Author Archives: Beth Skwarecki

USAWA Teeth Lifting

by Sanjiv Gupta

Classic Advertisement (from USAWA website)

The teeth lift is a USAWA Special Equipment Lift which originated from old-time performing strongmen.  Per a USAWA website article, Warren Lincoln Travis performed a 350 pound teeth lift with his hands behind his neck.

The current record list shows 15 USAWA athletes with records on the books.   Mary McConnaughey leads the women with a 130-pound lift in 2005, followed by RJ with a 54-pound lift in 2017.  The somewhat more crowded men’s field has Steve Schmidt in the lead with a 390-pound lift in 2005, followed by Eric Todd with a 300-pound lift in 2023.  The other 11 athletes in the books have records between 13 and 203 pounds dating back to 1999.  Art Montini has the most records in the book with 8 records (all 100 pounds or more) set in the 70-90 year old age classes.

Art Montini with his Teeth Bit (from USAWA website)

The last time it was contested in a meet was the 2022 Dino Gym Challenge, where among the 4 athletes participating only one had a successful teeth lift, Dean Ross at 39 pounds.

The teeth lift is essentially a neck exercise, but you still have to be hold onto the weight with your teeth.  Similar to a deadlift, your grip may fail before your posterior chain can no longer lift the weight.

The teeth bit is a very personal device.  Not because of the design or the shape of athlete’s choppers, but more because it is difficult to sanitize and kind of familiar to share un-sanitized.  Most of the designs I have seen are made from leather.  Leather is pliable enough to bite your teeth into, but also sturdy enough to hold 300 pounds.

I fabricated one based on the classic dog-bone template, folding the leather back on itself, gluing the two halves together to secure a D-ring and adding some additional leather and rivets for more security.  I did not use any specific medical grade of food safe glue.  I just used whatever Tandy Leather had on hand that I could borrow.  This seemed to be the traditional design.  If I made another one, I would not include the riveted section.  On one teeth lift, the bit slipped in my mouth and put a lot of pressure on my front tooth.  It would have been better to have the bit just freely escape my mouth.

The author’s teeth bit

I have heard horror stories about people having so much pressure on their teeth that they felt the roots of their teeth shifting or worse.  Alternatively, the USAWA website claims that Art Montini’s 107-pound lift in 2013 at 85 years of age was successful even though he has false teeth.  Personally, I am not the picture of dental health.  I have had wisdom teeth removed, teeth removed for braces and three teeth removed and replaced with two implants due to gum disease.  That said my oral surgeon could not endorse teeth lifting but did claim my implants were stronger than my natural teeth.

Whether or not you want to set records in the teeth lift, this might be worth playing with just to appreciate the grit it would take to lift over 100 pounds.  Here is a youtube video where I used a washcloth as a teeth bit and loaded it to 25 pounds.  I feel like the washcloth I was using could hold over 100 pounds, but I have no intention of finding out.

About the Secretary and Treasurer positions

Hey everyone! Beth Skwarecki here, the new Secretary of USAWA. At our 2024 national meeting, the membership voted in a new rule that splits the Secretary/Treasurer (formerly one position) into two, a Secretary and a Treasurer. I’d like to explain that change, and include some information on how members will interact with these two roles.

Why the change was needed

Briefly: because the Secretary/Treasurer did a ton of work. While the bylaws list five duties performed by the President, four performed by the Vice President, and three performed by At-large board members, there are a whopping fourteen duties assigned to the Secretary/Treasurer.

This may be a suitable workload for some people in some circumstances (honestly, I am impressed by everybody who held this position in the past!) but in 2024 we are a growing organization. Due to this growth, our Secretary/Treasurer has had to deal with increasing numbers of meet sanctions, concerns from membership, etc, while still doing the work of keeping our finances in order.

Eric spoke to me earlier this year to ask if I would be interested in the Secretary/Treasurer position if he were to step down. Upon discussion, we decided to make a proposal to split the roles. This proposal was presented at the national meeting and passed unanimously.

I’ll give an overview of the proposal here, but you can read the full thing in the 2024 national meeting minutes. Several items in the rulebook and bylaws had to be amended, but the most important ones were Article 5, defining the board, and Article 9, defining the duties of the Secretary/Treasurer.

The board still has five members (Article 5)

The Executive Board of the USAWA was, and still is, a group of five people. Under the old bylaws, the board contained these specific five positions:

  • President
  • Secretary/Treasurer
  • Vice President
  • At-large member #1
  • At-large member #2

With the change, passed during the 2024 national meeting, the board still contains five people, but the four officer roles are separated so that the Secretary and Treasurer are no longer required to be the same person. Any two roles may be combined, so that in the future we could go back to having a combined Secretary/Treasurer if the membership so desires. Or, for example, we could have a President/Secretary and a Treasurer/Vice President plus three at-large members. Any board positions not filled by officers shall be filled by At-large members. There must always be at least one At-large member.

After the membership passed this change to the rules, Eric Todd stepped down as Secretary, while retaining the role of Treasurer. He then nominated me (Beth Skwarecki) to become the new Secretary. (This vote also passed unanimously.) I was already an At-Large member of the board, so the five board seats still belong to the same five people. Next year will be an election year, so this could change. Currently the board seats are as follows (and the positions are elected in this order):

  • President (Denny Habecker)
  • Secretary (Beth Skwarecki)
  • Treasurer (Eric Todd)
  • Vice-President (Chad Ullom)
  • At-large member (Abe Smith)

Duties of the Secretary and Treasurer (Articles 9 and 10)

The section of the bylaws describing these duties has now been split, with financial duties going to the Treasurer and duties relating to forms, applications, and communication being the purview of the Secretary. Both positions still serve on the board and attend meetings as described in the bylaws.

These are pretty straightforward, but as a member, here are the major things you need to know:

  • Meet sanction applications should be sent to the Secretary; if approved, payment should be sent to the Treasurer. (We also removed the requirement for a physical signature on the meet sanction form, so applications can be submitted to the Secretary by email.)
  • The Treasurer shall maintain the bank account, negotiate contracts, and perform all other financial duties.
  • The Secretary shall maintain records, such as the membership roster and meeting minutes.
  • The Secretary shall receive complaints and grievances under Article 20, Part C. We also corrected a grammatical error in that rule, so that it now correctly states:

Any appeal, grievance or complaint by a member must be directed in writing to the USAWA Secretary, who will then present the issue to the Executive Board to be decided by majority vote. Failure to follow this protocol will result in appeals, grievances and complaints not being officially recognized.

The rulebook will be updated soon with these and other recent changes. I also plan to write a few more articles explaining other changes that were (or, in the case of knee sleeves, were not) passed by the membership. Please direct any questions or official communication to me at bethskw@gmail.com.

1 … 15 16 17