asses kicked in olympic lifting for a long time! Bottom line is standard linear periodization doesnt work. Overall stick with basic things with the high schoolers, do not get overly complicated and as a matter of fact most westside things are too complicated for the average high school athlete. These are my opinions from my experience as a high school and college football player, a powerlifter and a coach.[/quote]
Saying that cleans are “advanced” and not appropriate for high school athletes is not a valid statement in my opinion… its very easy to teach a young kid to do a clean. i just had a 12 year old girl win her age group at the national schoolage champion;ships for the third year in a row… she started training at 8 years old and won her first national title at 9 years old. 8 and 9 year olds are very easy to teach the clean to, if they can do it, then its hard to believe there is any high school in america where most of the football players are in such sad shape that they cant.
If in a college setting 1/3 of a team cant clean correctly, then obviously there is no qualified coach in attendance, since it doesnt take long to teach. most high school/ college age athletes can be taught do do a full squat clean in one or two workouts. a power clean is of course somewhat easier. now getting good at it and getting up to big weights is a long process of getting stronger and faster just like with other exercises, but just learning how to do it is not rocket science.
Saying that linear periodization doesnt work right after a statement of how the US is getting beat in international OL doesnt make much sense. its as if you assume that US coaches use linear periodization and other coaches dont, which would be wrong. if you want to know what the bulgarians, chinese, greeks, etc actually do, then i could post a summary, but it would be safe to say that just like in international OL, coaches here in the US use a variety of training methods, and overall train much like the europeans. of course, our national teams have been trained by a romanian olympic medal winner for years, and the resident athletes at NMU are now coached by the former chinese national coach, so its no surprise that they have brought their training philosophies with them.
The US used to be dominant in both OL and PL, but arent dominant in either sport anymore. i dont see us dominating the IPF worlds anymore than we dominate the IWF worlds. of course, in PL we have created our own federations with drug testing rules and equipment rules that allow bigger numbers to be lifted, but we wont really be beating the europeans till we compete with their best and beat them at the same meet and under the same rules. no way we can do that right now.