Weightlifting Explained: 1kg or 2.5kg?

Recently I was reading through some old Denis Reno Weightlifter's News newsletters from the early 2000s. I was actually looking up old competition results for another project I've been working on, but as I flipped through those meet results, I started thinking about one of the biggest rule changes the sport has seen over the past couple decades: the old 2.5kg rule.

For anyone who has joined the sport in the last few years and feels like weightlifting has been slow to make itself more spectator-friendly (you wouldn't be wrong), it helps to remember that the rules have actually changed quite a bit over time in an effort to make the sport easier to understand.

Prior to July 2005—because, yes, weightlifting rules do tend to change in the middle of summer—the smallest increase a lifter could make between attempts was 2.5kg, not 1kg.

If you opened with 135kg, the next weight you could call was 137.5kg. After that, 140kg.

In the snatch, most lifters at almost every level would jump 5kg between their first and second attempts, then either 2.5kg or 5kg on their third. In the clean & jerk, 5kg jumps were the norm, although 7.5kg from the first to second attempt wasn't unusual, and even 10kg jumps happened from time to time.

Looking back, the old 2.5kg rule discouraged much of the gamesmanship we see today. There simply weren't enough weight options to constantly adjust attempts.

Nowadays it's common to see lifters declare an opener, use all of their allotted changes before ever stepping on the platform, and then do the same thing between second and third attempts. At many USA Weightlifting competitions, this has become part of the strategy. Under the old rules, that happened far less often because every change had to move the weight by at least 2.5kg, leaving much less room to maneuver.

As predictable as competitions were under the old system, it also had some significant drawbacks.

The biggest disadvantage affected youth lifters.

A minimum increase of 2.5kg meant personal records came much more slowly. Improving by 1kg every few competitions is a much more realistic progression than having to wait until you're ready for a full 2.5kg jump. It also made competition attempts much more difficult. For an Under-11 lifter, a mandatory 2.5kg increase could represent a huge percentage jump from one attempt to the next. The current 1kg rule allows athletes to make increases that are much more appropriate for their strength level.

The other major advantage of the 1kg rule is that competition results became much easier to understand.

Before 2005, lifters could only increase attempts in 2.5kg increments—unless they were attempting a record.

That's when the "record plates" came out.

These were chrome plates weighing 0.25kg, 0.5kg, and 1kg. Whenever a record attempt was called, the loaders would bring the appropriate record plate to the referees so they could verify the correct plate was being used before it was loaded underneath the collar. Since the plates were so small and the rules required them to be loaded inside the collar, the referees had to physically watch them being placed on the bar. Otherwise, they couldn't reliably tell whether the correct record plate had actually been loaded.

It slowed the competition down, but the bigger issue was how confusing the results became.

Imagine a lifter whose third snatch is listed as 144kg. Under today's rules, that's exactly what counts toward their total.

Before 2005, however, only 142.5kg counted toward the official total. The same applied in the clean & jerk.

So a lifter could officially snatch 144kg, clean & jerk 188kg, and everyone watching would naturally assume they totaled 332kg.

Not so.

Their official total would actually be recorded as 330kg because only the previous 2.5kg increment—142.5kg and 187.5kg—counted toward the total. The extra weight only counted for the individual lift records.

Confused yet?

It gets even better.

Another lifter who actually attempted 142.5kg in the snatch and 187.5kg in the clean & jerk would also finish with an official 330kg total, despite lifting 2kg less over the course of the competition. If those lifters tied, the lighter athlete would win—sometimes by as little as a single gram. The only exception was if they weighed exactly the same, down to the gram, in which case the lifter who reached the total first would be declared the winner.

Compared to that, today's scoring system seems refreshingly straightforward.

Do I still think weightlifting could simplify some of its rules to make the sport more spectator-friendly? Absolutely. I'm looking at you, press-out rule.

But it's also worth recognizing that the sport has made meaningful progress over the years. The move from 2.5kg to 1kg increments made competitions easier to follow, allowed athletes to progress more naturally, and eliminated one of the more confusing aspects of the old scoring system.

Sometimes it's easy to think the sport never changes.

In this case, I'd argue it changed for the better.