Epilogue
Its Up To You Now!
When I began weightlifting, useful information about this fascinatingly complex and rewarding sport was rather difficult to obtain. The only books on weightlifting readily available in English were Bob Hoffman’s fifty page book, Guide to Weight Lifting Competition and Weight Lifting and Weight Training, by George Kirkley, both published in 1963. Each of these books provided a lot of information in a concise fashion, but neither gave the neophyte or more advanced lifter the information required to even begin to reach high levels of weightlifting performance.
Translations of Eastern European literature were generally unavailable at that time (and original works were very difficult to obtain). Sports training techniques used in the Soviet Union were virtually regarded as state secrets, so lectures in technique and training methods were rare occurrences. The fledgling weightlifter could gain access to a steady flow of information on the sport by reading Strength & Health magazine. However, as valuable as Strength & Health was, a reader had to study it for a number of years before gaining any reasonable knowledge of the sport.
Information on weightlifting is more widely available today than it has ever been. Today translations of Eastern European training manuals are available, and coaches from Eastern European countries are coaching and lecturing throughout the world. The coaching courses that were begun by the USAW in the 1980’s and courses provided by organizations that certify strength coaches and other physical instructors can give the beginner substantial useful information regarding weightlifting and weight training.
However, there has never really been one comprehensive source of weightlifting information beyond the beginner’s level. I hope that this book has filled that gap. Whether you are an athlete, or a beginning to intermediate level coach, if you have studied the material in this book and have grasped its essentials, you have learned a great deal more about the principles and practices of weightlifting than most beginners and many advanced athletes and coaches know. But a conceptual understanding is not enough to enable you to become or coach a champion. Now you must apply what you have learned on a conceptual level to real athletes. Only then will you begin the process of understanding and refinement which will ultimately lead to true mastery of the material, to an approach that is uniquely your own and to a training philosophy that is firmly grounded in reality.
This book was written to help everyone who wants to become a weightlifter or a coach of weightlifters, regardless of their level of aspiration. But most of all it is written to those very few of you out there who have the dedication and the greatness of spirit to pursue the most fantastic goal in all of sport: to be the best in the world. Which of you wants to become champion of the world or lift a weight that no man or woman has ever lifted before? Which of you wants to be the next to make weightlifting history by setting the standard that all who follow must strive to improve upon? Human achievement is the grandest spectacle on this earth, and the world record is one of the clearest and most glorious displays of such achievement.
A special message goes to the United States lifters who read this book. This is not because I necessarily favor the lifters of the United States over all others. I admire all weightlifters, from whatever country, as athletes and individuals. But I am an American and very proud to be a citizen of a country that has taught more people about the values and possibilities of freedom than any other country in the history of the world. And while Americans lead the world in many areas, they face a special challenge in the sport of weightlifting.
For years we American athletes were hamstrung by amateur rules that few of our competitors followed. Then there was the period of the great “psych-out”, a period when the minds of many America’s most promising lifters, athletes who were great and destined to be greater, were converted to self-doubting and self-pitying shadows of their potential selves because they believed that the former Eastern bloc countries knew weightlifting “secrets” that they could never learn. Now that the myth of superior science in Eastern Europe has been destroyed and the Westernization of the former Soviet Block countries has led to the disbanding of many of the sports science centers that were doing serious scientific work, that fear should be largely behind us. Instead there is a new psychological threat to United States weightlifting.
The United States has an anti-drug policy that makes us the envy of all athletes around the world who want to compete without drugs. But this has lead to the idea that we cannot win until the rest of the world follows suit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Drugs help performance in certain respects. No reasonable person can deny that. But they hurt performance in many other areas by having negative effects on an athlete’s general health, by requiring only intermittent use (as compared with proper diet and training methods, which can and should be used continually) and by undermining an athlete’s confidence on the day of competition when he or she must perform at his or her best without drugs.
Regardless of the benefits of drawbacks or using drugs, the limits of human achievement in weightlifting have not been reached. No one knows how much more is possible. Drugs are a way of improving performance but there are many others. It is obvious that many people have forgotten that fact.
But I know that there are some of you out there who have not, some who are ready to face the greatest challenge ever taken on by a competitive weightlifter: defeating athletes who are taking drugs without using them yourself. Those of you who believe it is possible are halfway there.
The last American male to set a senior world record in weightlifting was Robert Bednarski in September 1969. I was the last American male to set a junior world record when I made a junior world record in the total on May 16, 1970. The last American woman to set a world weightlifting record was Robyn Bird, who set a world record in the snatch on April 4, 1994. The last American male to win a World Championship was Joe Dube in 1969. The last American woman to win a World Championship was Robin Byrd-Goad in 1994. There has never been an American Junior World Champion (there was no Junior World Championship in my day).
So this is where we stand today. Robin Byrd-Goad is looking forward to winning more World Championships and setting more world records now that she has taken some time off to become a proud mother. But who will take the torch that she proudly carries when her career is over?
I have not talked to Bob Bednarski or Joe Dube about this subject lately, but I think I can speak for them when I say that after more than a quarter of a century, we are getting tired of holding our torches and long for some young American men to take them from us. We want dearly to hand off to a new generation. Who will be the new American world champions and world record holders?
More than sixty years ago the United States found itself in a similar situation with respect to men’s weightlifting. European lifters dominated world weightlifting, and there were no American world record holders or world champions. Then along came an American named Bob Hoffman, who gathered some of America’s most promising young lifters of the time in the small town of York, Pennsylvania. Those who could not come to York he touched through a wonderful magazine called Strength & Health. In York and throughout the nation, he inspired American lifting to heights that it had never seen before.
Among the group of lifters that Bob Hoffman gathered in York was a young man named Tony Terlazzo. Tony was a very talented athlete physically, but his greatest asset was his ability to project human capabilities into the future and to realize that all lifters, including the Europeans he was trying to catch, could lift more than they did and that no one was lifting 100% of his or her potential. Tony boldly resolved to come closer to his full potential than others who had preceded him and thereby become the best. The result, as they say, was history. Tony became an Olympic champion and the first world champion that the US had ever produced, and he established a number of world records in the process. In so doing, he not only brought great glory to himself and the United States, but he also showed the way to a host of young American lifters who went on to make their own records, win their own championships and establish the United States as a real power in world weightlifting.
I hope that this book will provide at least some help to those special few of you who have the greatness of vision to see that you can be the next world champions and world record holders, the best in the world and the best who ever lived. I want to shake your hands on the day that you are victorious. You will be the first of a new breed of American lifters who will lead a new American era. The challenge and the opportunity belong to you. I salute you and wish you great success!
Writing this book has been a learning process for me as I have had to place a structure around the principles and techniques that I have learned to apply almost subconsciously over the years. The writing process has led me to develop new ideas, to integrate existing knowledge and to identify conflicts in my thinking and to resolve those conflicts. In a sense I will never finish this book. I know far more about weightlifting now than when I started and would write it somewhat differently if I had it to do again (and I will do so in future editions). But I will never be able to catch up on paper to where I am day to day. Nevertheless, you have to stop somewhere, at least for a while, and this is where I will stop. For now.
I will close with a message to all of you fledgling athletes out there who desire to become weightlifting champions. This book has been dedicated to those of you who will accept the challenge of becoming the greatest weightlifters in the world. The doomsayers will tell you that you do not have the talent or the resources of your competitors abroad, that the deck is stacked against you on drug testing or that you should not reach for the stars because you might be disappointed. Do not believe any of it. If you want with all your heart to become a champion, let no one stand in your way. Dream of it, plan for it, train for it, live for it and become the champion you can be. Being the best that you can be and the glorious journey towards that achievement will bring rewards that are greater than any you may have ever imagined. Good luck and great success in weightlifting, the most glorious sport ever conceived by the mind of man or woman!
Postscript: In 2000, shortly after this book was originally written in 1998, Oscar Chaplin III won the 77 kg. category at the Junior World Championships. That same year, Tara Nott Cunningham won the first Olympic gold medal in weightlifting that a US lifter had won since 1960, and the first gold medal ever won in weightlifting by a women, at the inaugural women’s weightlifting event in Sydney. In the years since, American lifters have risen to new heights, fueled in part by opportunities to train for the sport afforded by the emergence of thousands of CrossFit gyms (where the Olympic lifts are done by thousands and thousands of athletes nationwide, and part fueled by stricter drug testing worldwide, after the US became one of the world leaders in the area in the 1980s.
In 2024, we had the thrill of seeing Oliva Reeves, lifting at the 2024 Olympic Games, win the first US gold medal in weightlifting since Tara, while Hampton Morris won a bronze medal at the Games and earlier that year became the first male US lifter in more than 50 years to set a men’s senior world record in the sport. Also in 2024, teams from the US won both the men’s and women’s Jr. World Championships, the very first time that had ever been done. With these accomplishments, the US has become a world leader in weightlifting once again. And there is every reason to this the US’s new position will be solidified over time.
But perhaps more importantly, world weightlifting has done much to clean up its act with respect to the doping scandals that lasted for years. The gender gap between men and women has disappeared in many countries (including the US). More nations are competing at the highest levels than every before, with more than 180 member nations of the IWF. Many of the new breed of lifters are using radically different methods of training (Olivia spent less than half the time in the gym than mane of her competitors – though high quality training). And Hampton Morris does most of his training in his garage with his father (who had no background in weightlifting prior to undertaking the training of his son). In the meantime, the many thousands of CrossFits and similar facilities worldwide offer weigthlifters the opportunity to learn and train in the sport. The abilite to view the greatest lifters in the world online that offer opportunities to learn that athletes only a couple of decades ago never had.
Athletes in many countries don’t need to wait for a national weightlifting center of some kind, and can train where they live, at least in then early stages of their careers. Opportunities for those who wish to become strong and skillful have never had been greater opportunity. It’s a glorious time for weightlifting and I hope many will avail themselves of the opportunity to join in on the fun! Toward that end, we at Weightlifting.Org intend to relentlessly publish work that will help you become as accomplished a lifter as you can be, through free or low cost materials like this book. Become a weightlifter today!