I wanted to share my thoughts on simple methods to improve U.S. Weightlifting. This is my personal opinion, and I do not make any claims in the following few pages as to having a secret workout or possessing knowledge unknown to others. What I’d like to present are what I see as inefficiencies in the organization that can easily be ironed out and improved on with some effort. I am not one who believes we will suddenly produce world champions if we follow a secret training program or learn a technique with a fancy name. Instead, I see the problem as being one of low expectations and a misguided focus on things that do not matter.

Stop Sending Full Teams When Full Teams Are Not Necessary

If you cannot place in the top 10 at an international competition, then you should not go. Becoming a member of a world or Pan-American team is something that should be difficult. I believe that if the standards for qualification for these teams were higher, the lifters would lose their vacation attitude and become more serious about the competitions. If you are going to a competition and you know at best you will place 15th, how can you be expected to take the competition seriously? It becomes much easier to be distracted with sightseeing and shopping trips. However, if you know that you have a chance to medal or perhaps win, nothing should be able to distract you from the task at hand. Below are two examples from this past year of money wasted on poor performances.

2011 Youth Worlds

The 2011 Youth World Championships saw USA Weightlifting send both a full men's and women's team to Lima, Peru. While not all the athletes were funded, only the funded athletes should have been permitted to attend and realistically only three of the five funded lifters should have gone. The 56kg lifter placed 4th, the 62kg lifter placed 6th, and one 94kg lifter placed 2nd. The other 94kg lifter placed 11th and one lifter who qualified and was funded at 62kg had to bump to 69kg where he placed 15th.

The qualifying procedures for this event were almost comical. They were created not with sending only high placing lifters, but with qualifying enough lifters who could pay their way to the championship. As an example, one self-funded female lifter placed dead last. But she qualified, right? So she earned the right to go. Not so fast. The following month at the USA Weightlifting School Age Nationals (now the Youth Nationals) the same lifter placed fourth. Fourth? She was considered good enough by the powers-that-be to represent her country, as long as she could pay for it, but she was not good enough to win the Youth Nationals? The qualifying procedures were a joke. It was decided that the American Open (a senior level event) and the Junior Nationals would be used to pick the team for the Youth Worlds. Why not include the Youth Nationals? It was related that the reason was for not using the Youth Nationals as a qualifier was that it was too far out from the Youth Worlds. Kids may be in a different weight class having qualified at a lower weight. The same thing happened this year as a lifter qualified at 62kg just a few months before the Youth Worlds and had to lift 69kg there. Isn't this what they were trying to avoid?

2011 Junior Worlds

At the 2011 Junior World Championships USA Weightlifting sent two full teams (8 men and 7 women) to Penang, Malaysia along with the customary "team" of coaches (5 official members). The total cost to send the team and delegation to this competition totaled $82,515.65 (USA Weightlifting, 2011).

However, realistically only two male lifters and one female lifter should have gone to the championship. Team USA only had two top 10 finishers, a seventh place in the 85kg category and a seventh place in the 94kg category and realistically the one female lifter, who bombed out, was in a position (based on her previous best total) for a possible top 5 finish. The rest of the lifters should have stayed home. The women placed dead last or near last and had two bomb-outs. The total expense to send three lifters, one coach, and one doctor would have been approximately $16,000 (according to the figures in High Performance).

Would it not have looked better had the U.S. sent only three lifters and those lifters placed well? This was the strategy used by Armenia. Despite having many talented lifters, only Gor Minasyan was sent to the Junior Worlds, where he won the gold medal in the snatch and placed fourth overall. Unfortunately, sending a team of less than qualified lifters to the championship waters down the success of the lifters who managed to do well. Rather than reporting on two seventh place finishes, USA Weightlifting had to report two seventh place finishes and 13 bottom-of-the-barrel placers and/or bomb outs.

With all of the money spent on poor placing at the Junior and Youth World Championships, USA Weightlifting could fund the travel to every championship with qualified lifters for the year and most likely have a surplus. In 1998 the standards to attend the World Championships were so high that only 18 year-old Oscar Chaplin III qualified. He deserved to go and he lifted well, placing 13th overall. What good is it to send lifters to place 35th? This year will be particularly rough as it is the last qualifier for the Olympics. Besides our super heavyweight and 85kg lifters, it will be tough for anyone to see the top 20. I understand that we have to send a full team but in 2009, not one lifter should have gone and in 2010 only the 85kg lifter should have gone despite bombing out. If you cannot place in the top 10, you should watch the championship from the couch or better yet, from the gym, because you are training.

Our standards have sunk so low that we actually celebrate poor performances. Even when our team places in the top 10 at world championships, it usually has more to do with our ability to outspend other teams rather than our superiority on the platform. We may have one or two top ten finishers while the rest place near the bottom, but because we sent a full team, our team placing is higher than countries whose lifters all win medal but only three or four lifers were sent.

It is amazing to me how much members of USA Weightlifting complain that there is a lack of funding in our sport. As some politicians say regarding the U.S. deficit - we don't have a funding problem, we have a spending problem. USA Weightlifting wastes money every year sending lifters to competitions when they have no chance of medaling unless twenty other lifters bomb out. Save the excess funds and only spend money on those with a top-10 worthy total. You can tell by a lifter’s recent best total if they can place well or not. It is the same process used by countries around the world.

Coaches Need to Work with the Appropriate Age Groups

In Milo, Paul Doherty wrote an article about his program at Sacramento High School. In the article, he states, "Too often gym rats paint themselves into a corner by starting gyms or working at health clubs that attract no one in the right age group to win the Olympics. We have to be in schools and start programs on campuses to really develop athletes at the ripe early age of 10 to 14 years" (Doherty, 2009). While some coaches have done well for themselves starting with lifters in the 18+ age group, there is only one current world champion that I can think of who began training that late in life. Lu Xiaojun (77kg, CHN) started training when he was 18 but had been a track and field athlete before that, so it can be assumed he had familiarity with the lifts before becoming a professional. It is the duty of every coach in weightlifting to go out and find lifters age 10-14 to begin training. Start by going to a local middle school or high school and ask to start a weightlifting program. If they tell you no, go to the next one and the next one and the next one. Knock on every door until someone lets you in. Do whatever it takes to find lifters and work hard and enthusiastically with them to make them better.

The problem with recruiting weightlifters in this country is that we are literally trying to sell weightlifting. I do not mean sell as in the exposure sense but rather that we are literally attaching a price tag for omission. Those who cannot afford the training can do something else. Sadly, most do.

The problem with pay-to-train is that only those with the means can afford the training. This creates a two-fold problem. First, those who are paying for training are mostly paying to be trained for another sport. While they may eventually lift in a few contests and maybe even win a national title, they are participating in weightlifting only as a recreational event and once their high school careers are over so is weightlifting. The second problem with pay-to-train is that it attracts the wrong type of person to weightlifting. Again, only those who can afford the training can train with this model and those kids are at least middle class. Middle class kids have other (i.e. “better,” in their minds) things to do with their time. They are willing to put in 1-2 hours for training, but they are not equipped to handle the intense, intense, intense training it takes to become a world champion. They have too many distractions in their lives. They are training for the fame and fortune of mainstream sports with which weightlifting cannot offer the same rewards. Here is an example: the greatest benefit weightlifting can currently offer is a chance to travel the world. The only problem is that kids of privilege do not need weightlifting to see the world. Their families have money, and traveling outside the country is not a big deal. However, to the poor kid who has never left the state and potentially the city, the opportunity to travel to another country is a big incentive to train, as they may never get that opportunity again.

Start a Weightlifting Season

If you get into a school, propose a weightlifting season, preferably in the spring to avoid issues with football and wrestling. Write up a schedule with 6-8 contests, send it home to the parents, and make sure the kids know they are expected to lift in these contests. In Sandusky, we have conducted a weightlifting season for the past four years and it has accomplished several things. First, it showed the kids that weightlifting could be a "real" sport just like football and wrestling. We had practice/training during the week and every other weekend there was a contest. Sometimes we could bring in lifters from out of town and sometimes it would just be us. It did not matter. There was a competition platform, warm-up room and audience (even if it was just friends and family).

Second, weightlifting season allowed the parents to see what their kids were accomplishing at regular intervals. Weightlifting can be a tough sport for parents because contests are usually few and far between, so they never have the opportunity to watch their children compete. Having a weightlifting season with multiple contests allows that parents to watch their kids compete, cheer them on and accept that weightlifting can be a "real" sport.

The rationale behind weightlifting season was this: if kids can be expected to play ten football games in ten weeks and wrestle 60 matches in four months, than there is no reason why they cannot lift in multiple contests in a relatively short period of time and perform at a high level at each contest. We have to start treating weightlifting like a real sport, and maybe the greater community will begin to as well.

Stop Looking for the Secret

U.S. weightlifting lacks serious ingenuity and a sense of what it really takes to become a world champion. Some of our coaches are secret hunters, looking for the right workout from the right country like Indiana Jones searching for the Ark of the Covenant. Others recruit plenty of lifters and by osmosis produce top-level (well, U.S. level anyway) lifters. After the lifters reach a certain level, they are passed off to another coach who supposedly knows more and can get that lifter to the next level. However, as anyway who has been paying attention can tell, that next level is somewhere between stagnation and retirement: very few go on to bigger and better things.

So what is the problem? Coaches need to stop worrying about things such as exercise selection, percentages, and tonnage. Train the lifters hard, teach them how to work, and the rest is incidental. Anyone who read my interview with Norik Vardanian in the September 2011 issue of Performance Menu should know that there is no secret workout in Armenia, only a core of highly dedicated, extremely hardworking individuals who want nothing more than to be the best in the world. Some may look at the workouts or exercise selection and scoff, saying they should be doing more of this or less of that. Frankly, none of that really matters. The gist of it is this - teach the lifters how to train hard and try not to get in their way if they want to stray from the program for a day because it violates your "workout."

I believe the U.S. can be competitive in weightlifting but it will take a 180-degree change of mind from administrators and coaches. We need to breed a competitive fire in our lifters. Do not waste time looking at the American records or the winning total at the Nationals. Instead focus on World results and aim only for those. It may seem like a great challenge, but why climb the bunny hill when Everest awaits?

Works Cited

Doherty, P. (2009). Building a High School Weightlifting Program: Success at Sac High. Milo: A Journal for Serious Strength Athletes , 78-87.

USA Weightlifting. (2011, July). Commentary from USAW's National Office. High Performance , p. 4.