Topic: THE THORN IN THE SIDE OF USA WEIGHTLIFTING

[Scott Safe]

Their position paper on football, gymnastics, etc must be the same.  If the school district is going to follow this logic, then they should ban any sport with a similar position paper.  You know it won't happen for football.  If they won't ban football, then they shouldn't be able to ban weightlifting.  My guess is the safe way to go with these position papers is not to recommend much of anything, that way they are not liable in any way when an athlete is injured.  I think the school board has to have some courage.

[Todd Wilson]

In regards to the position statement I would contend the following:

1) Physicians are not based ont heir degree experts on physical conditioning or injury prevention! Our general public and media however assume they are omnipotent with regards to anything involving the human body.

2) As Dr. Mel Siff and others have pointed out, no force generated in any weight room lift, or even the competitive sports of Weightlifting or Powerlifting are the forces as high as those the average youngster expierience on the playground or even in an actual sport day in and day out.

3) I would like to see the rational behind recommending aerobic conditioning being emphasized first. A) To my knowledge, there is no data that indicates that it has a more positive effect on general health that various forms of anaerobic conditioning. B) It can be just as dangerous. I have seen quite a few cases in which elementary aged students suffering from shin splits, stress fractures and IT band syndrome because they have beenr required to run 1-2 miles for P.E. class! Those conditions can be eaisly prevented via proper weight training.

4) I know of no evidence for a "cool-down" after weight training sessions. It has been found to be beneficial after aerobic work, but they are simply assuming it is beneficial for weight trainers. I have never found a benefit in it.

5) Glad you posted the link about the incidence of injury in weighlifting compared to other sports Chris, too many of these self appointed experts on exercise are ignorant of such information, nor have they made a concerded effort to seek it out. They are offering their opinions as fact, based solely on their perceived authority as a result of their credentials. I mean how many soccer kids get severely injured each year? Baseball, football, basketball? Even in their statement they say that if properly administered, weight training can be safe. Of course, they then turn around and contradict themselves, but......I suppose an "expert" can do that.

[Todd Wilson]

Paul, I'm glad you brought up the issue of kids playing in lots of sports. It has been and still is prevalent for parents, administrators and even some coaches, to push kids to play everything. The benefits are supposedly to give them equal oppurtunity to pick what they want to do, achieve more complete physical developement, etc.

Anyone can feel free to disagree with me, but I feel this is nonsense! If the kid wants to, fine, the kid should not be forced to stick with just one, or many sports.

However, I've coached on the highschool level at a small school in which kids play everything and are encouraged to do so. Especially the better athletes! This is no good for the sports program as a whole, and it does not benefit the athlete. The ONLY thing it benefits is the football program. There is too little time between football and basketball and wrestling, and between basketball and wrestling and soccer and baseball, etc. for any type of proper physical preperation for the sport. There is barely time for adequate techinical instruction. By the time spring roles arounf and the student gets to baseball, he has been practicing a specific sport for approximately 2 hours a day, 3-5 days a week since August. That's at a level rivaling the training of some elite athletes! No wonder, by baseball season they're worn out. But it's fine for football, they stay in shape, and then they get 6-8 weeks off in the summer before returning to football.

In addition, while there are certainly athletes who excel by playing everything, in my expierience, the one's who focused primarily on one (even if they participated in another) performed better in most cases. I was fortunate to excel in basketball. My father had been coaching 25 years by the time I got to highschool. Growing up, he stuck in gymnastics (which looking back was great) which I enjoyed but only participated in for a year, I also tried Karate, baseball and golf. Dropped baseball after a few years, just wasn't fun. Still play golf (I'm a basketball coach, it's a rule). But had I tried to play baseball, golf, or even football, I can't imagine myself having been as successful at basketball. Furthermore, more often than not when you ask someone who reaches a high level in a sport, it's rare that they played more than two sports in their whole life, and there was generally always one that they personally emphasized.

Therefore the recommendation for kids to play all sports IMO, is a bogus notion, it can lead to overuse and overtraining related injuries, and it does not lead to the highest levels of performance in any sport.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for kids trying different sports, but kids should not be prodded or made to play everything no more than they are forced to concentrate on one thing. That is far more dangerous, in my opinion, than mere weight training. Of course, how many physicians have been in a highschool of junior high to notice these things?

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

I poked around a little trying to see if there was interest in the weightlifting scientific community to do a direct rebuttal of the pediatricians paper. Apparently there is no interest and a focus on having another (updated) NSCA position paper on the subject of youth weightlifting.

Unfortunately, I don't see another NSCA position paper as being meaningful in the context of the pediatrician article. So, I guess I will have to try to write it myself and try to publish it. This will obviously be a difficult long-term project and will not carry the clout of the big-wigs in the weightlifting research community.

All help and support in the effort would be most appreciated.

Thank you.

[joedelago]

Chris-  in defense of the AAP, I don't believe that there has ever been a scientifically sound study that supports the position that competitive weightlifting does no harm to adolescents.  Recall that the primary tenet of the Hippocratic oath is to "do no harm".  The AAP is merely being true to that oath, in lieu of evidence to the contrary.

I am familiar with this topic because my wife, a pediatrician, set out to conduct a study that would be accepted by the AAP in defense of the sport of weightlifting.  She spent many hours drafting surveys, gaining the approval of her and her collaborator's institutional research boards, enrolling participants at the Junior Olympics for both test and control groups, and pursuing responses to the surveys.

The research plan was constructed to monitor the injury histories of young active weightlifters over the course of a year, and compare injury rates suffered by them to athletes of equal ages in other sports.

After all of that, despite enrolling nearly one hundred weightlifting parents/athletes in the study, she received exactly one response to the first quarterly follow-up survey.  A reminder message stimulated one additional response.

I don't blame the AAP for their position.  To my knowledge, we, as a community, have not offered evidence that will stand the test of scientific rigor as exercised by physicians.   If I am wrong about that, please point the way towards the evidence.  Cindy will immediately champion our cause with the AAP, of which she is a member.

Joe DeLago

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Joe,

I have to disagree with you. Sure, technically, there is no study that conclusively proves weightlifting is not harmful to adolescents, but we have had adolescents competing for at least some twenty plus years (Jr. Worlds) and have one of the lowest injury rates of all competitive sport. I'd say that is evidence. Also, there is a great deal of research in the area to the contrary (their position that adolescents should not participate). Some of this evidence they cited in their position paper but failed to discuss. Also, their position is that it is unsafe, so further study of adolescents, let alone pre-adolescents, in their eyes would be irresponsible and thus difficult to get IRB approval to do. So, the way I see it, their position is we can't do it until we absolutely prove it is totally safe and we can't prove it is absolutely safe until it is already proven that it is absolutely safe. Is football, soccer, etc absolutely safe? First thing I will research is the pediatricians position on other sports. Are they against all sport? Sport carries risk inherently. No sport is absolutely safe that I know of, for that matter nothing in life is absolutely safe.

So, I agree that we haven't conclusively proven it is safe. But, it is not reasonable for us to have to conclusively prove our sport is entirely safe in order for them not to tell people not to do it. After all, they presented no evidence whatsoever to support their recommendation against it. If they can put out position statements recommending against whatever they want based on nothing but a feeling that something could be dangerous, that would just about cover all aspects of life.

Dr. Faigenbaum told me he once tried to get the pediatricians to publish his rebuttal in their journal, but they refused. When I asked about trying to publish a rebuttal in a different journal, I got no further response. His website cites the position paper as if it supports weightlifting for adolescents (and parts can be interpreted that way if taken out of context), and I guess he is not interested in pursuing it further. If your wife is willing to contribute toward my effort to put together a rebuttal, I would be most grateful. I am fairly well read on this subject thanks to Dr. Fry, but could use all the help I can get.

Thanks.

[joedelago]

Chris-  to be honest, it does seem odd that the AAP would single out weightlifting as a "dangerous" sport, while allowing others to continue without comment.

I do disagree with the weightlifters' consensus that adequate research has been conducted into the safety of our sport, however.  I am a statistician, and have reviewed all studies that I could find, and have not found any that present statistically supportable evidence of safety.  There are some whose conclusion is that their data cannot differentiate our sport from others, but that is a long way from concluding that it is the same as others.  Failing to prove a negative does not prove a positive, statistically speaking.  

Having said that, this is a relatively easy problem to solve if we would make a concerted effort as a community to do so.  Unfortunately, we haven't been able to rally the troops around the cause.  If weightlifting families with adolescent athletes would participate in a well founded study, we could put this subject to rest.  So far, they haven't seemed willing to do so.  

All of that is political rhetoric, however.  I have been doing this long enough that I have seen some odd injuries recur in young weightlifters. Two that come to mind are avulsion fractures in the pelvic area and lower back strains in rapidly growing males.  Both are odd injuries for young athletes, and I have seen multiple instances of them.

I would really like to know if we are doing harm by subjecting pre-pubescent kids to the loads that competition presents.  In my mind, it is possible that we are.  Kids' bodies don't respond the way adult bodies do.  Adults sprain things; kids break bones.  This is because kids' bones are softer than their connective tissues until their bones have fused at puberty.  

I think it remains within the realm of possibility that little guys would be better off...and our sport would be better off...without the extreme stresses that competiton presents.

It would be nice to know for sure if that were true, wouldn't it?

Joe

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Joe,

I'm weak in statistics, but my athlete and fellow graduate of University of Memphis exercise and sports science program, Rhys Lucero, is not. I'm interested in discussing the stats on this issue. What is your criticism of the Hamil study? This seems to me to offer "statistically supportable evidence of safety", and I believe other studies also contribute something in this regard. I could understand wanting larger sample sizes and a longer time frame of data collection, and even a complete focus on adolescents (Hamil was mostly schoolage), but the study seems quite sound to me. Also, if you did another study improving on these factors, I don't believe it would conclusively prove anything. The pediatricians could simply ignore it too as they have done with all the other evidence they cited in their position paper as if it supports their position when it does not. Sure, we have injuries, some nasty, as all sports do and as happens in life all the time with things nothing to do with sport. I don't think this proves our sport is unsafe for adolescents or football and soccer would be banned as prep sports. How many prep football players have died or been paralyzed on the field in the last, say, ten years? Our sport is clearly safe for adolescents, based on what evidence we have, but football and soccer clearly are not (not to keep picking on football and soccer but they are good examples of very high injury rates, with many serious injuries, compared to weightlifting).

Just look at the FDA. They do massive amounts of research on every drug brought to market, but are still regularly pulling medications for being dangerous. Breathing air wears out your lungs. Thus, one could say breathing is bad for you. Is this rational? I do believe there is adequate research and evidence to conclude at this point that weightlifting is as safe for adolescents as almost any other competitive sport and safer than most. I'm not against more research, as the pediatricians are, but see little need for it except to combat the pediatricians unfounded statements. As for research on pre-adolescents, I would very much like to see more research and statistics, but this is far more difficult due to the incredible difficulty getting IRB approval for having young kids lift. Again, the fundamental problem is that the pediatricians have declared our sport unsafe for all but adults, without evidence. So, it will be difficult to prove them wrong when you can't test their statements without going against their significant "authority." I note, in their position statement, that they misspelled our sport's name as if its two words- striking ignorance for such experts in the field.

Their position paper is not science. It reminds me of the "Ministry of Science" declaring Reardon metal unsafe in Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)- politics and cowardice and a refusal to form hypotheses based on objective observation. But, yes, I agree there is not enough data to feel completely safe with pre-adolescents, and care should be taken with them and a very conservative approach. The people screaming about under 12s not being allowed to compete at schoolage and make camps, trips, etc., to me miss the entire point of coaching them- to lay a foundation for successful junior and senior years and not to win glory at age 12 in meets no one except them will recall ten years from now anyway.