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A 15-year-old weightlifting prodigy
- balls187 11y agoCurious why the article's title is "The LeBron James of Weightlifting" when the USA Weightlifting Exec was quoted as saying "The Michael Jordan of Weightlifting?"
- zedder 11y agoIt's like the debate has settled. Lebron James equals Michael Jordan. Practically interchangeable...
- differentView 11y agoThe 50-something coach said Michael Jordan, meaning the best. The writer just updated it to the best basketball player right now, same meaning.
- bostonpete 11y agoI don't think story writers typically write the headline but maybe the online version of WSJ is different from the print version...
- Steko 11y agoLebron also broke onto the scene as a 16 year old -- high school all american as a sophomore, lots of other media attention and coverage (edit: SI cover was a couple months after 17th birthday apparently).
- e40 11y agoThere's a scene, one of my favorites, in The Wire, where a gang member goes into a hardware store to buy a nail gun. He asks an older, white sales dude to give him the skinny on the nail guns on display. The sales guy picks up one and says it's the Cadillac of nail guns. He buys it and goes out to the SUV where his compatriot is waiting, where he tells his co-worker that he got the Lexus of nail guns. Here's the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpvkwBBu6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDpvkwBBu6U
- heyheyhey 11y agoThey aren't the same meaning though. The writer's analogy is much more accurate. MJ is widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time. To say someone is the MJ in a sport is saying that someone is the best in history for that particular sport. This kid doesn't even have a single gold medal. Lebron James, on the other hand, was extremely hyped up as a high schooler. Everyone pretty much said he was going to be the next MJ. The potential for LBJ was limitless; same goes for the weightlifter.
- balls187 11y agoThat is what I suspected was the case, but I'm curious if young people who are familiar with LeBron James but aren't familiar with Michael Jordan. Also one has to point out, this is an article on the WSJ, whose majority of readership would likely know who Michael Jordan was.
- dang 11y agoBoth of those titles are rather baity, so we changed it to language from the subtitle. Happy to change it again if someone suggests something better.
- balls187 11y agoI disagree that the title was click bait. It's a common occurrence in sports to reference athletes against well known popular athletes--especially when it comes to how extraordinarily dominant certain athletes were in their sport. These sorts of comparisons have happened long before "click baiting" was a thing. In this case, I believe the original title should be restored to it's original, even if it is premature. My questioning the title was specific to mentioning Lebron, while the article mentions Michael Jordan instead.
- temuze 11y agoHere's a video of him putting 331 lbs over his head... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v8OexNKrug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v8OexNKrug At the age of 14. Most people can't deadlift that. This kid's a prodigy.
- perfTerm 11y agoI'm sure if you do it safely that's fine, but boy does that look dangerous to me. Awesome feat for anyone, really pretty unbelievable for a 14 year old.
- comrh 11y agoI thought I remember reading that lifting can hurt young, growing bones but I would also imagine this kid's couches and parents are educated on it.
- zzygan 11y agoDefinitely a myth. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/phys-ed-the-benefits-of-weight-training-for-kids/?_r=0 http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/phys-ed-the-benefit... Study Review: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/5/e1199.abstract http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/5/e1199.ab...
- toddkazakov 11y agoI wouldn't be so sure about it. In those references people aren't lifting 300lbs, right?
- vidarh 11y agoThey aren't that well trained either. And most well trained people will never clean and jerk 300+lbs. Even if every single kid who tried a 300lbs+ clean and jerk died from it on the spot, that still wouldn't make enough of a dent to make lifting a high risk sport. The thing worth keeping in mind that people forget when questioning whether kids should lift, is that kids lift, or try to lift large percentages of their body weight to failure all the time during normal play. They have a training capacity and recovery ability that makes me insanely jealous as someone who's turned 40. If lifting the weights they are physically able to is dangerous for them, then so is a lot of their regular playing.
- steve-howard 11y agoThere are a few of reasons that powerlifting (squat/bench/deadlift) is more popular than weightlifting (Snatch/Clean and Jerk). The technique is much harder to learn for the explosive lifts, as the bar and lifter must move very fast for the lift to work at all. Olympic lifts generally require bumper plates (significantly more expensive than iron), though it is possible if painful to lower the weights back to the floor. And there is a much bigger genetic component to your limitations in explosive lifts than in the slower ones; the fraction of your deadlift that you can clean is very difficult to improve. That said, if you can get the technique down (internet coaching or otherwise) it's a wonderful feeling to rack a power clean.
- vidarh 11y agoPower cleans are great, but they also feel massively simpler than clean and jerk. I picked up power cleans on my own, but I don't know if I'd dare try to teach myself clean and jerk without a coach. EDIT: It also really annoyed me to see how they described power lifting vs. oly. As if you don't need core and leg strength and for deadlifts and squats. And for that matter most power lifters will practice additional lifts like overhead press too (or power cleans..)
- x0x0 11y agoYeah, it is very annoying -- perhaps they just talked to an oly lifter? For power lifters, the measure of an athlete is how much he can bench press—something not included in Olympic competitions. That's just flat out not true, and not something anyone familiar with powerlifting would say, except perhaps in a pejorative sense. For those of you who may be unfamiliar, the standard measure of a powerlifter is your total: the combined single rep maximum in three attempts of your squat, bench, and deadlift.
- Thriptic 11y agoYeah unless you're Eric Spoto the bench press contributes by far the least to your total. Powerlifters and olympic lifters also typically have deep respect for each other, as there is a broad intersection between the two sports.
- bcassedy 11y agoMan this is very cool to see. I know part of the reason the US has been traditionally been subpar at Olympic Weightlifting is the lack of emphasis at the youth level. That said, my understanding is American coaches are leagues behind the rest of the world in understanding how to train oly lifters. Hopefully this kid has a good coach.
- phowat 11y agoAnd also the USADA is much stricter in testing for PEDs than the WADA. The countries which dominate weightlifting are pretty heavy into PEDs and american olympic lifters (and from other countries, like Germany) will always be at a disadvantage in international competitions. I'm not saying this is the only reason, and your points are also valid, but this is a pretty big deal too.
- rquantz 11y agoTo paraphrase Mark Rippetoe, when you say these foreign athletes are better because they take PEDs, what you're saying is that they are stronger than American weightlifters. One of the problems with American weightlifting training, as Rip argues, anyway, is an overemphasize on technique, and not enough work on basic strength.
- kevindeasis 11y agoIf this guy would just open source his diet and routine that would be great. I wanna see how hard it is to copy his habits
- wdewind 11y agoOne of the interesting things about high level athletes is that their routines are often terrible and they are succeeding in spite of not because of them. People with even an intermediate understanding of weightlifting and program design can easily point out massive flaws in many top NCAA and professional training routines. The philosophy tends to be when you are working with monsters it's better not to break them than it is to train hard and risk injury (which I think is idiotic and ultimately leads to far more injuries, but who am I to say). So looking at this guy's routine probably wouldn't help you anyway. As for diet, the vast majority of a professional athlete's diet comes down to getting enough protein and carbs, with minor tweaks for individuals around things like meal timing, micronutrient content and fiber content. A great place to start for a 200lbs male is 220g protein/250g carbs/50g fat/30g fiber. Sorry I know that's a disappointing answer, but I can tell you the real answer isn't that much more interesting. Elite level athletes certainly work incredibly hard, but great genes are still a prerequisite.
- onan_barbarian 11y agoPeople with a "intermediate understanding of weightlifting and program design" have a long history of not having the faintest clue what they are talking about. Given how frequently fashions have shifted over the past 20-30 years, the armchair experts can't have all been right about whose routines are "terrible" and contain "massive flaws". Plyos or no plyos? O-lifts? HIT? Bodybuilding? Draw-ins, bracing, stabilization or old fashioned situps? Linear or non-linear periodization? 4-times a day training or "lots of rest"? It's almost like there might be multiple ways of doing this stuff and that a lot of it doesn't matter nearly as much as people think, especially in a population that has to play a ton of their actual sport. A lot of this IMO stems from confusing two populations, to wit: "elite athletes who are already beastly strong and conditioned, and training skills on a near full-time basis" and "the pool of perennial beginners/intermediates who make up the vast majority of sport science study populations, internet fora and personal training $$$".
- juddlyon 11y agoThis is really cool to see an American with such potential. The explosion of Crossfit is exposing a lot of people to Olympic lifting. However, Crossfit's programming can be incredibly dangerous - encouraging Joe Sixpack to do such complex and technical lifts "AMRAP" (As Many Reps as Possible) is a recipe for serious injury. Source: I got rhabdo and was nearly hospitalized.
- Pxtl 11y agoRelated (I'm sure you've already read this): https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-secret-97bcce70356d https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-sec...
- kbenson 11y agoYou're the second person I've heard that exact same scenario about on HN. I wasn't even aware it was a thing before I heard about it in reference to crossfit.
- icelancer 11y agoCrossFit has done more than USAW ever has and ever will do to get barbells in the hands of Americans. Too bad that it comes with serious side effects...
- mathattack 11y agoBarbells = Good. Cult of Work Past Exhaustion = Injuries.
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoThe other horrible part (besides exhaustion) is that I see so many people with horrible form on the first rep when they're totally fresh, nowhere close to exhaustion, and the trainer just screams '1, 2, 3!' etc, as opposed to 'dude holdup, here's what you're doing wrong'. And this isn't just at local small shitty gyms which couldn't find decent trainers and are run by a novice trainer... I mean if you want to laugh and cry and watch a slightly offensive video, check this out: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22p3g0_deadlifts-from-the-washed-up-loser-olympics_fun http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22p3g0_deadlifts-from-the-... If you have no time, just check the single lift that starts at 2:30, and consider that the judges passed it, and that they passed it according to the rules of the crossfit event. I mean that's criminal negligence if you ask me!
- MikaHakkinnen12 11y agoCome on, guys. This is Hackernews. In no way this is related to what this site is about. There're hundreds of site where stuff like this is supposed to be posted and discussed. I wouldn't care if I wouldn't need to read to all those cs and startup unrelated headlines.
- tghw 11y agoThat's why there's a voting system. If enough people think it's interesting, then it makes the front page. Trying to tell people what to vote for is not productive.
- TDL 11y agoFor the record, there is a large number of long time users to this site that are very serious about lifting in general. Furthermore, as it's been repeatedly stated, articles that are submitted to HN are what interest the community and many members of this community are interested in lifting.
- Dramatize 11y agoReally? I didn't know there were many lifters on here. Weightlifting or powerlifting? I've been powerlifting for the last 2 years with the goal to be stronger at 40 years than I was at 30.
- TDL 11y agoEvery time an article that has something to do with diet, exercise, or lifting gets posted we come out of the woodwork. Awesome goal by the way, I wish best of luck with it.
- vidarh 11y agoPowerlifting for 10 here. Just hit 40, and I'm stronger than I've ever been. What scared me into seriously exercising when I hit 30 was that it started being painful for me to walk up a single flight of stairs, and when I went to my doctor she looked at me with utter disdain and handed me a sheet of basic bodyweight exercises and sent me packing... Now my 1RM squat is 192.5kg / 424lbs and my knees never give me trouble any more. I think quite a few of us get into lifting partly because we need something to counteract the damage office jobs and sedentary lifestyles out of work do, and partly because it's something that fits the hacker mindset - weight lifting, whether oly or powerlifting or body building, lets you endlessly tweak programs and diets and measure results fairly precisely.
- Laaw 11y agoArticle is behind paywall. :-/
- IkmoIkmo 11y agoDefinitely not going to be a medal in Rio, that's now less than 1 year away and he's totalling just under 300kg, when the bronze in 2012 took a total of 332kg alone, and everyone who's lifting in the 330 range is about 20 years old. He'll make gains but I think it'll be too early for him at 16 to win a medal. (like his trainer said). In 2016, very possible. He's definitely well on his way. I think the main thing to know is that he's not just a US nationals champ at his age (a country who won 0 WL medals at the olympics in 2012, i.e. not super significant). But rather that at his age, he is the nr 1 ranked in the world by the international weightlifting federation. 20 people lift more than he does, but they're all older by at least 1 full year (and others well into their 30s by now). One can wonder if he has what it takes to increase by 35-40kg in the next 5 years. He added as much over the last 12 months, but of course it gets exponentially more difficult as you go up. On paper it looks like he can do it but 5 years of dedication is a long time, and it's likely that he'll have to jump a weight division as he grows into an adolescent body. We'll have to see!