This piece covers some thoughts I’ve recently had about the status of weightlifting knowledge in our society as we know it. It probably won’t have wide appeal, but I just feel like putting it out there to perhaps get some people thinking about these concepts.ars
By the way it doesn’t solely apply to weightlifting knowledge, but to any activity that has not been formalized to the point that its body of knowledge has not been archived and/or catalogued.
One of our Societal Biases
As a society we’ve been conditioned to believe that there is an endless march of progress, each step marked by a technological improvement. This causes us to think that anything old is not so great and that anything new is much better. We have a recency bias.
Furthermore….
The marketing tactics employed by the manufacturers of many products have convinced us that not only are new products better, but that the products that they replace are now obsolete. This ups the ante on rejection of anything perceived to be old.
And Along Came the Internet
With today’s technology just about anyone with minimal resources has a platform by which they can reach far more ears than the vast majority in the previous generation. With our past knowledge of weightlifting so inaccessible, every new voice is perceived as some kind of authority and so many of them are absolutely shameless about touting themselves as the latest and greatest fountain of knowledge.
A good example is the As Many Reviews as Possible guy who writes reviews of weightlifting shoes that don’t focus on the functional aspects of the shoes because he knows very little about the biomechanics of lifting. Still he has some following because he’s out there and there’s very little with which to compare him.
A Whiff of Weightlifting Knowledge in America
Because the sport of weightlifting was never formally recognized by any sort of official body with standards of preserving what was known about the sport, there has been very little archiving of the conventional wisdom of the time. In short, space aliens landing in America and wanting to know about our history of producing weightlifters wouldn’t even know where to start, who to ask, or how to find out.
Three publications, Strength & Health, Lifting News and International Olympic Lifter, were the only publications that documented the available wisdom and methodologies, but all three have been out of print for some time. None of their material was ever proper catalogued so even if dusty old copies could be found, accessing specific information would be next to impossible.
The Old Masters
The movement to actually have or be weightlifting coaches didn’t gain any impetus until the 1960’s and the coaches that came out of that generation developed most of the methodologies that produced the best lifters in America from that point forward. Those methodologies are still valid and can still develop weightlifters, but there is apparently little interest in harvesting that knowledge. Since most of the coaches in that generation didn’t publish much, that knowledge may soon disappear. The old coaches, and I count myself among them, are now ramping down or dying. At a certain point you younger coaches and your lifters are on your own.
There are some folks recording interviews with my generation, but more can be done and in a strategic manner.
Here’s a project for someone young enough to be enthusiastic and energetic enough but old enough to know better. Think about it.