Tag Archives: athletics

Olympic Lifting & Beyond: High Performance and “The Hard Deck”

The title here is an unabashed Top Gun Maverick reference. The hard deck is the zone below 10,000-5,000 feet at which a pilot is flying close if not fatally close to the ground. I’m using the hard deck here for some humorous hyperbole, comparing this with pushing oneself in athletic performance past previous limits orContinue reading “Olympic Lifting & Beyond: High Performance and “The Hard Deck””

Essay: What Makes A Champion?

One can examine an athlete’s technical specifications such as path of travel or velocity, and those are important for analysis, yet when considering what makes the champion athletes, their qualities often defy convention. Highly decorated Olympic track star and 36 year old mother Allyson Felix is a perfect example. Lü Xiaojun, 37, just claimed weightliftingContinue reading “Essay: What Makes A Champion?”