The short answer is that there are many roads to Rome and different people adapt to different stimuli in different ways.
The longer answer is that you’re pointing out a select handful of athletes that in the grand scheme of things could be seen as outliers, especially when you consider that Jon Edwards didn’t move to an OL exclusive lifting setup til much later in his career and Carl and Willie did quite a bit of bounding which could serve as an alternative (though not necessarily equivalent) substitute. Also, Carl didn’t power clean to the best of my knowledge. There are hundreds of athletes who have used heavy loading exercises, especially earlier in their careerss, who have been World and Olympic champions.
Unless you’re suggesting that heavy loading somehow detracts from a program or there’s absolutely no way you can do it (due to injuries or facilities) I’m not sure what the issue is…there’s no reason to exclude them.
ELITETRACK Founder