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Articles of Interest to Those New To Powerlifting, As Well as Sport Veterans.
Powerlifting And The Western World
By Nectar Kirkiris
Traveling to many national and world meets, I have always found it fascinating that powerlifters are so remarkably similar even though we come from so many diverse backgrounds and cultures. In fact, going into a new gym and finding another fellow powerlifter allows you to share instant kinship and a bond, which others may find difficult to understand. This bond is partly based on the fact that you now have someone to give you a spot and help you with your equipment but it also goes much deeper than that. As a result, I have often contemplated, "Who are powerlifters?" To answer this question requires us to look back at the history of strength training in the US.
The beginnings of weight training were primarily based upon the development and display of physical strength and the powerful muscular appearance that accompanied it. The most admired strength athletes were people like George Hackenshimdt, Author Saxon and Herman Goerner, who embodied this ideal . Even moving this timeline forward into the 50's, 60's and 70's, when bodybuilding and powerlifting were still in their infancy, we see that the line between these 2 disciplines was quite fuzzy. In fact the biggest difference between these 2 groups had more to do with the more strict dietary regimen of bodybuilders and less so with training philosophies. This began to change in the late 80's as weight training started to emerge from an underground cult sport and began to gain widespread public acceptance. However, a very interesting thing happened during this period. Rather than being accepted by the public for what it is, weight training instead was transformed into an image that fit well with prevailing attitudes and cultural trends. Gyms and barbell clubs were replaced by fitness centers. Barbells and platforms were removed in favor of machines and aerobics rooms. Personal trainers preached partial movements, squats are bad for the knees, super slow, etc rather than sound fundamental weight training principles that have been proven to work through decades of actual implementation. The very art of weight training was "dumbed" down and destroyed within the fitness industry. The results of this trend on powerlifting is that any existing old-school hardcore gyms are struggling to survive and what few powerlifters that still train in commercial gyms, rather than in their garages, are under the constant scrutiny and ire of the gym staff. But, how and why did this come to be?
To find answers for the present state of strength training in the US and indeed, in the entire western world, it is important to investigate the cultural changes that have occurred in our society. One of the best explanations of the effects of these cultural changes can be found in Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn's 1978 commencement address at Harvard University entitled, " A World Torn Apart" . In it, he goes to great length and detail to describe how the western world has collectively experienced a great decline in courage…in short, we have become a society of wimps. His reasons for stating this are due to the prevailing trend in the west of putting an over reliance on institutions (government, law) rather than the formation of character. If there is one thing that EVERY powerlifter possesses, it is character! Character is what drives us to train when our bodies ache. Character is what makes us accept the fact that to get strong requires lots of hard work and many years of dedicated training. Character is what stops us to help someone at a meet who may be a competitor in our class because we understand that in powerlifting, victory or defeat is determined by the individual's ability to perform on the platform. Character is what has made us all embrace a sport that is mentally and physically brutal and completely unforgiving.
Given this information, we are now able to answer the question, "who are powerlifters?" Hard work, perseverance, discipline, fortitude, patience, and individualism are all the traits of a powerlifter. In effect powerlifting continues to be a bastion for traditional western cultural values. Given that western culture is placing greater and greater emphasis on instant gratification, cynicism, moral relativism, and a lack of individual accountability, is it really any wonder that Powerlifting has been effectively rejected by the general fitness industry? Within USA Powerlifting, more than 5% of our membership is composed of active military personnel. Although this may seem like a small percentage, we must keep in mind that active military personnel make up less than 0.5% of all US citizens. Therefore, a USAPL member is more than 10 times more likely to be in the military than someone in the general public. When we add in the number of members who are former military personnel, we find a very large segment of powerlifters with experiences with military culture. Interestingly enough, many of the traits and characteristics of powerlifting culture are also shared by military culture . Therefore, it is again no surprise to see all the criticism and attempts at social engineering on military culture in the present day western world. For the military, like powerlifting, extols virtues and individual character that western culture has been trying to eliminate for the past 30 years.
Given this divergence between powerlifting culture and western culture, another obvious question to ask is, "Where is powerlifting heading?" Being outside the cultural mainstream is looked upon by some as reason enough to change powerlifting to more conform with prevailing cultural attitudes in order for the sport to gain greater acceptance and popularity. But before doing so, we must ask ourselves, "What is the problem we are trying to fix?" Although the vast majority of the public will never be competitive powerlifters, I truly believe that the vast majority of the public greatly respects the dedication, determination and sacrifice that powerlifters make for the pursuit of their sport. I base this entirely on the fact that even though western culture has recently made an effort to minimize these characteristics, the fact is that they remain fundamental and basic to the human experience and thus remain ingrained within us in spite of outside cultural influences. That is why we cheer for the underdog, we encourage the individual struggling to finish a marathon and we admire the powerlifter who goes to the point of total exhaustion to stand up with their 3rd squat. This has become even more evident after the 9-11 attacks. Suddenly the prevailing attitudes of nihilism, cynicism and moral relativism were exposed for the outright lies and frauds that they are as our TVs were filled with images of policeman and firefighters racing into the doomed WTC to their certain deaths. If the War on Terrorism has proven anything, it is that civilization is a fragile thing that has not created spontaneously but rather was forged through the blood, sacrifice and hard work of many individuals. More importantly, I see visible signs of a fundamental shift back to tradition western cultural values. The 1977 blackout that affected New York City resulted in widespread looting and rioting (estimates of the total damage done were as high as $150 million ) and resulted in thousands of arrests. The 2003 blackout, which was much more severe in magnitude, resulted in about 40 total arrests in NYC and a general sense of calm. How else can this dramatic difference be explained other than through a fundamental shift in New Yorker's attitudes toward a belief in the character of the individual over that of societies institutions? In 1977, New Yorkers didn't go looting as long as the power was on and they thought that there was a strong chance of the police arresting them for doing so. In 2003, New Yorkers didn't go looting even with the power off because they implicitly understood that it was wrong to do so. As much as powerlifting needs public acceptance to grow and develop, western culture needs the cultural influences of powerlifting even more to help it re-establish itself back to its root values, which are the cornerstone of western civilization. Therefore rather than letting our sport ultimately succumb to prevailing cultural attitudes, let it instead remain a pillar for our society to rediscover its cultural roots.
References
1 - To learn more about the history of powerlifting and strength training, please see this excellent website: http://www.americanpowerliftevolution.net/
3 - Solzhenitsyn was a soviet dissident who spent the majority of his life in soviet prisons for speaking out about the horrors of life under communism. Many of his ideas and arguments were adopted by the west in crafting ideology and counter arguments to communism. His speech, " A World Split Apart", which can be viewed here: http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document060603.asp , was very controversial at the time it was given for although it was highly critical of communism, as expected, it was also equally critical of western society.
4 - "Restoration of American Culture Through Military Action", Herbert London, June 23, 03, http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/london20030623.shtml
5- http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/6535187.htm
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