powerlifting

“The death of Powerlifting” – a comment on Swede Burns

Marilia Coutinho, Ph.D. shared a post. Published by Marilia Coutinho · 22 hrs ·  The Death of Powerlifting Everything is wrong. I get it. I do. There’s this “coach,” or talking-head on your Instagram, telling you what’s wrong with everyone else, but he doesn’t know a lot, himself. That’s why he’s talking so much. I read the whole text, carefully. Here

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Discipline and Sacrifice

(to Cody) I was talking to a friend, Cody, and we were laughing at the “tough” talk on “sacrifices”. Not to mention the embarrassing “alpha male”, “warrior” and “beast” embarrassingly stupid imagery. I did good both academically and in sports. Nope. Can’t remember any sacrifice. Let’s see what I remember as being an extreme sacrifice:

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The endless cycle of grief: the day powerlifting died

The process of letting go is a slow and painful one, but it brings some relief. As if with each flake you shed, you become a lighter and a more genuine version of yourself. I just now opened the book manuscript I was supposed to hand in in 2012 and never did. It is in

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Crazy dialogue with outsider explains autotelism and sport

‘- Young man, would you care to explain to me why you are lifting those weights – Sure ma’am, no problem: this is an autotelic activity, which means those who engage in it do so motivated by a self-referenced end. In other words, the purpose of lifting is itself. Did that help? – A little

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Hiatus from competition – how long, I don’t know

Today, I took down any mention of competitive powerlifting prowess from Twitter. That is probably just the beginning. Some say it might be relevant to point out that I lift nicely and sort of heavy, for professional reasons. After all, competitive results are seen as a confirmation of a coach’s familiarity with strength training. This

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9/11, the worse and the best and why even bother to lift

I am writing this without a draft. This day has been always the peak of some deep dilemma for me since 2001. As an academic scientist with multiple backgrounds, my role was to observe a phenomenon against the best models for prediction and policy making. As a person, it was the final loss of any

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The fascinating “potential”

and the self-set trap for coaches, professors, advisers When I started having to supervise students, I was just slightly older than most of them. Sometimes younger. It took me less than one year and a half to untangle the mess of ideas that involve what we consider “potential” in a student: erudition (how much organized

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