#BadWeightliftingCoaching (thread)

One of @stevemagness's "Rules of Everything" is "We overemphasise the importance of what we can measure and what we already know".

Similarly, in skills coaching we overemphasise the importance of what we can see.

In Olympic weightlifting, one of the easiest positions to see is the so called “triple extension” that occurs at the end of the pull.

This leads many coaches to spend a great deal of time working on this position.

However, emphasising the triple extended position often leads to a bad result. The athlete spends too long at the end of the pull, when they should already be preparing to catch the bar.

To understand this, consider throwing a baseball. The arm ends up in a follow through position, but this is due to the momentum imparted to the ball (and hand) earlier in the throw.

Weightlifting is a throw of the barbell upwards. If we emphasise the fully extended position then the lift loses its "throw-like" quality.

Alternatively, weightlifting can be characterised as a jump with the barbell. In jumping, peak forces are realised long before the triple extension position is reached:

Again, the triple extended position is caused by the momentum gained earlier in the movement. So in weightlifting, a focus on hitting the triple extended position means the lift loses its "jump-like" quality.

Of course, if someone doesn't hit the triple extended position in weightlifting it may well mean that there is a problem somewhere.

However in very many cases the problem occurs earlier in the lift, and cueing the athlete to triple extend won't solve the problem (and maybe introduces new problems).

For instance, in this video, the athlete doesn't reach full extension because of a lack of skill in the first phase of the lift:

Finally, for those who aren't convinced, for me this is similar to running. We don't coach athletes to fully extend their leg on toe-off...