Bodybuilding is the only sport where the goal is not records, but the person himself, his strength, health and beauty!..
When such a question is asked by ill-wishers of bodybuilding, they usually mean one, in their opinion, very important circumstance: bodybuilders do not compete in strength. It would seem that there is nothing to counter this, since bodybuilders really do not set strength records. Well, from this well-known fact it seems to logically follow that the bodybuilders’ muscles are nothing more than a sham, and bodybuilding itself cannot be called a sport. Unlike, for example, weightlifting, where strength is the goal and content of training…
Let’s figure out why bodybuilders who use monstrous weights in training: up to 150, 240 and even 500 kg, which eloquently testifies to their phenomenal strength, nevertheless do not compete in weightlifting. To begin with, we will have to make a short excursion into the history of athletics.
At the dawn of our century, athletes competed spontaneously, without strict rules, demonstrating the so-called absolute strength – the difference in weight and height of competitors was not taken into account. With the beginning of official competitions, including the Olympic Games, it became clear that participants should be divided into weight categories to ensure fair conditions for comparing results.
In 1914, the World Weightlifting Union, at the suggestion of the chairman of the All-Russian Weightlifting Union, established five categories: up to 60, up to 67.5, up to 75, up to 82.5 and over 82.5 kg.
Later, the list was expanded to include categories up to 52, up to 56, up to 90 and over 90 kg, over 100 kg, as well as up to 110 and over 110 kg, since the previous list did not fully reflect the genetic characteristics of the athletes competing in strength.
So, athletes began to compete on equal terms. Is this a plus? As it turned out, no! The idea of athletic development fell into a real trap with the introduction of weight gradations: an athlete who was required to demonstrate extreme strength now “had no right” to increase weight, in other words, muscle mass, which is the source of strength!
In fairness, it should be noted that the rules of weightlifting do not prohibit moving to a higher category. However, this happens extremely rarely. The fact is that in the new category, the weightlifter will have an incomparably higher level of records. Well, in modern sports, where records literally prop up the bar of the human body’s resources, it is almost impossible to sharply raise the level of personal achievements, so much more often weightlifters try to move to a lighter category. Having lost weight, the weightlifter gets a chance to compete in the category where his result, ordinary by the standards of the previous category, will quite pull off a record!
The question is natural: where do records come from if each weightlifter is locked into the tight confines of his weight category? The answer is paradoxical – to perform the snatch and clean and jerk, a weightlifter does not need supermassive muscles, since a high result in these weightlifting exercises does not require… strength. Yes, despite the external simplicity, the snatch and clean and jerk are extremely complex movements in technical terms, where the most important condition for success, leaving strength behind, is the athlete’s ability to lift the weight super-fast, with great speed.
Let’s take a closer look at the technique of the
clean and jerk . With a colossal effort, the weightlifter gives the barbell an impulse of movement directed vertically upward. The bar “flies” above the platform and hangs at the top point of the trajectory, rapidly losing its momentum. In the hundredths of a second that remain before the barbell falls down with all its weight, the athlete manages to perform a special technique: to squat under the barbell and take it, which has already started to move, on his chest. The weightlifter meets the next part of the exercise in a full squat position, holding the barbell on his chest. Then he straightens up, and the last, final phase begins. Having powerfully pushed the barbell up, the weightlifter again squats under it and takes the barbell returning under the action of gravity on his outstretched arms. All that remains is to straighten his legs from the squat position, and the weight is taken!
The key aspect, as can be seen from the description, is the athlete’s ability to give the barbell a high flight speed of up to 1.8 m / sec.! Such a skill requires very special, explosive qualities from the muscles, not directly related to strength and as different as, say, the throttle response of a car engine and its power.
This particularity of weightlifting as a sport is best understood using the example of sprinters and long-distance runners. A short-distance runner, a sprinter, like a weightlifter, is faced with the need to develop muscular effort as quickly as possible, while a long distance for a long-distance runner requires a long and economical expenditure of energy.
It is obvious that the training methods in both cases should be different. Until the mid-50s, weightlifters, as if by inertia, practiced the traditional scheme of performing strength exercises, until finally the long-awaited revolution happened. The entire concept of athletic training was subjected to a decisive revision and was transformed beyond recognition: instead of multiple repetitions with average weights in a variety of exercises covering all muscle groups, from now on it was necessary to perform 1-3 repetitions with maximum and near-maximum weights in several monotonous, highly specialized movements with a single goal – the maximum result in the snatch and clean and jerk. It is clear that such changes became the last, after the introduction of weight restrictions, nail in the coffin of those great athletic ideas of physical harmony, beauty and health, which at the beginning of the century were professed as the credo of the newborn weightlifting. The appearance of the champions has changed remarkably: hypertrophied extensors of the arms, legs and torso now coexist with caricatured underdeveloped muscle groups of the chest, a sagging belly, thin calves. The powerful, almost epic in its antique splendor, figure of Vlasov became the final touch to the portrait of an irretrievably gone era. The circle has closed.
The doctrine of a single and universal athletic criterion has exhausted itself…
However, in the world of athletics there are quite a few different competitive concepts, including powerlifting, curling, kettlebell lifting, where other qualities of muscles are put at the forefront – their ability to sustained effort or repeated, endurance, tension.
It can be assumed that the criterion of the so-called strength endurance, such as in kettlebell lifting, is exactly what bodybuilding needs, since bodybuilding originated from the ancient capons, which in turn were dictated by the brutal military practices of the ancients. As is well known, it required not only exceptional strength, but also the talent to demonstrate it for a supernaturally long time: battles, historians say, often lasted for several days. It is no coincidence that in recent years bodybuilding has been “discovered” by karatekas and kickboxers: even the great Chuck Norris began taking bodybuilding lessons from Lou Ferrigo, the famous protégé of Joe Weider… However, if we do not want the already well-known picture to be repeated, when in pursuit of results an athlete trains only those muscle groups that participate in competitive exercises, then we must include exercises for all muscle groups in the competition program! It is clear that such competitions would turn into torture for the spectators…
Bodybuilding as a sport has chosen its own path: balance in muscle development is proclaimed the main rule. Arguments? The law of expedient harmony, given by nature itself, which makes it possible to test athletic qualities purely speculatively, with the same degree of reliability with which mathematical laws allow calculating distances to barely visible planets: any disharmony in muscle development unmistakably indicates the inferiority of athletic qualities!
As in gymnastics, figure skating or diving, judges’ assessments are subjective: the result cannot be measured precisely. However, bodybuilding competitions also have an objective indicator – enviably constant sold-out shows. I don’t know what to compare them with. Well, maybe the same as in the “gyms”!
