USAWA

By Eric Todd

The National meeting will be directly prior to the competition on Saturday, the 25th of June at 10:00.  Below are the agenda items for that meeting. They will be at our President, Denny Habecker’s house: 637 N. 11th Ave, Lebanon, PA. All yearly decisions are made at this meeting, so attend if you can and have any input.  As it is an even year, our Executive Board offices are in place until 2023.  Dennis Mitchell has stepped down for chairman of the USAWA technical committee, so we will be voting on that.  Shoot me an email if you want to be considered.

Business Agenda for the 2022 USAWA National Meeting

1. Meeting called to order by USAWA President Denny Habecker
2. Roll Call by USAWA President Denny Habecker
3. Reading of previous meeting minutes by USAWA Secretary Eric Todd
4. Report of financial status by USAWA Treasurer Eric Todd
5. Report from Website Director Eric Todd
6. Report from Awards Director Al Myers
7. Report from Records Director John Strangeway
8. Report from Drug Enforcement Director Chad Ullom
9. Report from Officials Director Joe Garcia
10. Report from Postal Meet Director Denny Habecker
11. Report from IAWA Technical Committee Chairman Dennis Mitchell on upcoming IAWA events and other technical issues that are being discussed by the IAWA Technical Committee
12. Discussion and Vote on Rule Changes for the bench press and it’s variations to allow blocks under the feet
13. Discussion and vote on the addition of a Jefferson lift for each of the individual fingers
14. Discussion and vote on doing the voting for the national electronically to allow for increased participation.
15. Discussion and vote on changing Bylaw 17a to make the postal series be four legs of even weight resulting in a postal championship based off of the score tally of those legs.
16. General discussion in regard to increasing membership and participation in the USAWA
17. Discussion of any other new business as brought forward by membership at the meeting
18. Election for chairman of the USAWA technical committee
19. Bids and vote on Nationals 2023

By Dan Wagman

(This is another installment of proposals that Dan has submitted to the Executive board for consideration to be presented at the national meeting)

Send queries to Wagman2022Agenda@icloud.com 

(e-mail address active until Juli 1, 2022)

7. INCREASING INTEREST IN ALL-ROUND LIFTING

An important recent Forum topic revolved around how to increase interest in all-round lifting. One participant recognized that our sport is “on life support.” This Forum discussion yielded many options the organization could adopt in an effort to create greater interest in our sport and the organization’s membership base. These ideas follow and the membership is encouraged to discuss these points and to establish a method by which to proceed.

In General

• Talk to ex-members and ask them to answer these questions with complete honesty: Why are you no longer a member? Why don’t you compete anymore? What would it take to get you to become a member again?
• In competitions have USAWA lifts that are more main-stream, e.g., chin-ups, pull-ups, rack lifts, bp…
• De-emphasize weird and dangerous lifts.
• Rewrite rules for lifts that don’t conform to the accepted norm, e.g., curls, bench dip, French curl, etc.
• Ask people active on FB, Instagram, etc., to help in advertising the sport and competitions.
• Have some themed meets around PL, WL, Strongman, etc., while adding a few all-round lifts in order to draw in those sport’s competitors.
• Live-stream meets and eventually monetize that allowing for reinvestment in USAWA.
• Hold and livestream virtual meets and eventually monetize that allowing for reinvestment in USAWA.
• Use Postals as an entry-free intro in to all-round and advertise the meets in all online social media.
• Offer certificates for class winners, have awards, t-shirts, etc., for all meets.
• Include rep lifts.
• Link Forum to FB and other social media, vice versa.
• Have greater variety of lifts; certain lifts seem to repeat themselves frequently at Nationals, Postals, Worlds, etc.
• Use social networking more effectively; advertise meets on other FB pages with nice posters like IAWA-UK creates.

Organizational

• Appoint a Director of Development and ask for help in implementation of growth projects.
• Develop talking points and strategy that all can use and implement in recruiting new members.
• Pay a professional to advise on growth strategies, how to most effectively use social media, etc.
• Add Paypal to website and FB for easy and immediate membership via phones.
• Remove membership list from website as the low number of members reflects poorly on USAWA.
• Entry fee for all meets, portion of meet director’s earnings to go to USAWA for reinvestment.
• Eliminate age formulas. Young lifters can’t win, so why would they compete? Who can comprehend why an older lifter who was out-totaled by 100’s of pounds ends up winning competition? Besides, exercise science research demonstrates that age does not impact strength until the mid-60’s. Observed age effects are therefore due to other variables such as injury, poor training practices, etc.
• Place records on website as pulldowns because PDF and Excel too difficult to access via phone; see USAPL (https://usapl.liftingdatabase.com/records), Grip Sport (https://www.gripsport.org/lists.htm).
• Make the Forum more user-friendly; Iron Mind’s Forum (https://www.ironmind-forum.com) could be a template though there are others.
• Develop instructional videos of lifts w/ rules of performance and place on USAWA YouTube Channel.

By Eric Todd

Amorkor in action with the Steinborn Lift at the 2006 USAWA National Championships, in which she won Overall Best Female Lifter.

First point of order, a huge hats off and thanks to our records director, John Strangeway for doing a seemingly thankless job.  Our record list is pretty extensive with so many lifts, so a big kudos for him for taking on this huge undertaking.

So, I took this opportunity to update our century club.  The Century Club is for members who have achieved at least 100 records.  The Women’s Century club remains pretty much the same, with RJ Jackson out in front, and a total of 4 women being represented. The first thing that struck me in the men’s division is that Al Myers quietly slipped into the 6 century club, amassing over 600 records.  This body of work spans around 20 years.  He is creeping up on our president, Denny Habecker, who is the only other lifter in USAWA history to have over 600 records.  We had a number of major movers in the men’s division.  I jumped up 30 records, but not a single spot in the rankings.  Abe Smith jumped up 26 records in the list, and also jumped from number 28 to number 22 in the rankings.  Barry Pensyl increased by 24 records and improved from number 21 to 17 in the rankings.  Bill Clark’s recent return to the USAWA saw him add 20 records to our list and move a spot in our rankings from number 12 to number 11. Stalwart LaVerne Myers jumped up 19 records, and one spot in the rankings.  Young Aiden Habecker added 13 records to our list.

I also dove in to see if we have any lifters in danger of joining the list lift they persevere through a few more competitions. In the women’s division, Armorkor Ollennuking has 98 records, only 2 away from the century club.  A few years ago, she re-emerged to compete at Clark’s.  If she shows up one more time, I will bet she will go over.  Young Phoebe Todd is at 84 records.  If she sticks with it, she may go over by the end of 2022.  Misty Fritz is at 83 records, but she has not been in action since 2008.

The charge in the men’s division is led by 2 Clark’s gym team members.  Dave DeForest and Dave Emslie have both amassed 89 records in our organization.  Not far behind is Dan Wagman with 84 records.  All would be worthy additions once they achieve that 100 record mark.