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.
As usual, post your training updates and PRs. Mingle with the crowd. Talk about the Olympics.
Weekly Challenge
Last week’s challenge aimed at getting you to create a food log for three days (2 weekdays, 1 from the weekend). How many of you actually did this? This is the standard type of food log that a coach or trainer will ask from a client. It is a pretty good representation of how they eat (by looking at both week and weekend days), yet it isn’t more invasive than a few days. I’d suggest estimating your macro count for each meal and the day and see if you can improve it given what you want and need.
Next Week’s Challenge: Curl 40kg or 90 pounds for as many reps as possible at the end of one of your training sessions next week. And watch the Olympics. Post your reps to next week’s Q&A comments.
Week In Review
Monday there was a nerd-jizz-worthy post on hyperlordosis. Tuesday focused on helping powerlifters, CrossFitters, or strength trainees to transition into Olympic weightlifting. Wednesday talked about how much of an asshole Andrei Aramnau (won gold in 105kg class in Beijing) won’t be attending the 2012 Olympics, but it’s okay because he’s an asshole. Thursday was a “deep thoughts” moment from Dr. Kilgore. There were also posts on the live streams for the NAPF Powerlifting Championships (going on right now and throughout the weekend) as well as the Olympics (the opening ceremony is tonight).
Q&A
Justin,
A little context first I’m 32 and have a 13 year old brother, dad was active after he and mom split. So to the question at hand, I have a basic garage gym set up, rogue squat rack and bar w/some bumpers a pull up bar the basic crossfit set up. I’ve been doing “crossfit” for about 5 years now. My 13 year old brother is going to be starting football this year and wants to start working out. My old man not knowing any better almost bought him one of the cheap academy/sports place “home gym” things. I luckily advised him against this. But now he wants me to show the kid how to work out and set him up with some work outs. Stephen is 13 just started puberty and hit a growth spurt he is know about 5’8” and all skin and bones. I personally know how to do the lifts but would by no means call myself a coach or an expert. Would it be wise for me to teach him how to bench and squat correctly to knowledge and set him up with a squat rack and bench and pull up bar, or just run him through body weight movements and the like? I’ve tried finding some past q&a on the subject in your website because I know I’ve seen it before but just can’t seem to find it now. Any help pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mike
PS- doing the goruck in Austin in dec after reading your write up. Thanks for the extra push to get me to actually sign up for it.
Dear Mike,
The GoRuck will be a good time. I’ll be doing a post soon on preparing for one, so keep an eye out. In the mean time, I’d suggest walking around with about 30 pounds in a pack for about an hour once a week and add some calisthenics after you lift.
As for your little brov, the thing that will help him the most is to get stronger. That doesn’t mean you’ll ignore spatial awareness or body weight stuff, but, yes, it’ll be worth your (and his) time to learn how to squat and bench. This could be fun or frustrating for you, but with kids it’s best to be patient. As long as you have him a) squatting down all the way with b) his chest up, and c) his knees out, he’ll be fine. Remember, any weight room coaches he has will probably know less than you. As for bench, just get a little bit of pinching the shoulder blades together and work on keeping his elbows from flaring. If you need to, use a bit more of a narrow grip than you’d expect to help the elbows stay under control. Don’t progress him if they flare. This will build his triceps, which is important for any football position.
Basic agility work wouldn’t hurt him. You could teach him the “athletic position”. It’s easier than it sounds: the athlete is on the balls of their feet (which is the base of the toes), stance shoulder width, knees and hips slightly bent. It allows quick change of direction. You could have him do the standard “chop the feet” and do whatever. Side shuffle, back pedaling, up-downs, or whatever. 30 seconds to 60 seconds of whatever you think of with half that time in rest. Do this to finish his workouts off. Total training time could be less than an hour. Make sure he’s having fun and be encouraging on his progress. Teach him that this stuff will make him better at football. If he believes it, then he’ll be a better player automatically. Give him confidence and teach respect, and he’ll do well in football.
@70sBig Justin love your site. Question: tweaked my knee front squatting. Back of knee swelling but no bruising. Normal or am I a pussy?
This type of injury is related to toe angle and squatting (see first and second posts). Most people see that we eventually should have the toes pointed relatively forward, yet forget that toe angle is dependent on mobility.
Last December I had a similar injury. I did 72 clean and jerks, 31 of them with 300 pounds, for the Movember fundraiser (I don’t recommend this). My knees were crusty after this Thursday night session at my buddy Adam’s Panhandle CrossFit. Saturday I did an hour long ruck, and then Monday I was trying to warm-up to do some light or medium squats. I was squatting the bar, and tweaked the rear of my knee, just like Nic did above.
The reason is torsion. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that we want torsion, AKA torque AKA rotational force, at the hip because it helps to actively engage more musculature and more efficiently distributes the force of squatting or deadlifting across the thigh and hip. However, if a lifter doesn’t have the mobility — or their mobility has artificially been reduced due to structural stress (as in my case with the 72 clean and jerks and rucking) — then torsion can actually be an injurious act.
In this case, I think it’s a straining of the popliteus, a small muscle on the back of the knee (see image to the left). See how it attaches medially below the knee and laterally above the knee? When the toes are more forward, the tibia will face relatively forward. Then when the knees are shoved out, the femur (thigh) will angle outwards. See how this would tug on the poplitues if the upper attachment was pulled out while the lower attachment was kept in?
The popliteus normally aids in un-locking the knee from terminal knee extension. When the knee is flexed, as is the case in the bottom of a squat, it is contracted. My reasoning is that the muscle is shortened (contracted) at the bottom of the squat, and then the attachment sites are pulled apart (described in the preceding paragraph), resulting in a strain. For me, I know that the rucking also “worked” or “fatigued” the poplitues since each step applies more than body weight on the structure (it inevitably distributes force during walking, yet adding 50 pounds more than body weight to an already tired structure (from the CJs) will weaken and damage it even more). When I went to do the squatting movement a couple of days later, my popliteus was “crusty”, which means it was damaged, inflamed, and tender. Then I contracted it with knee flexion and then shoved my knees out which applied tension on a shortened muscle belly, and voila, it was “yanked” AKA strained.
I see this as a potential problem for people attempting “forward toe angle” style squatting when they lack the mobility in their hips, knees, and ankles to accommodate it. That’s why my suggestion has always been to make small, gradual changes to anything, whether it be mechanics or programming. At the same time, you have to take into account the other things that are going on in your training or life, because a lack of recovery can open a trainee up to small injuries like my popliteal strain. This is why when I climbed a 9,712 ft mountain last Saturday, I rested for three total days before snatching and CJing up to my month’s goals (more on this in a later post).
As for your injury, Nic, I suggest icing it as much as you can for the first several days. Mob the upper calf area with compression tack and stretch (you can do this above the knee as well) or joint capsule work with a rolled up towel tucked inside the back of the knee while in knee flexion (kind of like this vid). Ease back into squatting with light, medium, and then heavy days.
for some background, i’m 20, 5’8″ 195lbs with 15%bf. ive been lifting since high school, and it was always for football performance, so it was mostly the power lifts and just power cleans, with football conditioning. after high school i started learning the oly lifts. i’ve been doing them for about a year now, still not the best mechanics and deffinately not with a lot of weight, but i really want to focus on them because i like them so much. ive checked out the pendlay outline for a beginner template and i made my own up. could you tell me how dumb or smart it is?
mon- snatch 5×3@80% 1rm, high pulls and hang cleans 5×2 (not with significant weight, just to reinforce mechanics) high bar squat 3×5. (recently switched from low bar about a month ago when i decided to focus on oly lifts) pull ups
tues- clean and jerk 5×3@80% 1rm. high snatch pulls and hang snatches 5×2, rdls 3×8, sprints
wed-bench 3×5, bent over bb rows 3×5, db bench 3×5, db rows 3×5, push ups, lower back and ab complex
thurs- snatch 2,2,1 @90% 1rm. high bar squat 3×5, high pulls and hang snatches, press 3×5 (was doing 3×3 with ascending sets, but neglecting presses for a while has left me weak on them and im gonna just do an LP with them till i hit a wall) chins, if i have time ill do a bb complex
fri- c and j 2,2,1 @90% 1rm, high snatch pull and hang snatches, deads 1×5, dips, sled pullslooking at it, it seems like a lot. maybe it is. i havent been able to actually do this program for longer than two weeks uninterrupted due to travel and vacation, but it hasnt been too much to handle for the time ive been able to do it. i feel like i can do this template, but if it seems like im gonna drive my dick into the ground just let me know.
Dear Alphinitis,
You’ve been reading the site and commenting for a long time, so this is why I’m dealing with your long-ass, messy question. By the way, someone made fun of you for posting your BF%, but I think that is relevant information, so ignore that person.
I’m not going to dissect your program fully. But I’ll give you some of my personal philosophy with programming Olympic weightlifting. I don’t typically like partial movements for beginners. This means pulls, lifts from the hang, or from boxes. I agree with Pendlay that the positions are incredibly important, and these partial lifts may develop those, but I think it over complicates things for a beginner. Not to mention, in my opinion, they just need time to do the full lifts over and over with at least okay positioning (this would grade them out at a “B”). Instead, you are getting reps with tons of partial movements that may or may not be correct to begin with. I’d rather you just do the full lifts.
I don’t like to think in terms of percentages until the mid to late stage intermediate programming of anything. Modern society wants to be told exactly what to do, but programming is more organic than that. Doing whatever for a percentage may be the optimal stress in a given week, but who is to say that it will be several weeks from now? Or the first several weeks of a program? That’s why I indicated a steady progression in the program earlier this week.
You also have a day in which you bench, and then the next day you are snatching. I don’t know if you’ve ever benched heavy and then snatched heavy (I’ve done this in a session), but it’s not good. Not good at all.
By my count, you’re aiming to train five days a week. You already know I’m not a fan of that, especially for someone in your position that is transitioning into weightlifting. Rest is important to recover and get stronger from compound movements that impart a systemic stress. You are young, but I’d rather you learn this lesson now instead of doing it the hard way.
Lastly, I see a bunch of random shit tacked on the end of the training sessions. Dumbbell work and what not. Focus your efforts, mate. You already know why, but Ron Swanson will help:
If you live in the U.S., then NBC will be your primary access to the Olympic games. Every single event will be live streamed on NBC’s website, but you mast have the NBC channels as part of your cable package (and use your log-in with that provider to log-in to the live stream). If you are going to trust the illegal streams available, just know that their quality can widely vary.
Regardless if you are going to stream from NBC or not, you can see the entire schedule of what events are on each day at the NBC live stream schedule. You can see what events will be on any given day, but you can also select a specific sport and see what day and time it is on.
THIS MEANS THAT YOU SHOULDN’T ASK WHEN A SPECIFIC EVENT IS BECAUSE IT’S READILY AVAILABLE. We’ll be posting about various events, especially weightlifting, on Facebook and Twitter. Some stories will show up on this website as well, but faster updates will be available on Twitter (the recent tweets can be seen on the left side bar). Next week will be busy (with raw nationals) so rely on the social media. There have already been some new updates that include Ryan Seacrest and Carson Daly being gigantic poons who don’t lift.
If you live in the UK, or use a VPN software, you can stream the BBC coverage of the Olympics (I think it’s free to do so). Australians and Canadians: feel free to submit local streaming choices in the comments and I’ll add them here.
I’ve written fairly frequently on why modern sport and exercise science has failed to produce much valuable information on producing elite athletes or good programs to improve fitness in the generally healthy population. I’ve pointed out misunderstanding of adaptive processes, ignorance of underpinning paradigms, errant hypotheses, and just plainly bad research questions. There is also the fact that lots and lots of sport and exercise science research is conducted on college students and then the results are extrapolated to athletic population. Starting Strength, Practical Programming, and FIT were all built on the concept that most of the available data was only relevant, at best, to beginners. What resulted from that position of disdain for available research data were three books that work and deliver instruction on how to get stronger, more enduring, and more mobile. Tens or hundreds of thousands of normal people have used the information and instructions in those books to create un-tabulated data about fitness.
Most recently I’ve been working on an interesting project with the owner of an international exercise instructors school to help align the instruction delivered with viable theory and valid scientific data. While doing some readings specific to the project I came across the following:
“The study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy.”
—Abraham Maslow, 1954
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is standard fare in psychology, and his work is quite highly regarded. His statement above underscores the concept that we should not use sport and exercise research data from untrained or diseased populations to create an understanding of how to train to create peak fitness or improve athletic performance. To do so creates an approach to training relevant only to those populations. What this means in the context of everyday trainees and coaches is that while we need to read incessantly to learn everything we can about training and human adaptation, we need to follow the advice in the Proverbs of Alfred (circa 1300):
“Gin thu neuere leuen alle monnis spechen, Ne alle the thinge that thu herest singen”
This sentiment was much later modified into a more hippie and anti-press bent by Arlo Guthrie:
“Believe half of what you see, some of what you read, and none of what your hear”
In application in the gym this could be further modified to:
“Believe what you see working in the gym, some of what you read in the exercise science literature, and none of what you see on TV or in newsstand fitness magazines”
—-
Dr. Lon Kilgore is an anatomist, a physiologist, a writer, an illustrator, and, in my opinion, a pioneer that quietly helps pave the way for strength coaches and fitness professionals to revolutionize the way the world looks at “fitness”.
This is a single-ply geared powerlifting championship for the North American continent (the same occurred in the raw category at the Arnold).
NAPF/IPF North American Championships start wednesday
• Weds July 25, 2012 Lifting: [All Women] 1:00 PM est.
•Thurs July 26, 2012 Lifting: [Men 59kg & 74kg] 1:00 PM est.
•Fri July 27, 2012 Lifting: [Men 83kg – 105kg] 10:00 AM est.
•Sat July 28, 2012 Lifting: [Men 120kg – 120+kg] 10:00 AM est.
Here is the live stream link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/napfregionals2012
And the live scoring: http://napf.no-ip.org/
Brooks Conway is lifting on Friday at 10 AM if you want to watch. Bev lifts Wednesday at 1:00 PM. Good luck to them and Quest Athletics lifters.
