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2012 USAPL Raw Nationals – Part 1

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I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to write about this meet for a while, and I think I’ll talk about some general stuff, quickly recap the lifters, and then tomorrow expand on the lessons learned (mostly the hard way). I handled 11 lifters over this three day meet, but had some help here and there. I’d like to thank the following people for helping:

Mike Battaglino, one of my closest friends, has a good coaching and programming eye; he’s going to be a very good powerlifting coach. He helped choose some attempts and managed some warm-ups in the instances where I had multiple lifters in the same session. Elliot Rowe handled all of the filming duties on Saturday, and for that we are grateful  Jacob Tsypkin, Elliot’s coach, would drop whatever he was doing and help load warm-up bars for the lifters. Chris partially took the handling duties of one of the younger lifters from Wichita Falls while I handled AC and Norman on another platform. Brent, AC, Norman, AJ, and Big Cat also helped at various points that made it possible for me to focus on preparing the athlete and counting attempts. Thanks everyone.

L to R back row: Jacob Tsypkin, Norman, Chris, Mike, Brent, AC, Sean Culnan, E.C. Stumpf.
Front row: Elliot Rowe and Justin

 

Of the 11 lifters, I’d say that 6 of them had pretty good meets. I personally played a role in the preparation of AC, Chris, and Mike (Brent does his thing, but he gave me more control of his attempts). Courtney, Wendy, Sean, Jordan, Andrew, Drew, and Norman had prepared on their own. I helped Jordan taper, have coached Courtney before, and have been friends with Norman for a while yet never coached him. Handling lifters is all about getting the most out of what they can do on that day, and I think I did that for pretty much everyone, especially Courtney, Wendy, Sean, Jordan, AC, and Chris (the others typically had circumstances they couldn’t control). In chronological order:

Friday

Courtney Modecki is a strong little girl who has been involved with CrossFit for a while and lifted in the 132 class. She trains at Outlaw CrossFit, was on their affiliate team, and rotates through strength training, CrossFit regionals, weightlifting, and now powerlifting throughout the year. She has a lot of potential in both powerlifting and weightlifting. Since Jennifer Thompson dropped back down to the 132 class, our goal was to get second place and hit meet PRs. Note that gym PRs are not the same as meet PRs; they’re largely irrelevant for competitors. I planned all of her attempts based on her high-end goals and what she hit recently in training.

Courtney opened the squat with a no-big-deal 253. She was then red lighted for depth on her second squat of 275. The squat wasn’t hard, and I was confident I could cue her to fix it, so I made a 5kg jump to 287 lbs. We originally wanted closer to 297 on the high end, but missing 275 changed things. I gave her the cues, sent her out, and she made good on the 3rd attempt of 287, setting a meet PR (she may have had enough for 292, but I’m happy with the 287 call). Courtney then went 3 for 3 on bench, hitting 127, 138, and 148 in succession. I don’t remember any issues on bench; as she focuses on this sport, her bench will improve. We opened lighter on the deadlift at 292 and then  hit a medium to moderately difficult 325 on the second. It wasn’t hard enough where I didn’t think I couldn’t make a 12.5kg jump to 353, but Courtney was out of gas on the third attempt and missed it. I attribute this to her training — a Sheiko volume program doesn’t allow any higher intensity lifts, so she wasn’t adapted to hitting several maximal lifts on squat and deadlift. Not to mention she traveled, was at her first national meet, and was tired. In any case, finishing with 287/148/325 gave her second place at her first raw nationals. Courtney has the most room to improve on the deadlift (she’s pulled 365 in the gym), but her squat and bench will steadily improve with consistent attention.

Brent Kim is Brent Kim. For the most part he has a template he sticks to, but it’s broken up by his work schedule and biceps curls (I think). I guess his training was regular leading into this meet, but he had commented that he hadn’t deadlifted a whole lot. A difference between last year and this year is that Brent high bar squats. He had decided on some openers, but I talked him into changing some of them (he beheld the instrument of his liberation). We took 418 on his opener, then a 7.5kg jump to 435. We then made another 7.5kg jump to 451 and he missed it. My guess is his training hasn’t been conducive to multiple high intensity squat sets. This can be easily rectified, even if Brent keeps splitting time between weightlifting, powerlifting, and swollertrophy. He’s looking good, by the way (the fire rises).

Brent went 3/3 on bench, which I think might be a PR, but he meet PR’d with 275 on the third. I think it was satisfying to him to hit that milestone, because he was abnormally happy after the lift. Brent wanted to open kind of heavy on his deadlift, and I talked him into opening lower so that we could get his third. He hit 386 as a “last warm-up on the platform”, then 430. It didn’t look fast, but I still called for 463 on the third. He missed it after getting it off the floor (he didn’t feel in charge). At the time I felt that it may have been something he could have ground through (he seemed to just turn off when it it slowed), yet it’s a function of apparently not deadlifting a lot, and therefore not being used to the tension at that intensity. Squatting and deadlifting around 430 at 154 pounds is still good, but I felt that I could have gotten a bit more out of Brent and it’s bothered me since. Maybe it’s because Rachel wrote a leh-uh, and in that leh-uh, she chose Hah-veeh. Even though he didn’t hit the numbers we wanted, Brent still got 5th place.

Wendy Hajik is my new buddy who trains at the same gym as Brent (he avoids speaking with her along with any other female). Brent sort of introduced us and I asked who she was there with, and she was about to compete in her second national meet by herself. II offered to at least count attempts for her if she wanted it. She accepted, so I helped her warm-up and got her ready for squat. Wendy has short, explosive upright squats with a high bar; short femurs are good for that. She was set on her openers but said she would “figure it out based on how it felt”. That’s not really how I roll when I handle someone, but I didn’t want to interfere or change much since we had just met.

Wendy opened with 304 pounds on the squat. She crushed the opener and…then stepped forward before the rack command and was red lighted. I felt terrible because I always tell my lifters to wait, especially on the first squat. I had the impression she was more experienced than her four previous meets (I found this out later); it was also her first national meet. I still feel like it was my responsibility, I just didn’t want to over step my bounds as a handler when I had just met her. In any case, she took the same weight on the second attempt and…shifted her hips backwards and missed the second attempt. I would later find out that her weightlifting shoes were stolen a couple weeks prior; the minimalist running shoes she’s wearing undoubtedly attributed to the technique miss.

At this point Wendy is borderline freaking out at bombing out of the meet. People keep coming up to her and talking to her. They all walked away and I said, “Look, I don’t know what all of these people are saying, but you’ve done thousands of squats before, right? This next one won’t be any different. Take a deep breath. Visualize what a normal squat feels like. You’ll be fine.” I had her relax and visualize a few times as she waited. When her bar was loaded, she walked out, went through her routine and…squatted the weight up for three white lights. When they beamed, she IMMEDIATELY burst into tears, sprinted, and jumped into my arms. And stayed there for ten seconds. I actually walked back to the warm-up room carrying her. I didn’t realize how nervous she was, because, in her words, she “gets pretty zen” before doing a lift. It was a high pressure situation and she came through for an impressive 304 squat — a bit more than double body weight (148 lb weight class).

Wendy went 2/3 on bench, hitting 134, then sort of a hard 148 (a 7.5kg jump). I made the smallest jump (2.5kg) to her third at 70 and she missed it. No big deal; who benches anyway? Wendy opened on deadlift with a simple 314 lbs. Then we took 331 for a moderate second attempt. At this point, things were getting fun. She was competing with another lifter, Jill Joiner-Wong for second place (1st place was locked up by world champion Kimberly Walford, who had a completed deadlift of 507 red lighted in this meet!). Jill called for 342 on her final deadlift and so we called for 353 to have a 2.5kg edge in the total (Wendy squatted more than Jill, Jill benched more than Wendy, and  success with Wendy’s 353 would mean she totals 2.5kg more [Jill was lighter, so tying the total would have let Jill win 2nd]).

I asked Wendy four times if she wanted baby powder on her thighs. She insisted in wouldn’t be an issue. This would prove to be a regrettable decision. Wendy pulled a very hard third attempt with 353 and slowly locked it out…yet her leg movement and the bar sticking to her thighs resulted in the judges red lighting it for hitching. Had I applied baby powder to her legs, she would have gotten it.

Not a bad meet, especially with how the squat started. I know how I’ll handle these situations in the future by always cuing the “wait” before the first squat and applying the baby powder, but I’m pretty sure Wendy will use it forever from now on. Wendy also qualified for the Arnold, so we’ll see her again there.

Sean Dunston trains at Outlaw CrossFit and has posted on 70’s Big since the beginning. He competed in the master’s and open 181 class (I handled 2 other lifters in this class). He squatted 435 and 457, so we went for a national master’s record of 480 on the third attempt. Unfortunately it just wasn’t there that day, but I think it’s doable in the future. Sean then went 3/3 on bench hitting 220, 237, and 254. He opened deadlift with an easy 440, hit a second attempt of 474, and then hit a meet and lifetime PR deadlift of 507. There was more in the tank as well, but he was happy with that pull and it capped off a great meet. Sean finished 8/9 and I think he got second in his master’s class.

Jordan Feigenbaum is a meticulous lifter who was competing in his second meet (first nationals) and aimed to qualify for the Arnold. His body fat sits at sub 7%, so he’ll eventually move into the 198 weight class (he has room to fill out, he’s around 5’10” or so). We opened with 419 and then hit 441 on the second attempt. He missed his third of 463, and I sort of recall it being a mechanical issue. Had he been thinking “push hips”, he would have kept his posterior chain engaged instead of shifting forward into the quads. Jordan opened on bench at 308, then hit 320, but had a crack at 331 before missing it. He opened with a solid 507 opener, qualified for the Arnold with a 529 second attempt, and that had a really solid battle on a successful third attempt at 551. I was really happy to see Jordan hit the 551, especially since we didn’t get his third squat and bench. I think modifying his training can facilitate the third attempts on the other lifts. Great second meet for Jordan, he qualified for the Arnolds, and he finished 8th overall in a very competitive 181 class.

Andrew Pichardo is a friend of Chris’ from Wichita Fallsand was also competing in the 181 session in his second meet (first national meet). I wasn’t present at the fellas’ weigh-in because I went to get breakfast (one of my two main meals of the day), so I missed the fact that Andrew’s squat opener was incorrectly labeled as 220kg AKA 485 — higher than what we planned for his third attempt. The actual attempt was supposed to be 200kg AKA 441, and I just didn’t pay attention to what was on the chart projected on the wall. As the coach, I should have double checked all of the openers (there were two instances of openers being wrong later in the weekend, one was the lifter’s fault, the other the judge’s fault) and I feel that this is my fault. I didn’t find out about the wrong weight until Andrew was pinned on his first attempt. When the bar was loaded it was too late anyway, because he signed the card. Still, I could have prevented the snafu. I took him in the back to hit 445, and it was a grinder; he barely got it. I had to tell him that he wouldn’t be getting any squats that day and I waved his third attempt.

We had trouble on his first two bench attempts at 270 (I can’t recall exactly what the problem was), but he came back and made good on a third attempt at the same weight. At this point I feel terrible and only want Andrew to deadlift well since the world has gone to shit on squat and bench. We hit 463 on the first, then a moderate 507 on the second attempt. It wasn’t slow enough that I didn’t have issues calling for 546 on the third (lower than what he originally planned if I recall), but when you aren’t adapted to multiple high intensity pulls and you cut weight for the meet, it results in being fatigued for third attempts at a national meet. The 546 didn’t go. Andrew and I both learned a lot at this meet, and I felt terrible for him because I knew I could have prevented it from happening. This experience leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I messed up, but he got to experience his first national meet and still hit 507 in competition.

The next update will have the rest of the lifters.

 

A Part of Me Died

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Life is spinning out of control,
seems the whole world is out to get you,
Everything is wrong, nothing seems right-eh.
…
But you can’t let it bring you down,
No you’ve got to fight-ehhhhh…
— Baseketball

I’m really good at pointing out things that are wrong, so let’s get started.

1. Nobody in this video can string a sentence together confidently. At one point Maurice Greene says that the coach is going “to facilitate us on the weightroom”. Huh??? Then he says, “Here we have Montel Douglas who is the British national record holder…for Great Britain…and shit.” I added the last part because they undoubtedly had to edit that part out. Then the coach makes up his sentence as he goes along as if he’s never had to think about it before. Then he says the squat is “important for a track athlete to simply create force into the ground”. To clarify, we don’t summon force out of thin air like a demon, we apply force into the ground so that Newton’s third law occurs (equal and opposite reaction) to move. I’m not expecting this explanation, but I am expecting correct terminology when you’re a supposed expert.

I could keep going. “We go a hip-width distance” — of what? “We feel that halfway to a quarter is deep enough,” — sharing your feelings is not a way to prove why to do something.

Sure, even I have bad days with communicating, but this was terrible. What is Montel the world record holder of? Why should track athletes lift weights? What is this squat movement accomplishing? Why is this “new” movement beneficial?

2. “What better exercise to load the lower body than the barbell squat,” and then he hardly loads the body by doing a partial rep. And wasn’t this the reason that Maurice stated that they didn’t want to go deeper?

3. “Puts a lot of stress on yo body, creates injuries…and shit”. If you perform the squat like Maurice Greene, who is labeling himself as the expert, then yes, they can be injurious. In fact, decent squats can be injurious if regular mobility work isn’t performed. This is why a proper squat is done with the hip going below the knee so that it trains the lower body joints and musculature through a full range of motion. This is also why proper foot attire is worn to increase the efficiency and subsequently the safety. Remember that lifting shoes have the slight heel increase, the non-compressible sole, the meta-tarsal straps, and the wider sole base to help solidify the articulation of the athlete to the ground so that they can properly apply force. Furthermore, lifting shoes help utilize the body’s mechanics more efficiently to distribute force evenly across the thighs and hips regardless of anthropometry. A belt will only increase all of this efficiency by increasing the intra-abdominal and thoracic pressure, increasing the stability of the trunk which will not only improve the transmission of force (AKA performance), but help protect the spine by improving the pneumatic “brace” against the anterior portion of the spine.

4. Since when do sprinters run with a short range of motion? I haven’t watched sprinting in this year’s Olympics, but my understanding is that good sprinting takes the hips through, or nearly through, a full range of motion. Wouldn’t we want to train all of this musculature through a full, albeit safe, ROM so that we are as strong as possible? Even if this wouldn’t help us apply force, which it does, it would at least strengthen the musculature through a full ROM to help reduce the chance of injury since the structures adapt to handling greater forces.

Oh, that’s weird. Here’s a pic of Maurice Greene with both of his hips near or at their limit of hip flexion and extension.

5. I could understand an argument that full ROM squats may be too stressful for inclusion in a sprint program in the same way that I say deadlifts are too stressful for certain stages of programs (i.e. for Oly lifters, soldiers, or football players), but that’s not the argument here. Furthermore, even if it was, the sprint athlete most likely has a periodized approach to their training year, especially if they are peaking for World Championships or the Olympics. Therefore they’d be changing the volume, intensity, and frequency of their squatting. Also, they would, at this point, be adapted to handling both squatting and sprinting during the week because they have been progressed into it.

6. I’m pretty sure that when I was younger I read an article in Men’s Health (or similar crappy magazine) that Maurice Greene was squatting 315 for sets of 10 in his training. I’ve seen reports that he squatted above 500. Even if it wasn’t Maurice in the mag, there are many documented reports of him squatting decently heavy to prepare for his sprinting. We can assume he at least went to the depth he showed in the above video. Wouldn’t that show us that it worked? He held the world record in the 100m at 9.79s, he won two gold medals, a silver, and a bronze. He won five world championships as well as one indoor world championship. Can we not say that squatting supported all of this? When he won his gold medals at the 2000 Games, he was 26. In 2001, he started having issues with injuries, but still won the silver and bronze in the 2004 Games at 30 years old. He eventually retired in 2005 at the age of 31. His first major international tournament was in 1995 when he was 21 years old and he failed to make the Olympic team the following year. This means that he had at least 10 years of hard, elite-level training. We can assume that he was training for at least 3 years before his first major tournament, putting his highly demanding competitive years at 13. He probably ran track in high school, but we’ll ignore those four possible years.

What does all of this mean? He was very accomplished, but as he got older, his body broke down. This happens to everyone. There isn’t enough performance enhancement drugs to account for getting older (Greene said he bought PEDs, but allegedly didn’t use them). 30 years old is ancient in demanding professional sports. Most guys are out of the NFL before they are 28. It’s not that crazy to assume that his body couldn’t keep up with the demands of elite level sprint training anymore, and this is almost certainly what happened. Sure, he could have gotten hurt squatting, but he was “getting old”. 30 isn’t old, all things considered, but it is for Olympians in a high demanding sport. Sorry Maurice, just because you regret having to retire and don’t accept the fact that you can’t retain physical prowess forever doesn’t meant that full squats are bad or injurious. And we aren’t even taking the fact that you don’t squat efficiently into consideration. It’s hard for me to take a guy seriously who squatted his whole life, had an amazing career, and then campaigns against doing them.

7. Track coaches do some weird things. Barry Ross has his sprinters deadlift the bar to the knees, then drop it to the floor. This removes the eccentric portion which apparently helps reduce injuries. It’s a “halting deadlift”, which is typically really fucking useless, but in this case I can see the applicability because it strengthens the concentric action of the hamstrings, but more importantly strengthens the back and hip musculature to stabilize everything for sprinting. I explain this concept in my seminars, but if your hips are not held in place during sprinting, then you are losing out on some arbitrary amount of force you area applying to the ground with each foot strike.

I can understand the above example for a specific type of athlete with a specific mechanical and structural demand for a single modality athletic event. I concede to the fact that something weird may be applicable to a very specific athlete. However, the above example is supported by anatomy, mechanics, and logic; the quarter squat is not. It mostly loads the knee extensors through a few degrees of motion. I guess it looks like that stupid VMO exercise people use while standing on a block. I’m not against using weird, yet specific assistance exercises to build up an area that can enhance total movement. But don’t label it as something that is the holy grail or the primary strengthener. In other words, don’t use a cute, gimmicky exercise and sell it as the “main thing to do”. That’s the only way that I could see the quarter squat being used, but even then it doesn’t make sense from an anatomical, mechanics, or logical perspective.

8. The athlete can be good in spite of stupid exercises. There’s a guy who trained in the gym in Texas. He is a white guy of average height and weight and played collegiate football. He is a freak. He has at least a 40 inch vertical and would be squatting 500 for reps within several minutes of walking in the gym. In basketball shoes. He didn’t really listen to coaching very well and just did his own thing, but he was strong as hell doing it his way. He reportedly squatted 700 pounds in college and was the quarterback.

My point? In spite of not having completely sound mechanics, this guy was strong and powerful. And he’s not an Olympian or an elite athlete. Imagine someone who is not only gifted physically, but has the drive and determination to be great. They are truly a freak in the average person’s eyes, capable of outstanding performances. People like this can and will make progress in spite of inefficient training techniques or programming because they have such a great genetic potential and an iron will to work hard.

We see this all of the time with crappy strength programs in collegiate, even high school, settings that produce beasts that can bench 500 pounds and squat 600+ with little to no training. It’s not absurd to have an elite athlete do a stupid, meaningless exercise and they will improve nonetheless. Some strengthening is better than no strengthening, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

This means that regardless of ability, a coach should do his job to strengthen the relevant musculature through full ranges of motion, maintaining or improving the mobility of the athlete, and not only not injure the athlete, but train them so that they are harder to hurt. By these qualifications, the coach in the video failed.

At least there are some Olympians who understand the power of squats.

Robert Forstemann and Andre Griepel have a “quad off”

Olympic Streams

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For fuck’s sake, you guys are blowing me up constantly for weightlifting streams. You can do one of several things.

1. Go to All Things Gym and look at his nice, organized stream list. I’m shocked at how organized this dude is; he’s on the internet a lot. In any case, he has a long list of various free streams you can use. Thanks, Gregor.

2. Watch it on your home country’s network, assuming you have their cable package. I can tell you that Comcast blows and is difficult to deal with, so let’s go to the next option…

3. TUNNEL BEAR, ASSEMBLE! TunnelBear.com has a VPN for download, and it’s a cheaper option than other programs I’ve seen online. I don’t know what “VPN” is, and I don’t care. What it does is it makes your location appear from somewhere else. This is legal, and it can help protect you. In this case, we are using it to “tunnel” our position into the UK so that we can use the BBC live streams (they also have session recaps to re-watch any event). Read the FAQ if you’re confused.

Bears are always funny. Tunnel Bears are always helpful.

Download the program for free, and you’ll get 500mb of data each month (Note: If you tweet at TunnelBear, they’ll give you 1gb for free within a day or so). Unlimited data is only $4.99/month, which is half the price of other options out there. To me it’s worth watching the lifting sessions, but I also get to stream all of the Olympic events live or re-watch all the events. I don’t get anything from Tunnel Bear, but I love bears and I love weightlifting.

Tunnel Bear is very simple. Download it. Install it. Sign up (free or paid). Install the network thingy (it’ll do it for you). Open program. Sign in. Flip the right switch to “UK”, flip the left switch to “On”. Wait a sec, and the gadget screen will turn blue. You’re good. Then go to the BBC stream site. Load whatever you want to watch. The player will load and have a little “i>” on the left. Click that to play. If you have issues with the stream, then reload. Be patient at first.

Personally, my stream is a bit choppy. When it plays, it’s very good quality, but it’ll pause once a minute for a few seconds and then keep going. This is due to my shitty internet connection at the house, so your results will vary. If you are worried about the expense, then try the free 500mb option before paying.

Thank you to @culfinglin for the tip on Tunnel Bear! Edit: There’s no malware or adware in Tunnel Bear. 

Females in the Olympics

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The Olympics do not occur every year, so I wanted to highlight some of the stories about women in the Olympics for today’s female post.

Women In Numbers

The biggest story prior to the start of the Olympics was that there were more American females competing than males. However, this is also the case for all of the Olympians in this year’s games.

The United States is represented by more women than men for the first time ever. Russia also has more women competing. One hundred and twelve years after women were first allowed to compete, and 108 years after they were first awarded medals, more women will compete in these games than ever before, whether you count by percentage (45 percent) or total (4,860).

Title IX was huge for growth in women’s sports. Nowadays women can earn their living in professional sports and, as of this year, women compete in every Olympic sport. It was a good step for a progressing American society; I hope it continues around the world.

 

Hope Solo should know better
One of the American football/soccer commentators is Brandi Chastain, the gal who ripped her shirt off when the American women won the 1999 World Cup (see image on left). During the U.S. – Columbia match, Chastain pointed out that defender Rachel Buehler “needs to improve (her defending) in this tournament”. After the 3-0 U.S. victory, Hope Solo raged out on Twitter, saying:

 

Its 2 bad we cant have commentators who better represents the team&knows more about the game @brandichastain! #fb

Lay off commentating about defending and gking until you get more educated @brandichastain the game has changed from a decade ago. #fb

Its important 2 our fans 2 enjoy the spirit of the olympics. Its not possible when sum1 on air is saying that a player is the worst defender!

I feel bad 4 our fans that have 2 push mute, especially bc @arlowhite is fantastic.@brandichastain should be helping 2 grow the sport #fb

Jesus Christ, Hope, you’re 30 years old. Maybe one tweet would have sufficed to defend your teammate, but this is the part where we say, “Yeah u mad bro.”

For an actual break down of the U.S. victory over Columbia, instead of these silly issues, read this post.

 

16 year old Chinese swimmer shocks world

Ye Shiwen wins gold, breaks a record, faster than men, and is only 16

Despite the fact that American Ryan Lochte edged Michael Phelps for the gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley, China’s Ye Shiwen is receiving heaps of press. It’s not because she won a gold medal, but how she won the gold medal.

After 300m of fly, back and breaststroke, Ye was eight-tenths of a second behind USA’s world champion, Elizabeth Beisel. And then, with 100m to go, something extraordinary happened. She swam her first 50m of freestyle in 29.25sec, and her second in 28.93. Those are just numbers, and mean little to those who do not study the sport. To put them in context, consider this: Ye was faster in the final 50m of her own 400m IM than Lochte was in his.

 

Dude. She was faster at the end of the race than the best guy in the world. And she’s 12 years younger than Lochte. To top it off, she was the first swimmer to break a world record in this Olympics by more than a second. She broke Steph Rice’s time that earned her a gold medal, and Rice was wearing the polyurethane suit that has since been banned. Impressive stuff from the young Chinese swimmer.

 

There are plenty of stories that have and will occur, and they all won’t be represented here. Feel free to post them on the Facebook page or tweet them at 70’s Big (I’ll retweet Olympics results). Here’s a few quick hitters:

Kim Rhode
The female athlete, 33, won the gold in women’s skeet shooting Sunday, making her the first U.S. contender to take an individual-sport medal in five back-to-back Olympics, according to the AP. She also tied the world record and set an Olympic record: she shot 99 out of 100 targets. (Editor’s Note: This was her fifth straight Olympics that she medaled in, setting an American record.)

Dana Vollmer
The 24-year-old swimmer and defending world champion set a world record in the 100 M butterfly with a time of 55.98 seconds Sunday – good enough to earn her the gold medal, according to the AP.

Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh
The beach volleyball contenders are trying for a third consecutive gold medal – and they’re already well on their way to securing that win. On Saturday, the duo beat out Australians Tasmin Hinchley and Natalie Cook in a tense match that went way past 11 p.m. local time. The final score: 21-18 and 21-19. “I was worried,” Walsh said of playing so late. “At home, it hits 11 and I’m a zombie. But we could play at 4 in the morning, we don’t care.”

For complete “Day 2 of the Olympics” coverage, see this post (there’s an American bias, feel free to post more coverage in the comments). The first two paragraphs focus on an interesting turn of events in gymnastics:

Nobody saw this coming: Defending all-around champion Jordyn Wieber, the face of this year’s U.S. women’s gymnastics squad, failed to qualify for the finals in her signature event. She lost to teammate and friend Aly Raisman, who turned in quite possibly the performance of her young life.

The emotional chaos that ensued after the scores were flashed said it all: Wieber stood crying in the background, head down, while Raisman tried to field a reporter’s questions even though she was crying herself, clearly torn by mixed emotions. Was this a blip on the radar for Raisman or is she about to step from the shadows to create her own legend? And will this blow rattle Wieber’s psyche or will she still be able to bring her best performance to the team competition? We’ll find out soon.

More gymnastics coverage.