Spotlight on Senior Lifters

Senior Lifters are age 20-39 and are referred to as ALL in the record books.  OPEN is Senior and Masters, but I will be using the term to refer to Senior only.

Senior Lifters (20-39) are often under-represented in All-Round weightlifting.  In scrolling through the records, I came across (204) athletes who have an ALL age class record, but no Junior or Master’s records.  (144) of those athletes have less than six records.  That goes to show you how difficult it is for 20-39 year old athletes to compete successfully in All-Round Weightlifting.

  1. Riley Wenzel – 51
  2. Bill Spayd – 31
  3. Crystal Diggs – 29
  4. Travis Luther – 27
  5. Phil Anderson – 24
  6. Jacqueline, Simonsen – 24
  7. Nicholas Frieders – 23
  8. Jera Kressly – 23
  9. Kerry Clark – 22
  10. Jacqueline Caron – 20

In the last twenty years only (6) senior athletes have won the overall National Championship.  The remainder have come from the Masters class. 

Nationals Senior & Overall Champions

  • 2016 Joe Ciavattone Jr and Casie Morrison
  • 2011 Amber Glasgow. 
  • 2006 Al Myers and Amorkor Ollennnuking
  • 2005 Mike McBride. 

By membership in 2025, Senior Members hailed from

  • Canada – (11)
  • Buffville/Kentucky – (4)
  • Clark’s – (2)
  • Frank’s – (1)
  • Pennsylvania – (1)

The most obvious reason for few Senior lifters in the record book is that they must beat all of the Junior and Masters records to establish an ALL age record.

I have a few other theories as to why Senior lifters are not as prevalent in All-Round weightlifting records and hope there will be some discussion in the forum.  First, 20-39 are the prime strength years and athletes may choose to focus on Olympic Weightlifting or Powerlifting which have multiple federations and larger fields.  Second, Lynch, Age, and Gender adjustments tend to draw more Masters athletes.  Third, athletes are introduced to All-Round primarily through friends and family and in a mostly “old men” organization, new athletes tend to be other old men, wives of old men or children of old men.

A website article considered having a Senior record category rather than only allowing Seniors to set ALL age class records, but I did not see any details in the 2022 Annual General Meeting minutes. There was a good forum discussion as well.

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