Technique
Some Questions of Perfecting Weightlifters' Mastery of Technique
English summary of Tyazhelaya Atletika. Ezhegodnik 1982 (Moscow: Fizkultura i Sport, 1982), pp. 24–26: the text is paraphrased, not translated.
The problem
- Technique decides how fully a lifter turns strength into the lift. Firmly automated skills make performances reliable, which matters most in team events.
- Technique is still neglected. USSR state coach Yu. A. Sandalov noted that 17% of competitors at the VII Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR scored zero, and he blamed weak technical preparation. The author adds two causes: coaches chasing strength and volume, and unsolved basic questions of technical training.
Two distinct notions
- Improving technique means its historical evolution, which went two ways. (a) Muscle coordination before the descent under the bar improved; the sequence is now large muscles, then medium, then small, and bar trajectories and rhythm are established. (b) The descent got deeper, from the power position through the diagonal and the split to the squat. That second line is now exhausted.
- Future directions: better control of movement, linked to physical qualities and individual traits, and greater speed in every part of the lifts. Reserves are large: advanced lifters now use 55–60% of their static strength in the pull, against 40% fifteen years ago. Static and dynamic strength correlate at 0.822 with 80% weights (Yu. V. Verkhoshansky, 1977).
- Improving in technique means the athlete's mastery of the current rational model. It depends on the coach and should anticipate where technique is heading. This is today's weakest link, because it lacks a methodology.
What technique includes
- Technique is more than external biomechanics. It also includes the motor and mental components of controlling movement (D. D. Donskoy; V. M. Dyachkov).
- Motor: balanced physical qualities and coordination, meaning the rational use of the leading qualities and of inertial forces (N. A. Bernstein). The key skill is matching effort to the bar; V. S. Farfel (1963) called it the main thing required of a lifter.
- Mental: receiving feedback, processing it consciously and correcting the movement (P. K. Anokhin; Bernstein; Farfel; A. Ts. Puni).
- Information sources: the range of motion stays constant while effort varies fast and widely. Farfel et al. (1975) found that static effort is controlled by skin and Golgi tendon receptors, with joint receptors added for dynamic effort. In lifting, that means the palms, the soles, and the tendons and joints.
Experiments (Masters of Sport)
- Static: lifters exerted a maximal pull on a dynamometer (grip strapped), then tried to reproduce 50%, 25% and 75% of it. Errors reached 100% or more.
- Dynamic: hang pulls on a dynamographic platform at maximum, then at 50%, 25% and 75%. Errors were slightly smaller but still very large.
- Competition snatch on the platform: force stayed constant whatever the weight, and only bar height and speed fell as the weight rose. Lifters thus cannot match effort to the load. With lighter opening weights the bar moves too fast and disrupts the descent under the bar, which explains misses with easy weights, typically losing the bar behind the head in the snatch.
Recommendation
The fault lies in training methods: proprioceptive feedback is incomplete and poorly conscious. Coaches should train muscular sensitivity and supplement it with dynamometer and dynamograph readings. This should raise both results and reliability.