Topic: THE THORN IN THE SIDE OF USA WEIGHTLIFTING

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Mike,

Of course, I do not support a ban of our sport! But, obviously, this position statement by the Academy of American Pediatricians does support such a ban. My entire program at my school was destroyed because of this article. A selfish swim coach didn't want her kids weight training and she used this article to annihilate me. They demanded I stop teaching the bench press, front squat, back squat, deadlift, snatch, and clean and jerk, not to preadolescents, but high school freshmen- regardless of how little weight was used. I resigned instead. They were willing to let the entire program collapse,  including football which they recognized was getting stronger.

Yes, everyone should read the above recommendations again. It says for adolescents not to compete in weightlifting. This recommendation is not based on ANY science and is in complete contradiction to an enourmous amount of evidence indicating one of the highest levels of safety in all competitive sport. It would be one thing for them to recommend against pre-adolescents which is a pretty new age group being competed and therefore doesn't have a lot of injury statistics yet. But, they are simply ignoring data when they say adolescents should not do this sport. They are not acting as scientists, but politicians.

The question, again, is what do we do about it? Its one thing to let this go over the pre-adolescents and figure its not the end of the world for them to wait a couple years for their first national meet. But, I really think we need some organizational effort to force the Academy of Pediatricians to retract these statements about adolescents weightlifting. This is an irresponsible, unsubstantiated attack on our sport that that is doing considerable damage and should not be allowed to stand.

[Mike Wittmer]

Is there another sport that is as misunderstood as weightlifting?  

Regardless, I don't think I'll be able to get enough funding to do a properly designed study.  I've been working on it for a couple of years. Perhaps powerball would be a solution?

[Jack Dluzen]

HEY I GOT A IDEA, LETS  . GET A DOGE BALL TEAM TOGETER AS IN THE MOVIE , WITH ALL OUR J/O LIFTERS .  PROB THE PEDIATRIC SOCIETY WILL  SUPPORT THAT IDEA WITH FLYING COLORS! :!:

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

The USAW has put out a position statement on this matter. But, this document wouldn't have helped me against the Academy of Pediatricians paper. In fact, I had a much bigger stack of evidence than referenced in this review, and it didn't matter in the slightest.

The document/file is attached to this post, and here is a link: http://www.msbn.tv/usavision/displayPage.aspx?id=936

[Jim Hooper]

Chris, Your outrage is understandable.  This is a classic example of misguided pseudoscience (if it has footnotes, it must be the truth, right?) that cements absurd and unfounded fear of lifting for kids and teenagers.

Consider that, under the rationale and indeed the explicit words of the paper, NO kid should ever be allowed to attempt their first pushup or pullup -- that would be a "maximal lift" undertaken for the very first time with "weight."   Which is verboten, according to them.

What's more, the most egregiously overreaching statement in the paper -- the one you block quoted -- says you cannot lift a max weight, or perform any Oly or powerlifting or "bodybuilding" movement, until you reach "physical and skeletal maturity."  For those who might wonder what that means, what it usually means is that the growth plates have fully ossified.  A paper from the American Academy of Orthopedics submitted to FDA recently stated that "skeletal maturity" is reached by most females at age 14 and most males at age 16.  But medically, the way one determines whether "skeletal maturity" has been reached is to radiograph the wrist bones and grade the ossification of the growth plate -- if you are still growing, you are not "there" yet.   This utterly ridiculous paper would therefore discourage any heavy lifting until, for example, a 6 foot 170 pound sophomore has reached his full height of 6-3 or whatever when he is 18 or older.  What a joke.  And what a disservice to American kids -- who, as all of us who coach them know full well, have much greater problems, potential risks and physical impairment associated with being fat, inactive, underdeveloped, and weak as hell than they will ever sustain from any strain or injury in supervised weight training.

Somebody better tell my daughter, a 12 year old competitive gymnast who maxes out the President's Physical Fitness Test without breathing hard, and my son, a 14 year old who Olympic lifts heavy and wrestles 4-5 days a week to boot, that they are supposed to be physical wrecks by now.    

I imagined that the members of this sub-committee might be highly uninformed -- pediatricians are generalists, with knowledge that tends to be a mile wide and an inch deep, compared to, say cancer specialists, orthopedists, or, in our case, sports medicine specialists.  I googled the authors to see about that.  Several of the committee members appear to have, or claim to have, some specialized expertise in "adolescent sports medicine," whatever that may entail, while others seem to have next to none.  Washington, the chair, is a pediatric cardiologist in my home town, Denver.  Berhnardt is a professor of pediatrics at U. Wisconsin, and ironically enough, worked as a volunteer at the OTC in San Diego (undoubtedly not with adolescents).  Gomez is a "radiation oncologist," i.e., tumor spotter, who probably would not be able to distinguish a squat from a lunge with a head start.  Ditto Drs. Johnson and Martin, a pediatrician and nephrologist (lung specialist), respectively, who appear to have no particular expertise or experience in anything remotely related to lifting.  Dr. Rowland is the author of a book entitled "Children's Exercise Physiology," a reviewer for The Physician and Sports Medicine journal, and has published on VO2 max -- probably an cross-country kind of guy.  Eric Small MD advertises himself as a "nationally recognized expert in pediatric and adolescent sports medicine," and has written book entitled "Kids and Sports -- Everything You and Your Child Need to Know About Sports, Physical Activity, and Good Health -- A Doctor's Guide for Parents."  Don't know his agenda, but you can bet he has one.

For all its stupidity, there appears at least one caveat, in the journal-published version of the article -- in a footnote in the margin -- clarifying that the opinions expressed in it do not constitute a "standard of care" (that's put in there so that they do not inadvertently assist the plaintiff in any lawsuit against any of their colleagues who might be sued and accused of negligently failing to heed their advice), and that deviations from their recommendations might be appropriate in individual cases.  (Maybe that means well supervised lifting programs are okay, or maybe not.)

In any event, there is at least some hint in the remainder of the article that the authors (or a majority of them) saw at least some benefit in strength training for people not yet ready to join the Marine Corps.  One wonders if USAW would have the inclination and wherewithal to attempt to communicate seriously with the authors -- again, the lead author is an hour drive up I-25 from the OTC -- and perhaps try to persuade them to modify and soften the worst language -- again, the sentence you bolded.  

If they were presented in a professional way with the stack of contrary data that favor our side, coupled with some information about the damage their article has done (as in your situation) and can do (by similarly discouraging even superbly-designed strength training programs for high school athletes), they might be persuaded to say something a little less onerous, like "Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, and heavy resistance training should be practiced with caution, taking into consideration the athlete's physical development, and only under the supervision of qualified coaches."  Or something that is similarly justified by the available data, acceptable in terms of their desire to be medically cautious about appearing to endorse potentially injurious activity, and that yet allows high school kids to do power cleans, fer cryin' out loud.

I'd be willing to help -- and could probably get support from the father of one of my 14 year old lifters, who happens, ironically enough, to be the top peer-rated pediatric surgeon in Denver.   This is the kind of thing that USAW should be doing to promote (and protect) the sport, but they probably need extra help to put their argument and presentation forward, I would guess (literature review and analysis, slides, finding experts to advocate for their position, etc.)

I agree that this kind of thing should not be allowed to stand, if we can help it.  This is emblematic of the kind of misunderstanding of the sport that undermines participation in the teen years -- as you experienced --, which of course contributes to the miniscule size of our talent pool.  Then again, when I look at the recent changes to the qualification weights for the School Age Nationals -- huge leaps up that will cut participation in most classes down to a half dozen or so lifters -- I wonder whether encouraging 13-16 year olds to get into and excited about weightlifting is much of a concern at headquarters.  Relative to the article, I would hope they would realize that just publishing their own counter-paper is a waste of time; they have to get the damaging one, which will wrongly be perceived by ignorant school administrators and parents, as the authoritative one, corrected.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Jim,

Good post. I don't think this USAW position paper was written in direct response to the Academy of American Pediatricians paper, however. I think this paper is more an explanation for the IWF and USAW under 13 rule change. I also think the qualifying totals are another matter entirely and don't think reflect any intention to reduce our participants but a necessary step to keep national meets manageable.

I will see if I can talk to some people in the USAW to find out if any effort has been made to deal with the pediatrician position paper and if there is any interest to try if not.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

PS

The Academy of American Pediatricians position paper on strength training for youth reminds me of the Ministry of Science's position statement on Reardon metal (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand).

Psuedoscience indeed. Worse even, they seem to fail to mention published research in contradiction to their own recommendations, and even cite research in contradiction to their findings yet do not discuss these papers or contrary evidence. This appears to be a serious breach of scientific ethics, in my opinion.

[Jim Storch]

...irresponsible, reckless, and/or incompetent coach really could injure kids...

This got me thinking.
What is their position on swimming?
There are those who still think it's ok to teach swimming by throwing the intended "swimmer" in and then letting them sink or swim.
Does this make competitive swimming for preadolescents unsafe?

What is there position on doing push ups and pull ups?
Are they too dangerous to have competitions for preadolescents?
I think we can all agree that the heavier something is the fewer times it can be lifted.  That being said is it ok for someone to do one push up when that's all they are capable of (max attempt), but not ok for them to bench press a given weight for ten reps (NOT a max attempt)?