Topic: THE THORN IN THE SIDE OF USA WEIGHTLIFTING

[joedelago]

C-  I just happen to have access to a research plan covering this topic, if you want to use that as a starting point.  Want me to email it to you, so you can look it over?  Joe

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Joe,

Actually, I think it could help recruit more cooperation if you were to post it in this thread. I know Dr. Brian Schilling is a member here, and who knows who might pop up to contribute on this topic. Why don't we discuss what you have so far? I'd be very grateful to see it and I'm sure more of our members and guests would be as well. I will inform Dr. Fry, Dr. Faigenbaum, Dr. Garhammer, Dr. Pierce, Dr. Schilling, Dr. Stone, and some others. But, I still think a detailed mission statement is our first step.

Thanks

[joedelago]

C-  Works for me.  Do you want to take a stab at it?  Joe

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Sure, here is a rough draft proposal, just to get the ball rolling. I fully expect we will make significant changes during the process.

Youth Weightlifting Research Mission Statement

To utilize the forum in a cooperative effort toward designing, implementing, and publishing a rigourous research study aimed at conclusively determining weightlifting injury rates for adolescent males and females in competition. The study will include at least one control group and at least two experimental groups, and have a large sample size with data collected over a substantial time-period.

Sounds like a massive effort, but I'm game.

[joedelago]

Hope this doesn't turn out like the old "a camel is a horse designed by a committee", but here goes:

"To utilize the forum in a cooperative effort toward designing, implementing, and publishing a rigourous research study aimed at conclusively comparing weightlifting injury rates for adolescent males and females in competition to those of other sports. The study will include at least one experimental group and at least two control groups, and have a sufficient sample size to conclusively establish injury rates over a substantial time-period."

I wanted to highlight changes, but couldn't figure out how.  Tips on that front would be appreciated.

The only real substantive change I made was to flip the number of control and test groups, thinking that weightlifting should be compared to more than one sport.  If we don't do things that way, the AAP might conclude that we just picked the wrong other sport.

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Joe,

I had assumed there are already injury rate statistics from other major American sports which the AAP considers legitimate. Thus, I didn't think we needed to reproduce this data and could focus on our sport. If they have no statistics they consider legitimate, then how have they formed a position on the relative safety of one sport to another?

How about this, with design later (my bad)?:

To utilize the forum in a cooperative effort toward designing, implementing, and publishing a rigourous research study. This research will compare injury rates in weightlifting competitions for adolescent males and females to injury rates in other sports' competitions, and it will have a sufficient sample size to conclusively establish injury rates over a substantial time-period."

[Grant Gardis]

Chris:

Didn't Mike Reed already do something like this?  I thought he gathered all sorts of injuries rates for weightlifting at National Meets.

[joedelago]

I will gladly yield to someone more qualified to represent the AAP's position, but I think we need to be mindful of two key points:  first, the control, or other sport, position needs to be well represented with sufficient samples collected in an identical manner, and two, training is just as important as competition to the extent that they are fearful of maximum repetitions regardless of whether they happen on the competition platform or in the basement.

Rufus, I'm not sure that the Reed study addressed either of those points.