Do Athletes Need the Olympic Lifts?

The other day I got into a discussion about olympic lifting and athletes. I was asked my opinion on whether they should be used with athletes or not. My answer was that it depends. First off if you don’t know the movement, don’t understand the movement, have never done the movement, have never been taught how to do the movement by a professional then my answer is do not have anybody you train do them. When taught properly the risk for injury is extremely low. If you don’t know what you are doing then don’t do it. It’s simple. Just because you watched a youtube video doesn’t make you a master of the lifts. You wouldn’t watch a video on brain surgery and then be like hey I can go perform brain surgery because I watched a video on youtube. Sorry doesn’t work that way. You are doing a disservice to your athletes by having them do something you ave no idea about.

I feel that the argument that only olympic lifters need olympic lifts is a terrible argument. Many of the top athletes, high school to professional utilize olympic movements. Now that doesn’t mean that they are an end all be all and should be used because so and so uses them in their program. Just because it works for one athlete doesn’t mean they will work for you.

Then the next argument comes in that they take too long to teach. No, they don’t, you’re just not a good coach and you don’t understand the movement. The systems you have aren’t advantageous to teaching the movements. If athletes don’t get something it is not the athletes fault it’s your fault as a coach.

The next argument is that there is a high risk involved. That is wrong and if you would like to argue that please provide the statistics to back it up. Now, is there risk involved? Sure, when coaches who don’t know what they are doing have their kids performing these movements.

That is where my job comes in as a coach. Do we utilize the olympic movements here at The Spot? Yes we do. Does every athlete do them? No they do not. Are there other ways to achieve similar effects that the olympic movements produce? Yes there are. You can use sprints, jumps, med ball throws etc. But you can also do various pulls and jumps with the olympic lifts like the power snatch, hang power snatch, OH squat, snatch pulls, snatch grip RDLs and DB snatch. The lifts are also fun for athletes, it breaks up the monotony of doing jumps and med ball all the time. There are a lot of variables that go into developing a sound program for our athletes and weather or not to include the olympic movements.

The application is also important. There is never a need to max any athlete on the olympic lifts because there is too much risk vs. reward involved. But I don’t see a problem using variations of the lifts with your athletes... that is, if you know what you’re doing. We have developed a system here at The Spot. We teach the various positions with a med ball that way they learn the positions but we can still work on explosiveness. We also incorporate the positions into a warm up with a light bar. You have to build a foundation. You can’t expect your athlete to be able to catch a clean the first 30 minutes you’re with them. You need to be an awesome coach and understand the lifts. Don’t be in a hurry to add weight to the bar because you need to make sure the athlete is proficient. Olympic lifts have great carry over into any sport. Speed along with good technique with a barbell does the body good.

Coach B