On the face of it, it seems ludicrous that anyone in the Olympics is “fat.” But after recently viewing old video footage of Soviet superheavyweight powerlifters, I noticed how many of them appear obese. Their abdomens were huge. (Some NFL linemen also appear fat, not just muscular.)
Obviously, having a lot of heft must help in lifting bone-crushing weights, an observation buttressed by the fact that superheavyweights as a class lift the heaviest weights of any powerlifting class. They also are exceptionally big-boned men.
My questions: are these superheavyweights really obese or are their abdomen muscles themselves huge–or both? Does some degree of obesity (i.e. heft) confer advantage in powerlifting over the hypothetical lifter who is shredded and ripped? As I’ve always thought that strong legs and lightning-fast lifting speed confer the greatest advantages in power lifting, why the massive stomachs and flabby-looking legs?
[I’m not trying to draw a parallel between these Olympians and the portly men at country clubs who slap their protruding bellies and announce, “This is all muscle!”]
IANAE, and I don’t know the answer to your OP, but I thought you might want to know that the term powerlifting as generally used describes something different than the Olympic competition you were watching. Think bench press and deadlift, instead of snatch or clean and jerk. Olympic style lifting requires tremendous speed and agility, as well as power. Those guts are amazing though, huh?
I believe powerlifters are trying to get accepted as a demonstration (I fear that is not the correct word) sport in the upcoming Olympics.
I’d be interested to know the average fat content of Olympian superheavyweight lifters. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s rather low–or at least concentrated in certain body parts.
In most all sports, Body Building being the major exception, atheletes are concerned with performance not asthetics of development. Super-heavyweight Olympic lifters train hard and to make sure that they eat enough to rebuild broken down tissue with no regard to overeating as they are at the top limit of weight anyway. Erring on the side of too much, as it were. This is not the case with the lighter weight classes.
Powerlifters are the same. Lighter weight catagory lifters watch their weight so as to compete in the lightest weight class possible to better insure a win.
The big lifters are fat and as such can (and do) suffer the same coranary problems of the average slob. While It’s true that they have an edge in cardio-vascular and cardio-pulminary fitness, but their veins will clog as any overweight persons will if their colesterol or fat intake is too high. Or if they retain too much ‘belly fat’.
I seem to recall watching the old Soviet lifter Alexei Alexeyev (sp?) on Wide World of Sports as a kid, and the commentators saying that the guy’s life consisted of little more than eating, lifting and sleeping.
That said, I recently read that these Olympic-class lifters have incredible explosive power in their legs and most of them can dunk a basketball, despite being so huge.
Don’t know if this applies to the biggest of the big, however.
The answer to this question is essentially the same one you give to regular people when they ask about how to improve their physiques, particularly when they want to devellop a 6-pack. Short bouts of heavy weightlifting devellops muscle and makes it grow bigger; it burns off very little fat. And since these guys eat a lot more than a regular person and (presumably) have less free time and energy after their intense workouts to go for an hour-long jog than you and I, they end up packing the excess over top of the muscle… in the usual areas that men do. I imagine the chubby weight lifters as large, poorly proportioned body builders (some very develloped muscle groups, others less) dipped in fat; sort of like icecream dipped in chocolate. I’m not sure the excess weight actually helps them all that much - I’m imagining putting on a wet winter coat and seeing if that would help my dead lift.?. I’ve seen one heavyweight lifter who was rather ripped… he had the same physique that the chubby lifters had underneath the padding - his abs were not sticking out like 6 mellons or anything; they looked full but relatively normal. Like has been mentioned, once they no longer need to worry about staying under a certain weight, they can spend the extra time they would have used to trim down on lifting weights even more, and don’t worry about what the ladies might think of their bellies.
Awhile ago there was something in National Geographic why these powerlifters appear fat (I will post a link as soon as I can find one.) What people have been saying about them being unhealthy otherwise, according to the article is untrue, an interview with one of the lifter was accompanied by a picture of him (not a tall man at all) dunking on a regulation 10 foot high basketball hoop. I know I’m not being helpful at all but it had something to do with fast-twitch muscle fibers.
Years ago I read something about this by Fred Hatfield, PhD, an expert in this field. He said there is some advantage to be conferred by being fat, but this only applies to the super-heavyweight class.
The advantage is that individual muscle cells, surrounded by fat, can gain a bit of extra “interstitial leverage,” whereby they can contract against the fat, as opposed to each other.
I think he means that each cell can “push off” the fat, the way your feet push off the floor when you lift something heavy.
Whether he still believes this, I can’t say, but he’d be a guy who’d know.