Why do women and men not play against each-other in sports like tennis and soccer?

It's worth nothing that the Matildas, the Australian women's soccer team, were defeated 6-0 by the Australian men's under 16 team. The American women's team had a similar experience. Now, were the 15yo boysmore practiced in their soccer skillsthan women who'd been playing 5-10 years longer than them? Or was it that a 15yo boy tends to be bigger and stronger than an adult woman who doesn't lift?

If strength isn't a major factor, why does WADA test for anabolics in tennis, soccer and so on?

Being bigger and stronger helps. The question is always, how do you balance that with all the other things that help - a person has only so much time to train and practice, and the body can only recover from so much. Being stronger helps, being fitter helps, being more skilled helps, but you can't lift heavy AND run for miles AND practice the sports skills, all at full intensity every week. Now, wouldn't it be good if there were some way to get stronger without having to smash yourself as hard in the weightroom, hmmm...

Strength barely matters in soccer, look at Neymar, Kane, Cannavaro, Cole etc
some of those guys weigh as much as women and played in defense


Its more reasonable to believe they test because of the whole hysteria of 'cheating' which would cripple the image of the sport.

If you've ever seen your average girl try and play soccervs your average guy with no experience its painfully obvious which gender is inherently better. That has little to do with strength.

Tennis on the other hand is more strength focused so that makes sense.

I'm sure though that aside from your time under the bar, you spend a lot of time thinking about lifting, looking at vids of your lifts and so on. And looking back through old journals, "my bench is stuck, what was I doing when I made the best progress on it?" That's what they call "deliberate practice", you're practicing and deliberating on it - "how can I do this better?"

I'd expect that really you spend a bit more time on squatting than people might think. All the good ones do. You didn't get to 780lbs just by walking in, squatting some random amount, then fcking off and forgetting about it until the next workout. Guys like you devote a LOT of hours to this, not just the time under the bar.

Yes, powerlifting has a smaller skill component than something like soccer. But it still takes up a lot more time than people imagine - if you're good. I'm not presuming to tell you this, ffg, I'm just laying it out for the rest who aren't into it and don't know why the crowd cheers grindy lifts.

Because anyone can squat 1,000 lbs....

First of all to be a world class powerlifter you need to be freakish in all 3 lifts... a big squat and average deadlift will get you no where


Take a pool of 10,000 people

How many of them are going to squat 5x5 3x a week for 10 years?

zero

Oh I would absolutely agree with that. It's definitely not as simple as just squatting 3 times a week for "practice" and if you have great genetics you become a world class lifter in 10 years. I would say the majority of getting to that level is what's done outside of the gym after your workouts. Obviously perfecting your technique is huge, but it's a lot of programming, nutrition, breaking down weaknesses, assessing what you're doing wrong during the lift, peaking etc... The more dedicated you are the greater potential you have. I'd say that goes across all sports too.

There's a right way and a wrong way to excel at different sports. Countless hours under the bar isn't the way to do that for powerlifting. But yes KA, I'm sure I've spent some more time in a squat rack than your average gym bro

Oh fck yes. Biggest squatter I've had was this guy Big M. He'd lifted for a couple of years before he came to me, biggest squat 365lbs, in 18 months we got him to 505lbs. After that he kind of burned out - 3-4 years of steady lifting with never more than two weeks breaks can do that to you. Plus, his biggest total was 615kg, to qualify for Nationals he needed 720kg - and that'd have him placefifteenth, the winner was doing something like 940kg. The steady grind of training, plus realising just what he'd have to do even to qualify for Nationals and come fifteenth - well, you can guess.

And Big M was unusually dedicated; after all, he got to 365 on his own with zero coaching, most will never do that. In my gym people pay for three month terms, just looking at the first three years (to July this year), 33% of the men and 55% of the women lasted more than one term. So2/3 of guys and about 4/9 of womenbail within 3 months. That is, they don't even make it all the way through a novice linear progression.

Jim Wendler said something like -

Most people will do 1 or 2 competitions and never be seen again. If you have a crew today and if in two years you have 1-2 people the same, you're doing really well. And those who've been working steadily for 10+ years... they're a rare, rare breed who really need to share what they know with the rest of us. Thus Wendler's motto: live, learn, pass on.

Now, I am not that up there among that rare breed, but even I know: OP is a troll loser who doesn't lift.

So do you run a gym, or train people at a gym, or both?

At what point in the next couple years should I be abandoning my commercial gym for an actual gym with coaches etc? Or is that something I should be doing sooner rather than later?

I'm from 2013, what is this cope and why does it apply to lifting?

Sorry, most of my posts are in the PT subforum and people know my history, I forget outside it.

I worked for 4.5yr at big commercial gyms. And for 3 years now I've run a double garage gym (see sig), too small really to even be called a "small business". I'm the only trainer there since we have 20-24 regular members, and about half as many again visiting members (people who live interstate or the like, who come occasionally and send vids regularly). In my view, we call you a "trainer" if you work mostly on getting people up to around 50% of the world record for whatever they're doing; past 50% most people will have to specialise and focus all their work on that one thing (eg lift only as much as will support your 1,500m time, etc), and the person who can guide that we call a "coach."

For example, if you lifted in the 120kg class, well the drug-tested open raw world record for squat is 386kg []http://goodlift.info/records.php?fd=0&ac=0&sx=M&eq=1]. 75% of that is 290 - you don't need to squat 290kg for your health. But around 193kg/425lb... you'll never be the same again. Get there, never lift again, and you'll still be the biggest strongest guy most people know for the next decade or two, and you'll certainly never need a walking frame. And you can squat 425lb and still do other things in life, like run and rock climb, be relatively lean, play lunchtime soccer and so on. Much past that and really you have to dedicate yourself to lifting.

Does that make sense? As you go along further, your programming and nutrition and so on have to be more on-point, and you start being more likely to need specialist knowledge.

I'm a trainer by profession and a powerlifting coach as a hobby. That is, most of my work is giving people strength for everyday life and sports. Past 6-12 months most people need something to drive them to keep pushing, and there is where the PL competitions come in. Those who don't compete mostly spin their wheels around the numbers they got after 6 months - they're always taking breaks, deloading and so on. Those who compete even once or twice a year keep improving.

Yes, some people in my gym are spinning their wheels. Any trainer or coach can put up their best client as an example. But anyone can have a freak walk in some day. The real test is what the failures look like - a good trainer/coach's failures will be better than an ordinary one's successes.Sooner.

To my mind, coaching is like drugs in that it'll take you a bit further than you could have got by yourself, but it also gets you there quicker. I don't recommend drugs but I do recommend coaching - if you want to go further, and get there quicker.

A good part of it is not the actual coaching but the environment. In 4.5yr at the YMCA I never had any males bench 2 plates (100kg/225lb), except a few who started with like 95kg. In 6 months in my dusty garage 5 did it, including the guy recovering from lymphatic cancer. Was I suddenly a better trainer? I'd love to think so, but no: it was the environment. There's only so strong you can get squatting next to someone on a bosu ball. When you walk into a place and see a 69yo woman pulling 235lbs for her work sets, that tends to fie you up a bit.

Real powerlifting gyms will have much, much bigger numbers than ours. But even ours are remarkable in a mainstream gym. I'm just giving perspective.

Hmm. I had never heard the differentiation between a coach and a trainer like that. Interesting. I guess I will look into a local non-chain gym and see what my options are. I've really only been focusing on losing weight right now but a change of environment, healthy competition, and actual coaching outside of me reading the stickies and watching YouTube will be helpful. Thanks for your perspective

LOL this is misc. It's where people go to chitpost and vent.

Yes it 100% does. MMA is a good example.
Better recovery rate. More time for training. More time to sharpen tools. More Cardio. More longevity.
Since USADA has kicked in tons of fighters caught. Tons of fighters that are never the same.

It's rarely put like that, but that is the truth of it. Lots of trainers present themselves as coaches. Every would-be trainer at PT schools says they want to work with professional athletes. "Yeah, I'll just work with people who are young, resilient, motivated and talented." In other words: "no challenge, please."

Now try working with people who old, fragile, poorly-motivated and untalented, and we'll see what kind of trainer you are!

But to my mind, it's like this: if you're not an "athlete" until you compete, then you're not a "coach" until one of your athletes competes. And then we start judging if you're a good or bad coach... we all hope to get better in time.It sounds like you've done well on your own so far. In my experience, the ones who go furthest with coaching are the ones who go fairly well on their own, too.

Like my guy Big M: he'd already sorted out the motivation and the basics, I just had to tune things up a bit. I'd like to think he went further with us than he would have on his own, but in truth... he was going to be fine. Whereas plenty of others I train say, "there's no way I could have done this on my own, even in ten years." You're probably more like Big M.

Strength matters in most sports, sure some have more skill to overcome it but look at football and basketball. Mostly everyone becomes bigger and stronger and I can say with a straight face even someone like Lebron was on something serious his first 2 years in Miami when He randomly became even bigger. In football just lol most are

Powerlifting is not cope because people do it as a hobby, there is basically no money in it. It's like saying people enjoying their type playing ball or Video games are coping. No one powerlifts to try and pick up women either lmao

i always found powerlifting as cope because relatively speaking humans are just weak af compared to other animals. Lol @ being able to squat 1000lbs but get ragdolled by a small gorilla the same size as you

Need to stop thinking negative brah.
Bodybuilding has just as much cope if you think like that.

let people do whatever they enjoy.

If you consider being a brute manly. Otherwise, just balancing strength with athleticism would be the true best alpha.

Appreciate the thoughtful responses/comments/advice. You should come out of the PT section more often, lol.

We're powerlifters and like to think we look pretty aesthetic. Strong and look good > just looking good.

Plus nobody looks terrrible with a 315 bench unless their obese.

Had no idea this thread reached 5 pages

Holy **** balls is this realt?

Wow. Strong neglect in 70% of posts. Like what is your problem misc?
You dont hear powerlifters running around claiming their sport is the goat and that you suck unless you can bench 3 plates, but somehow average lifters who do it purely for the looks and have mediocre results (at best) feel that it is their duty to pick on people who think/train differently.
Im a competitive powerlifter and I chose it for the following reasons-
-dont want to pin since I am concerned about the wellbeing of my children (although not 100% proven there is a correlation between needles and next generation health probs)
-Dont really care that much about looking good. Prefer looking good/feeling good/being strong.
-The rush of dopamine after a DL Pr for example, far outweighs the feeling of looking at gym results in the mirror.
-its basically the only "competition" type sport in the gym besides crossfit which I dont like while its heavy on the joints
-its a gym sport where you dont act self centered and basically 'mind your own business'
Fits me perfectly

Love what you do, let others do what they love doing and if you dont agree - leave them be /thread/life

Peace out boyos

The only bag of goodies I bring around with me:


I'd share but it seems like you're watching your figure. (seriously though, best fast carbs)

Pure cope

And calling it a sport is laughable

But let's be real calling bodybuilding a sport is also fcking laughable

OP is right. Powerlifting is cope. I know this because I’m not very good at it, which can only mean it’s not worth anybody’s time, let alone mine.

Not srs, competing against people in physical endeavours is never cope.

Brb, you’ll never have to run 10, 000 meters in real life so Mo Farah is coping with not being jacked.