On 27/03/2001, Martin Jones<[log in to unmask]> writes:
<< The British Amateur weightlifting Association do not allow Children under
the age of 15 to compete in their competions - it may be worth contacting
them >>
***However, one of the greatest lifters of all time, Naim Suleimanov of
Bulgaria (who later became Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey) at a bodymass of 52kg
was outlifting all adults at the age of 15 in world championships. He
recently retired after the Sydney Olympics and was invited to become one of
the honorary Vice Presidents of the International Olympic Weightlifting
Federation for his great contributions to the sport. Always a very small
man, he was not well suited to most other sports, but, from an early age
excelled at lifting heavy weights and all these years later he is not
suffering from all those dreaded problems which young lifters are supposed to
experience.
Maybe British adults simply do not like children to be superior at sport to
adults :) Their whole ban is rather ludicrous, since the British Olympic
movement allows much younger children to compete in the even more physically
demanding and stressful sport of gymnastics. Were they to be consistent and
base their bans on biomechanical and clinical findings, they should ban
youngsters from playing several sports before the age of 15, not only in the
Olympics, but also at school, and that definitely includes rugby, wrestling,
judo, soccer (high incidence of knee and ankle injury), track and field and
gymnastics. Cricket fast bowling and tennis might also be candidates for
banning because of the very large stresses placed upon the spine and
shoulders. Not that I am promoting this idea, but I am simply trying to
emphasize the illogicality and inconsistency of the whole sorry saga.
When are people going to appreciate that one does NOT have to lift heavy
weights to impose large stresses on the human body and that basic physics
shows that large forces (involving small loads but large accelerations) and
large torques (involving small loads, but long lever arms) can be produced
without adding any load whatsoever to the body? Are Newton's Second Law and
the Law of Levers really so little understood by the sporting, teaching and
medical professions? If so, there is something very amiss with our
edunational system in general.
Once upon a time a well-known scientist said that no person could presume to
call himself educated if he did not understand the implications of the Second
Law of Thermodynamics - well, I am going to take that even further and state
that no modern person can afford to call himself/herself educated if he/she
does not understand the implications of Newton's even simpler three laws of
mechanics. Thus did not Zarathustra spake!
Dr Mel C Siff
Denver, USA
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Supertraining/
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