Women's snatch event at the Olympics – big power, little muscles

Just caught a little bit of the female Oly lifting (snatch) and it's amazing to see these chicks from China and Thailand with so little obvious lean muscle beasting 230+ pounds overhead.

Testament to how much a well-trained CNS can do without you having to build up much mass, I suppose – but weird considering you pretty much have to assume these girls are on the sauce (it's the Olympics), making hypertrophy almost unavoidable.

Hugely impressive lifts, no matter what – at least for this chump.



P.S. I know there's someone reading this who can't wait to pluck that low-hanging "women's snatch" fruit, but come on, man, don't be that guy. Obvious joke is obvious.

 

Ahh you caught me

 

Chyna had a muscle snatch worth mentioning.

 

Huge snatch, if true

 

When it comes to women in weightlifting its the fact they can lockout by having crazy hyperextensions abilities on their elbow joint that they can focus more on speed and technique. Men can do it also and this doesn't require much upper body strength as all the drive is on the hips and legs. Eccentric loading is not very common in weightlifters as well so they dont get a lot of muscle damage or hypertrophy because of it.

 

I've heard this is one of the reasons a lot of powerlifters drop the bar, too. The eccentric is supposedly the major hypertrophy-stimulating portion of any lift, and they don't necessarily want to pack on mass if they're trying to stay in a certain weight class.

 

Yes there is that, however powerlifters know that more muscle lean mass correlates to better totals. In oly weightlifting that is not a guarantee as technique is much more of an important factor. Powerlifters will do more auxiliary work to increase muscle mass, its also why you are starting to see more of them that do bodybuilding as well and both disciplines are closer together then ever over the years as they have come across common ground when it comes to training.

Also understand the nature of powerlifting where they grind out huge weights to maintain form and that takes heavy hit on CNS. In Weightlifting you either get it or dont, you can do more reps for technique reinforcement, you may get some eccentric involvement if you catch a clean or snatch high and rise it down in the hole.

 

Side note, but isn't it weird that the power lifts aren't among the Oly lifts? Pretty much everyone with a gym membership hits bench, and a ton of people do deadlifts and squats, too.

How many people do you see doing the snatch or, even rarer, the clean and jerk, unless they're training them for competition?

Not exactly common tests of strength.

 

You can powerlift in most venues, all you need is a rack, cage, a barbell and a lot of plates. Same can't be said for oly lifters.

 

I haven't had the chance to watch any weightlifting. It's never on when I do have the time to watch TV. I'm assuming China will take most of the lighter weight gold. Also sometimes you just can't go by physical appearance, especially on TV or a photo. I'm sure she's thick, solid and tight...also much more lean than their pasty skins may reveal under their singlet.

Did the U.S. put together a team this time around? If so I wonder if Caleb Williams is still competing and qualified for the Olympics? That guy was a beast during his powerlifting days.

 

The Snatch and Clean and Jerk are very technical lifts. They require a great deal of practice, preferably with a qualified coach, and a good level of flexibility.

Squat, Bench and Deadlift are much easier to learn, and therefor offer faster progression.

 

I had to watch it through live streams. I got to watch the 53kg weight class I think. I'm super impressed with these tiny ladies throwing weight over their head that would kill me if I tried. I didn't see any USA lifting, though.

On a side note, I tried to get interested in the judo competition, but for most of the match it was hand slapping. I saw one good throw and then had to watch something else.

I did like fencing, though.

 

Indeed, but that's the point. The snatch and the clean and jerk are rare, technical lifts. Why are they given the Olympic spotlight while the lifts everyone does are sidelined?

It's like getting rid of the sprint and having an event to see who can scale a climbing wall the fastest instead.

 

The oly lifts are known as the classic lift, so it came first all other lifting modalities are a precursor to helping those lifts like the squat, deadlift, and bench for the clean and press back in the day. Bodybuilding was around at the same time in the late 19th century, and powerlifting was non existent. The nature of the lifts required true athleticism to be displayed and due to it's finesse was heavily favored over strongmen athletes. It has a long history in the olympics, a staple of the original events like wrestling or the track and field events.

 

English is not my native tongue , can you explain this simpler please?
Sounds interesting

A sprint is cooler than bench pressing, many olympic lifters also have the big 3 from powerlifting in their programs, I´m sure they don´t have bad numbers...

 

Girls generally can hyperextend their elbow to great degree, as do men but this is more common among females, this is called elbow lockout. Catching weight with arms locked out makes heavy weight very easy to handle and stabilize, because of this one can support a great deal of weight over their head. Here is a picture of an extreme hyperextension of the elbow from a female.



Eccentric means your muscles are stretching (lengthening) when there is a load(weight) on the muscle for stress response. Think of going down on a squat, or lowering the bench slowly to your chest, if you are doing a pullups you slowly lower yourself down after pulling yourself up away from the bar, the lowering of your body stretches your lats muscle. These eccentric movements are hard on the muscles, it's where the most damage happens, but it's also where the greatest muscle growth occurs.

Look at this girl do a clean from the hang. She barely lowers her body to initiate the pull to fall under, all her rapid movements are dropping weightlessly and rather quickly underneath the bar to catch it. Then she stands up with it, the standup is the "concentric" part of the lift, it is the opposite of "eccentric". She essentially eliminated the need for an eccentric part of the lift by manipulating her body around the bar.


Because of this, she can do more volume with lifts like this, as it's not very hard on her Brain (CNS). It will eventually catch up to her as she increases the weights or does more volume.

 

Olympic Lifting is easier to watch, as there is only the lifter and the bar on the platform. With Bench and Squat you need spotters, which can block the view of the audience. There is also a far greater range of motion, and the lifts are much faster, making Olympic Lifting much more interesting to casual viewers than Powerlifting.

Most Olympic Lifter that I've seen train do not Deadlift. An Olympic Weightlifter will Squat ass to grass, partly because that is the position they will be in when they receive the bar in Snatch and C&J. A Powerlifter by contrast wants to hit parallel and no more, because he is training to Squat the heaviest weight possible, and going below parallel is a waste of energy.

Finally, Bench Pressing is verboten for most competitive Olympic lifters, as it can lead to decreased shoulder mobility. In Olympic Lifting, flexibility is vital; it's impossible to perform the lifts correctly without a good range of mobility, particularly in one's shoulders and back. I've seen a guy who can Squat well over 400 but who couldn't do an Overhead Squat with a broomstick.

That is not to say that a good Olympic Weightlifter could not cross over successfully to Powerlifting. The basic strength is already there. But it's contradictory to train both sports at the same time.

 

It fell out of circus acts/old strongmen who tried to amaze crowds by bringing things overhead. Putting weights overhead were the most popular forms of lifts and were often the challenges to determine who was the strongest man. When it became formalized they dropped a bunch of exercises that were 1) Not popular in a lot of countries, 2) Right/Left versions of lifts, 3) More flexibility than strength based, 4) Endurance based.

If they redid it based on those criteria, the Olympics would be bench press and curls.

 

They mostly do high bar, but no doubt that the numbers are impressive

 

I have that same elbow flexibilityhaha but I´m not good in olympic lifting, maybe I´ll go back to see if it helps me, thank´s for the info, I´ll try to meditate it.

Well I trained in a gym where the teacher follows the cuban school and there is bench press and deadlift in the programation, of course not every day and not as heavy as the powerlifters but the excercises are there, about the squat range seems to me olympic lifters cheat less than powerlifters.
The broomstick guy is an extreme example, not very healthy.

Yeah for sure, anyway I am sure they do a lot of front squat logically.