2022 USAWA NATIONAL MEETING AGENDA ITEMS: No. 7

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)

  1. 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.