The Difference Between Weightlifting and Weight Lifting (and Why It Matters)

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

This will be an extremely pedantic post, and one that I am terribly sorry to have to write. I’ve been into weight lifting (two words) for a long time, but about six years ago I got into weightlifting (all one word). It turns out these are two very different things.

Weightlifting, all one word, is the sport that is contested in the Olympics in which people—wearing what look like old-timey swimsuits—pick up barbells loaded with brightly colored weights. In one of the events, the snatch, the bar is lifted from the ground to overhead in one swift movement. In the other, the clean and jerk, the bar is lifted to the shoulders and the lifter pauses to breathe and question their life choices before using another sudden movement to shove it sky high. (You can lift more weight the second way, which is why they are separate events. Each lifter’s best snatch and best clean and jerk are added together to find out who wins.)

Weight lifting, two words, refers to the action of lifting a weight—any weight. If you’ve never heard of this distinction or never thought of it when you said or heard the word “weightlifting,” bear with me here.

Why "weightlifting" refers to the sport of the snatch and clean and jerk

Early weightlifting competitions, in the 1800s, evolved out of circuses and stage shows where a strongman would show off feats of strength to an audience. Sometimes these strongmen would challenge each other, and would bring in judges to verify the weights and ensure a fair competition. Gymnasts around this time trained with dumbbells and barbells as well, and would also set up their own friendly competitions. By the time the first (modern) Olympics rolled around in 1896, there was enough interest in weightlifting as a competitive sport that it was one of the sports contested.

It took decades after that for competitive weightlifting to evolve into the form we can still see in the Olympics. The dumbbell lifts and one-hand lifts were dropped; by 1928 the sport had three barbell lifts, each of them done with both hands. In 1972, one of them (the clean and press) was dropped from competition. This leaves the two-lift sport we know and love today. (We all do love it, right? It's our favorite? Good.)

Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches

$44.37 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg

Shop Now

Shop Now

$44.37 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg

The idea of lifting weights for fun and health didn't become popular until after the competitive sport became established. The name "weightlifting" was already taken, so when some weightlifters decided to challenge each other in other lifts, like the squat and bench press, they had to choose a different name. (Thus was born powerlifting.) Other offshoots chose names, too. The "World's Strongest Man" TV specials led to the sport of strongman, where people (not just men) lift a variety of implements like stones and kegs and log-shaped barbells, and no two competitions are the same.

Probably the most famous strength sport is bodybuilding, where competitors don't actually lift anything in competitions; they just show off the body that they built through lifting weights. Much of gym culture as we know it today was born from the bodybuilding style of training, as bodybuilders and barbell manufacturers collaborated to write and publish magazine articles for the masses. If you think of your strength training in terms of "reps" or "muscle groups," this is why.

You can also, of course, just lift weights. This isn’t weightlifting, because that's the name for the Olympic sport; it’s “lifting weights” or “lifting” or “strength training” or "resistance training." You can, if you must, call it “weight lifting.”

I'm a weightlifter, and I agree that this makes no sense

I hate that I have been forced to become so pedantic about this. Weightlifting is an awful, terrible, no-good, very-bad name for one of many sports in which people lift weights. Powerlifting, by the way, is almost as badly named; it's actually the Olympic lifts that showcase power, and the “power lifts” that showcase strength. So people like me are left protesting that we are weightlifters, not powerlifters or bodybuilders, and the average person curling a dumbbell in the gym has no clue why we care so much about whether or not there is a space between “weight” and “lifting.”

The problem, ultimately, is that nobody ever came up with a better name for the sport they have in the Olympics. Some people will call it “Olympic lifting,” leading to confusion when you tell your friends that you do it but also that you are not going to the Olympics for it.

Crossfitters have found a workaround by casually referring to “oly lifting,” which I support in theory, but weightlifters have not embraced the term. We compete in weightlifting, and clarify what we mean by saying “you know, weightlifting weightlifting,” while miming the motion of a snatch. I’m sorry. This is the best we have for now.

View the full article