I think injuries in the weight room are greatly exagerated for anyone other than beginners. It’s definitely safer than performing the sport being trained for, be it football, basketball or track. Studies have shown this to be true.
I definitely agree. I’ve never had anyone hurt from doing OLs. I’ve had some lumbar issues with a couple different types of squats or pulls. On a related note to some of the earlier posts on the deadlift, I’d say that I’ve probably seen more injuries with that exercise than any other. It really lends itself to pushing beyond safe limit loads as it’s relatively easy to complete a lift with terrible technique.
My biggest problem with the clean is that even if the form is technically sound, the weight being used is not nearly maximal.
HUH? You lost me on this one. If you load the lift maximally, how could the load not be maximal?
Assuming some general preperation before max effort weight training, such as solid core preparation, the deadlift takes much less time to teach than an olympic style clean. For a descent athlete, proper form can be taught in just a handful of training sessions. Max effort lifts, or at leat max triples, can begin fairly quickly. For an Olympic style clean using near maximal weight (pull from the floor doesn’t go much higher than the belly button), it takes much longer.
I think this goes back to some earlier points- how long are you training for and what’s the issue with a slightly longer learning curve if the gains are considerably greater (or different). If it takes 3 weeks as opposed to 3 sessions isn’t that still worth it if you’ll be able to use the lift for years to come? Also, I read earlier that someone suggested that OLs provide the same benefit as deadlifts. This is simply not true. They are very much different. Even if you’re doing deadlifts for speed. So even if we err on the ultra-conservative side and say that OLs add 2-3% benefit over just doing deadlifts, isn’t that worth it when winners in our sport are decided by much less than that.
Oly pulls have two short comings in my opinon. First, the vast majority of athletes, unless trained and supervised by a coach very well versed in olympic lifting, make the first pull much higher than elite olympic lifters. If you can pull the weight well past your belly button, it is obviously nowhere near a maximal effort lift.
You’re stuck in power lift thinking with this one and using a one factor model for ‘maximal.’ You can’t compare loads used in one exercise and say that because you can’t lift the same load in another exercise (even if it looks similar) that it’s not of maximal load. Are front squats sub maximal because you can’t lift as much as in a back squat? Remember, maximal can be maximal speed, maximal load, maximal force output, maximal power output, etc. Note that OLs easily beat out heavy deadlifts on all of those except load (remember load does not equal force or power[/url]). This thinking is really WAAAAAAY off base in my opinion. In fact, the peak force, RFD, and power output of all the OLs is several magnitudes greater than what we see in the power lifts.
Second, because of the beating that the shoulders and wrists take, most oly lifts I see are a performed at a lower percentage of 1RM, which is already lower because of the improper technique normally displayed. I have heard, but can’t confirm, that oly pulls are rare for NFL athletes because of the potential for shoulder/wrist problems.
I actually think it’s true that many collegiate and NFL strength coaches don’t use OLs because of fears of shoulder injuries but they are either terrible coaches, conceding to the whims of uninformed sport coaches, or are uninformed themselves. There’s no link between OL and shoulder injuries. I have occasionally seen some wrist injuries but it was always in cases where the athlete wasn’t racking the bar correctly.
ELITETRACK Founder