In Jim Schmitz’s article Jumping The Feet To Wide (where the photo was ripped from) he describes the above lift as : “It was an ugly lift, but it was strong and impressive.”
Weeks later reading Bill Starr’s article They Don’t Award Form Points In Olympic Weightlifting I had an epiphany.
I don’t care at all about the cleanliness,properness, and picture perfectness of my olympic lifting/weightlifting form at all.
Like the stress in the linked Bill Starr article I’d rather simply get stronger, have my numbers improve, and let form work itself out.
My experience says looking to form/technique as a goal does nothing but hamstring me. My power clean really took off when I stopped giving a fuck about triple extension and just ripped the bar.
Past the knee, jump + shrug, get under it. The jerk is a given.
Weightlifting Thoughts
In early olympic weightlifting they didn’t perform the lifts we do today. Through 1972 there was a third lift…the clean and press, and in the 1800s and early 1900s weightlifting competition was a grab bag of one handed and two handed floor to overhead lifts.
Not 2 or 3 but closer to 8.
Form?
I’d prefer continentals and press outs to be legal.
I prefer the brute force and heave old time version of weightlifting to the perceived trickery that is the perfect technique of today.
That’s not to say weightlifters are weak. In fact (watch the bloody vaginas come out of the woodwork here) that if international caliber weightlifters were to compete in powerlifting we’d see some records shattered.
The jerk carries over to the bench.
All the pulling carries over to the deadlift.
The back squat? They already train it, walk it out (no monolift trickery), have big #s raw, and aren’t far behind the records if at all.
I’m sure if you were to comb the entire internet for video you’d find weightlifters hitting the largest unofficial world record squats, not powerlifters.
Competing
Like Jimmy “The Bull” Pellechia says in the one tnation article online interviewing him, “why make it official”.
I care not whether it’s been done in front of officials in competition or in a gym or not. Strong is strong.
Powerlifting has this weird hive mind like thought of “it only counts in competition”.
LIFTING IS AN INDIVIDUAL SPORT!
Outside of owning a world record, why are you in a meet? That shit can be simulated at a gym (lots of york barbell guys did meets every saturday either somewhere else or simulated at the gym, some even branched out from weightlifting into powerlifting without training for it, just entering meets).
Video (or even witnesses) is more than enough as proof of a lift. Fuck having officials, do you really need their approval? You could even try being your own approval.
If it’s not a world record, near it, or even elite why are you “competing”, like chaosandpain says lifting is not a fun run.
500lbs is still 500lbs be it in a meet or a backyard.
I’m not clogging up a meet, or paying to enter one without the planned total being something actually good.
-J