Quick report and practical applications

Introduction

Most information available on the subject of average exercise ratios among olympic weightlifters tend to originate from the older Soviet manuals from 1970’s and 1980’s. Somehow these numbers are recirculated, re-touched, and presented by various sources online. Basic limitation of existing statistics is that they are based on Soviet style training (for example they don’t include snatch and clean grip deadlifts), and do not consist of female population (their training differs a little from male counterparts).

I use the word “Soviet” instead of “Russian” to emphasize that their data is about 30 years old (when there was still Soviet Union, and there were no female weightlifters yet), and also to give credit to several non-Russian proud nations that are sort of bundled together by many sources: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

This report is only showing some statistics that I was able to obtain and by no means should be confused with scientific research. I was looking for similar information before, and I don’t think there is anything available to the public. I hope this short report will be beneficial to many of you. Please use this as a general reference, not as a bible.

Method

I based my research on maximum results for 13 female lifters in 10 different exercises. This group of females has some Chinese National, Asian Championship, Youth and Junior Worlds Medalist. I also was able to directly observe training of this highly competitive group for a few weeks in China and had conversations about training with their coaches, and even with some lifters.

Result

LIFT to LIFT, CHINESE RATIO (SOVIET RATIO, if any)

- Snatch to Clean and Jerk, 80% (78%)

- Power Snatch to Snatch, 84% (87%-90%)

- Snatch to Back Squat, 61%

- Snatch to Snatch Deadlift, 71%

- Snatch Deadlift to Front Squat, 96%

- Power Clean to Clean and Jerk, 89% (87-90%)

- Clean and Jerk to Back Squat, 76%

- Back Squat to Clean and Jerk, 131% (126 +/- 6%)

- Clean and Jerk to Front Squat, 86%

- Clean to Clean Deadlift, 81%

- Clean Deadlift to Back squat, 94%

- Clean and Jerk to Jerk Recovery, 85%

- Push Press to Clean and Jerk, 73%

- Front Squat to Back Squat, 89%

Conclusion

1. Professional female weightlifters on this team train 6 days per week. Apply this information to amateur weightlifting as you wish. My personal opinion - ratios are highly applicable to a non-professional lifter.

2. Ratios of Power Snatch to Snatch, Snatch to Clean and Jerk, and most of the ratios are within a few percentage points as compared to old Soviet (male) ratios.

3. Soviet ratios do not report on push press. It is an important upper body exercise for female lifters to track. Women generally have much weaker upper bodies as compared to men.

4. Common sense tells us that average deadlift should be stronger than squat. Typical Chinese Weightlifting style starting position for the snatch and clean deadlifts is lower (hip placement) than in other styles (and powerlifting), therefore these deadlifts are not very impressive as compared to front and back squats. Also, Chinese coaches do not allow these deadlifts to be done with back rounding or to the point of risking an injury.

5. Jerk recovery numbers were all over the place, and don’t have much correlation with other lifts, I suspect some lifters do them more often or with greater effort, and some do them only occasionally.

6. Officials, from the Chinese province I have information from, were proud to announce that they never had any doping violations. Their lifters do get tested in international competitions as well. Compare to Soviet lifters of the 70’s and 80’s, heavy drug use. Still, exercise ratios remain roughly the same.

7. Even differences in technique, dynamic Soviet vs static Chinese Weightlifting start, training methods, etc. did not cause big contrast in percentages.

8. Soviet sources don’t report on snatch and clean deadlifts. Most Chinese and Filipino lifters train these exercises once per week (each). I also noticed Chinese Taipei lifters performing these, however I did not ask about frequency. Typically, Polish weightlifters don’t use these exercises, but some of their coaches program them on case by case basis.

Training suggesions

There is many ways of incorporating them into your training plan and it would have to be probably another newsletter dedicated just to this subject.

In the future, I’ll try to also offer some suggestions and answer to an obvious question: what to do if my own exercise ratios don’t make any sense?

References

1. My own sources from China.

2. Trenierovka Tsiasheloatlieta. R.A. Roman.