Need new shoulder exercises!

[Arioch]

In that article you will note he presents little in the way of factual evidence. For a very good reason. He is wrong. You can find some more anti-weightlifting crap at the HIT website if you want a laugh. The numbers show over and over that OL'ing is extremely safe. This being said, many coaches have no clue how to properly teach the lifts, which is rediculous when they are not that hard to learn (my son picked up the basics in a couple of weeks, and he got his coordination from his mother's side of the family).

I cannot answer the question "is it worth it?" Only you can. I asked myself that question once, and the answer was pretty obvious.

For someone in your situation the OL's are not necessary, but they can provide a viable adjunct to traditional weight training, as well as the fact that some of the OL's are superior to practically every other lift for doing things like strengthening the external rotators, etc. (this is, of course, not including specific rotator work).

Contact one of the coaches at the LWC and talk to them. More than likely they will coach you at first for a pittance if you say you are interested in learning about the quick lifts. I did this frequently when I administered an LWC.

 

[Arioch]

I had another thought (scary, huh) on the reason why people think the Olympic lifts are hard to learn.

For the longest time, Olympic lifting was the standard, and everyone did it, even bodybuilders, like John Grimek. Then the odd lifts started to come into fashion, primarily following WWII but not really increasing until the late 50's, when odd lift meets were more popular. They included (pick three, but usually always the squat and bench, the deadlift, the upright row (1 second hold at top) and the curl. Many people who did not have the patience to learn the quick lifts or the flexibility gravitated to this sort of training. And when powerlifting started in the early 60's, many people were enthralled with it for a couple of reasons, particularly in the US.
1. Improvement could be seen more rapidly in terms of weight moved.
2. It primarily started in the US, so in the early days of international competition, we were easily winning, this was the opposite of what was going on in Olympic lifting, where are performance had started to decline. (By way of reference, the last Men's SHW gold medalist in international competition was in 1969).
3. The Russian were promoting the science behind their training methods, and this intimidated a lot of people, who could not see beyond the "grip it and rip it" school of thought, like Terpak, who was a high profile coach, but a complete idiot.

The Russian method was based on the PASM, or process of attaining sports mastery, which was said to take seven years on average to learn. People quickly fell into the "it takes seven years to learn the Olympic lifts" way of thinking, and incorrectly so. Mastery may take years, but the basics can be learned in relatively little time (a couple of weeks).

Other problems within the US lie in the lack of our success in competition, the lack of qualified coaches, and the lack of dedication that seems to get larger every year.