Should powerlifting be an Olympic sport?

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This idea's been floated around for a while. It seemed to be taken quite seriously in the 80s, but it seems to not be brought up too much now. Olympic style weightlifting is two lifts nowadays. The clean and jerk and snatch. Both are very technique intensive lifts, and are more displays of athletic speed and power. Powerlifting on the other hand, is the squat, deadlift, and bench press. In a way, powerlifting is misnamed, as Olympic lifts with the same weight used will display more power, but powerlifting measures the ability to generate force.

Before 1972, however, the press was an Olympic lift. You'd have to press the bar overhead without moving your feet or using leg drive. Limited leg drive started to be allowed in the 60s, but then judging became too hard because of that, and so in 1972 the overhead press was taken out of Olympic lifting.

Powerlifting came about in the 1950s as odd lift events. Basically, lifts that were not for Olympic style weightlifting, but were done as part of training or just general strength exercises. It started as a very disorganized sort of underground sport. Some of the lifts contested for example, were curls and continental clean and jerks (where you stop the bar with your belly and bring it up, the way lots of strongman competitors do it) but eventually the squat, bench, and deadlift were settled upon to be the lifts done. Eventually more controversies happened in powerlifting, gear is an example. People started making knee wraps really long so they could squat more weight, then eventually it got to the point where special lifting suits were made so that people could lift more weight. Also, drug use became contested. So different federations developed between gear used, and whether or not drug testing would be done. As of now, one powerlifting federation, the IPF, is the closest to an official powerlifting federation on the world scale. It does not allow drugs, and only allows single ply lifting suits, and has unsuited 100% raw events also.

So I personally think powerlifting would be neat as an Olympic sport, but lots of hurdles would have to be overcome, with the lack of unity in the sport. It'd basically I think replace the press lacking from Olympic lifting now. Some people have suggested adding powerlifting events to Olympic lifting, or bringing the press back, but that'd be either a mess (bringing powerlifting events in) or the ship has sailed (adding the press back) in my opinion. But I think powerlifting as a separate sport would be good. Paralympics already has bench pressing for it's weightlifting event.

What do people think here?

no. powerlifting has become a joke all of the special suits, knee wraps being considered raw, insane arches high squats. I think they should make the deadlift an Olympic lift and only allow a bet an chalk but the squat and bench a are too corroded.
I also dont think the olympic lifts should be oly lifts. they are more about technique than strength. ive actually read that you can be too strong to be a good olympic lifter.

only way will support powerlifting as an olympic sport is if monthly steroid tests are given, it is done 99 percent raw(ONLY a belt and chalk), and i would like a change in the weight classes. i would like the 198 cass to go upto 205and the 220s to bump up to 225.
http://www.seriouspowerlifting.com/4043 ... h-training

Bench press and Dead-lift doesn't look like much compared to the elaborate complex movements of Olympic weightlifting. Part of the reason the clean and jerk is done at the Olympics is because it's "a show" to the spectators watching like where the lifter flips the barbell up then holds it over his head for everybody to see. And then afterwards the lifter throws the bar down and it goes crashing to the floor. It's supposed to be dramatic I guess.

Oh boy, Mark Rippetoe on Olympic lifting... He recommends lowbar squatting for Olympic lifting, which is dumb as all hell. And he has no lifters at even the national level coming out of his gym. So I'm inclined not to listen to him on Olympic lifting.



He equates our success in Olympic lifting in the 1950s and 1960s to our training. Our training was crap. The reason we were successful was because first off, Europe was still rebuilding after WWII. Russia lost most of it's good lifters in WWII. Poland was too poor to even afford barbells, and most of the barbells in Poland at that time were donated by Russia. The other thing is, the press was a measure of absolute strength. Without the press, we lost our one advantage we had. Our strategy lifting was basically have a huge press, huge clean and jerk, and then not care about the snatch. This shows, because in the modern Olympic lifting era, modern women are able to out snatch the men from the press era (eg, Jang Mi Ran.) I mean, I do agree with him somewhat on the main point he's trying to make, that our athletes need to be stronger, but absolute strength isn't stopping us. We got plenty of strong lifters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK7m6I5m6gY Pat Mendez is an example. 800lb ATG squat without any gear at all. But Pat hasn't translated that to a snatch or clean and jerk that's really too great in competition.

But no, you cannot be "too strong" to be an Olympic lifter. That's the point of Rippetoe's article. The only slight study I've heard of saying that was a Russian study that said pressing is bad for jerk strength, as it affects the tonus of the muscle. But then again, there's people like Dimitri Klokov who contradict that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iui94VWFhnA 500lb push press at 105KG. Also, there's plenty of Olympic lifters who switch to powerlifting with good success, but almost zero examples of powerlifters switching to Olympic lifting with good success.

As far as weight classes, it's all arbitrary. Most serious competitors drop weight by cutting water weight. There's 260lb powerlifters that'll cut to 240 before a meet just by cutting water weight, either through diuretics or just sweating it out. So for a pro athlete, the change in classes you described wouldn't affect much. Olympic lifting recently bumped all the weight classes up a tad, ie, 82.5 became 85, but the only reason for that was to erase the old Soviet/Bulgarian/Eastern Bloc records that were all done under steroid influence.

But the Olympic lifts are Olympic lifts because they're technique intensive. They measure strength and athleticism together. What I'm proposing is having powerlifting as an event to measure just strength, as a separate strength measuring sport.

i think cutting weight is dumb..i sit around 205 and would never cut to 198i would just lift in the 220s. I dont want to weigh 220 though so i will be at a disadvantage. I got into lifting to be the strongest i can be,not win comps. Cutting to 198 would seriously sap my strength. That's the type of body i have. I lose 1pound and my lifts go down by 5-10.

olylifting IS very technical which is why hesasain rezzadeh prob cant dl over 600...or bench over 500.

LOL wtf. Rezzadeh puts almost 600 over his head. His clean and jerk is 580lbs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuaESO6c63M That's him doing two sets of two with 300 kilos (660lbs) on the squat, ATG, with only a shirt and shorts on, not even a belt. Supposedly his max is 400 kilos (880lbs.) He said he didn't go any further after that because his legs were strong enough. I'm sure he can deadlift 600. Even the people who have very efficient clean technique still usually have a 100lb gap between their deadlift and clean. So that'd mean he probably can deadlift at least 700lbs, more likely in the 800s or even 900s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Ixa38U9x0
This dude here is a Russian Olympic lifter and he's benching with his feet on the bench 225kg, or 495lbs. He competes in +105KG, so he's technically a super heavy (but he's not fat super fat like Rezazadeh), but unlike powerlifting, Olympic lifting just stops weight classes at 105. Whereas powerlifting will have seperate 240, 260, 280, etc type classes, all the way to 325 I believe. Actually, reading now IPF just streamlined to 105+, then 120+. But they used to have 110, etc. Don't know what's happening locally with various feds.

As far as cutting, the weigh in is for the first day. So you show up dehydrated, then once your weigh in is done, you eat like hell and drink a ton of Gatorade. As I said, most just cut water weight and sometimes glycogen. But the weight classes won't be changed just because you feel like you're a better lifter at 205 then 198. If you don't care about winning competitions, then why even argue for changing the weight classes, then? You have to fit into the weight classes, not the opposite. That's the way it is in all weight classed sports.