Science for practice

Some Factors Affecting the Competition Reliability of Elite Weightlifters

M. S. Gisin, S. I. Lelikov, S. V. Stepanova, M. B. Vasilyev; Moscow

English summary of Tyazhelaya Atletika. Ezhegodnik 1983 (Moscow: Fizkultura i Sport, 1983), pp. 40–43: the text is paraphrased, not translated; data tables are given in full with English labels.

The article’s byline in the source prints the second author as “S. I. Tselikov”; the book’s contents page and its editorial board give “S. I. Lelikov”.

Premise

This builds on M. V. Starodubtsev (1979), who related opening weights to training weights, and on V. S. Kopysov, S. I. Lelikov and M. S. Gisin (1981), who related near-maximal training lifts to good attempts at meets. The authors propose predicting reliability only from successful near-maximal snatches and clean & jerks in the final 4 weeks (the "competition month").

Measures

• Competition reliability: the % of the 6 official attempts made. Only 0, 17, 33, 50, 67, 83 or 100% is possible.
• Training reliability: the % of near-maximal classic-lift attempts that succeeded in the competition month. The sample had 12–71 such attempts, of which 12–62 succeeded.
• Degrees (training cut-offs set midway between the competition values):
  • low — 0–2 good attempts at the meet, or ≤ 40% in training;
  • medium — 3–4 good attempts, or 40–75%;
  • high — 5–6 good attempts, or 75–100%.

Study 1: USSR team at the 1981 World and European Championships

Table 1. Training and competition reliability (%) of USSR national team members

** Damaged in the digitised source. The article text gives Zakharevich's competition reliability as 50% (90% is not a possible value with six attempts) and Kravchuk's training reliability as 88%.

• The two degrees matched in 80% of cases:
  • high–high: Osmonaliev, Pervy, Vardanyan, Kravchuk, Klokov;
  • medium–medium: Zakharevich, Sots, Pisarenko.
• Vardanyan won the snatch with his first attempt, 170 kg. His two misses at 178 kg were optional world-record attempts, and he set the record on a fourth attempt.
• Zakharov and Sarkisyan were highly reliable in training but only low and medium at the meet. They had cut about 6 and 4.5 kg. The authors blame both the psychological state and the functional and body-composition changes caused by forced weight cutting.

Study 2: weight cutting and body composition

• Event: "Day of Records", Podolsk training base, 9 March 1980. It was the selection meet for the 1980 Olympic squad, and 5 world records were set there.
• Subjects and timing: 11 lifters, measured before the cut on 5 March and again right after the weigh-in. The source prints the first date as "1981", evidently a misprint.
• Measures:
  • bodyweight;
  • absolute and relative muscle and fat mass;
  • the muscle-to-fat index (MFI).
  The changes were correlated with reliability in the snatch, the clean & jerk and the total.

Table 2. Correlation between changes in body composition and competition reliability

Conclusions

• Fat loss correlated negatively with clean & jerk reliability (r = –0.630 and –0.670). A rising MFI correlated positively with reliability in the total (+0.637). What matters is losing fat rather than weight as such, and moderate fat loss is harmless if muscle is kept.
• The gap between training and competition bodyweight should be no more than 3–4 kg. A bigger cut makes a good muscle-to-fat ratio hard to keep.
• Carrying high training reliability into competition is the key to managing preparation.