One of the strongest Olympic weightlifters breaking world records in training was not even allowed to compete in the Olympics.
You know why? Because he didn’t train under the methods of the highly respected strength coach, in fact when he did, his lifts went down.
Olympics are political.
Who was it?
So that is a “No”, correct?
Here’s a guy in the throwing world who found this out too.
Remember, the Olympics are also a “show”, and politics show. Nationalism is brain disease-
Video?
The 1972 Olympics where Ricky Bruch won a bronze medal?
That’s really cool! We lived out there for a few years when I first got out of the army. I got to see the center a couple times, but never do anything there (long after my mediocre athlete days); what a cool feat for you!
Kids matured so much earlier back then.
One of those things you don’t appreciate until much later. Being 6’4" and 220ish lbs, I was the training partner with some elite ELITE athletes. We did accelerated and decelerating running drills, where you’d be tethered to a partner with a long bungee type chord. Your partner would either hold you back or run past you and pull you. My partner for awhile was, at the time, a recent olympic world record holder from Jamaica.
Nobody told him bands don’t work for RAW?
Because they did more 1-rep maxes, including big Ricky.
They ain’t doing that anymore.
Sigh…….
Antonio something from Bul. I believe he actually left Bul. and lives in US past his prime.
He had something of a 210+ snatch in training back when the records were around 200.
I haven’t followed O lifting for years. I don’t care for it much anymore. That California Strength on YouTube was cool though.
Now how bad would it look if some loner comes along and dominantly beats all of ‘em???
That wouldn’t be for the “show” or the coaches.
That had to be nuts. I always liked getting on a bigger field and seeing freak athletes that were freaks even amongst the dudes that were already there. It amuses me to no end nowadays when I’m at a kids’ sporting event and every dad thinks he was like one opportunity away from the pros or his kid might be the next dude if he just got a little more playing time or a better speed coach or whatever. My friend, I promise you the ones that are going to make it, make it.
Too true. They’re like a different species. When God made them in “create a player” mode, he was using cheat codes.
I love that. It took me a long time to realize some folks were just born better, and that can be ok.
It’s still silly when we take it to the other extreme and say things like “do I have the genetics to even bother at life?” I don’t know how to get the nuance across that two things can be true.
We have an interesting culture thing going on right now wherein, if you cannot be the absolute BEST at something, people don’t want to bother with it. It’s very much a system of extremes. Same reason everyone is always looking for “the optimal” everything. At one point, “good enough” wasn’t good enough. I see my own kid struggle with this: they don’t like trying new things if they’re bad at them. They only want to try things that have a natural aptitude for. Meanwhile, I think about how many times I fell down trying to rollerblade (tell me you grew up in the 90s without saying you grew up in the 90s). We were ALL awful at things as kids, haha.
You’re 100% right. I blame a lot of it on this culture of things like YouTube fail videos. Nobody wants to be caught failing, because that’s your 15 seconds of fame - so now that’s who are. Everyone would much rather live in anonymity than be a failure, so they’re safer to just not try. The risk of failing far outweighs the potential benefit of succeeding.
100%. I’ve seen this playout personally.
Fortunately, there is still plenty of room for the above average athletes who can grind.
But, you can’t beat your genetics when it comes to fragile tendons, bad eyesight, glass jaws, bad emotional state, addictions, etc. regardless of how good you are.