Takano Athletics

A few years ago I read a feature article in the paper about a group of people who had initially joined together to improve their cardiovascular health.  They reduced bodyweight and got involved in aerobic exercising activity.  They realized that a lowered heart rate (beats per minutes or BPM) was a reliable indicator of cardiovascular health as so many great marathoners and triathloners had numbers considerably lower than the standard 72 BPM of average healthy adults.  What went awry was that after awhile they became more focused on the index (BPM) rather than what it represented and resorted to taking Beta Blockers in order to attain an artificially lowered BPM!  This is right up there with the misguided fools that practice taking I.Q. tests thinking that a heightened score will mean that they are more intelligent.

Recreational weightlifting has its own version of this phenomenon with something that has come to be known as the “donkey kick”.  I took a little vacation from weightlifting a few years ago and when I came back and watched a local meet I noticed a considerable group of the competitors were lifting their feet high in the air and prematurely in order to make a resounding slam on the platform upon landing while performing snatches and cleans.    I could tell from their technique and relative inefficiency that they were not being coached by anyone in the mainstream of weightlifting.

Acting in a naive manner I questioned one of the donkey kickers about this maneuver and he responded that they had been coached to do that since the top lifters make a resounding noise with their feet when dropping into the squat.  Apparently the volume of the slamming feet was what determined a good lift to whoever was doing the coaching.  Since then I’ve tried to advise people against this practice, and I figured it was a somewhat provincial phenomenon.

Yesterday I got a communique from Yohei Kaga, a reader in Japan and an acquaintance from the NSCA conference.  According to Yohei the phenomenon has spanned the Pacific and its tentacles have reached into Japan’s weightlifting and strength and conditioning communities.  He is distressed because he is correctly not teaching this to his athletes, but it is creating a considerable controversy.  His asking for my input on this issue is going to trigger a response that has been building since the day I discovered “donkey kicks”.

First of all I have to thank my coach, the late Bob Hise, II for making the following concept clear in my head.  He used to tell me that you can’t lift or support a weight if your feet are not in contact with the floor.  He was an advocate of not moving the feet at all between the pulling stance and the squatting or catching stance.  I eventually realized that most people don’t pull and squat with the same stance width, so therefore the time spent off the ground while moving from one stance width to another needs to be minimized (fast feet).

This time during which the feet are moving from pulling stance to squatting stance is called the unsupported phase by Eastern European literature.  All attempts must be made to minimize this duration because the lifter cannot exert any force on the bar during this time.  The sound of the feet hitting the platform to assume the squatting stance is a result of the feet moving rapidly to the side, and not because they are slammed down.  Furthermore there is no direct correlation between the decibels generated and the proficiency of the lifter.

One lifter who trained in my gym quite frequently was Mehran Eslampour who qualified for Iran’s Olympic teams in 1980 and 1984, though unfortunately for him Iran boycotted both Olympics.  Mehran’s best lifts of 155 kg. (341.8 lbs.) snatch and 200 kg. (440.9 lbs.) at 82.5 kg. (181.8 lbs.) bodyweight prove that he was the real deal.  What always amazed us was that his feet made very little sound when completing the unsupported phase.  He was trained by Iranian and Soviet coaches, among the best in the world, and they found no problems with his foot sounds.

The other point to consider and it is a major one, is that the hips, knees and ankles (the triple extension) do not fully extend if the feet are lifted prematurely from the platform.  This means that the full power of the legs and hips are not being put into the lift.  Donkey kickers are lifting less weight so that they can sound like the feet of real weightlifters.

I know that right now there are some corners that are proposing that the double knee bend is dead and that lifters don’t go up on the balls of their feet while pulling.  I’ve found that there is always someone attempting to achieve guru status by injecting something new and often inconsequential into the mix.  As far as weightlifting technique goes, some of these things sell to the uninitiated without an experienced eye because they are incapable of observing them without resorting to some cinematic analysis.

For right now, there is a double knee-bend, there is a triple extension, weightlifters go up on the balls of their feet, foot sounds are symptoms and not causes, old men talk about the weather, and it does rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

P.S.  Right now I’m planning a 10 week course for those interested in learning how to properly coach the snatch and clean & jerk.  It will contain specific information on exercises and training programming delivered by e-mail and hosted video.  The cost will be quite reasonable.  Please let me know if you have interest in such a course.  Thanks very much.