USAWA

By Dan Wagman and Ruth Jackson

From our perspective there are many aspects of all-round weightlifting that make it the greatest strength sport. But at the top of our list is the fact that your strength is challenged in 182 different lifts (USAWA Rulebook, 9^th Ed.; but actually 218 lifts if you count right and left arm for one-armed lifts, 10 different fingers for finger lifts, and front and rear weaver). In addition, human physiology is such that it is nearly impossible to excel at all feats of strength equally. Fact is, we have been humbled by how challenging it is to perform well in certain lifts that present personal challenges. This humbling experience is something that many, if not most, strength athletes are unwilling to expose themselves to as they would rather stick to the lifts they can impress in.

With that said, we thought it would be interesting to see who the top men and women lifters are in USAWA—if not all of American strength sport. We determined this by only looking at how many different lifts a lifter holds a record in. We referred to the September, 2016 USAWA Record List for this.

TOP 5 GREATEST ALL-ROUNDERS

Regardless of age or gender, or even time-in-sport, all-round weightlifting’s overall top performer is Al Myers with records in 152 different lifts. Denny Habecker comes in second with 141 lifts and Dean Ross rounds out the top three with 132 lifts. Only two lifts behind Dean is Ruth Jackson with 130 different lift records for the overall fourth place ranking while Art Montini’s 128 different lift records completes the overall top five greatest all-round weightlifters.

TOP 10 BY GENDER

Women

Rank               Name                                                 Lifts                           

1                    Jackson, Ruth                                      130

2                    McConnaughey, Mary                           66

3                    Phumchaona, Noi                                 57

4                    Fritz, Misty                                          41

5                    Myers, Molly                                        37

6                    Ollennuking, Amorkor                          36

7                    Gordon, Emily                                     34

8                    Hall, Rita and Sees, Susan                   33

9                    Monk, Elizabeth                                  31

10                  Jobe, Gabby and Schmidt, Kathy          27

Men

Rank               Name                                                    Lifts

1                    Myers, Al                                               152

2                    Habecker, Denny                                    141

3                    Ross, Dean                                            132

4                    Montini, Art                                           128

5                    Ullom, Chad                                          122

6                    McKean, John                                        105

7                    Garcia, Joe                                            104

8                    Mitchell, Dennis                                     94

9                    Emslie, David                                        80

10                  Glasgow, Dave and Myers, LaVerne         77

Please note that determining these rankings took a huge amount of counting, deletion of multiple records for the same lift, sorting, etc. To give you a sense of this, just for the top 10 men there were over 3,300 initial line items of records. After removal of multiple records for the same lift the line items were reduced to a bit over 1,000. If there are any errors we apologize and would appreciate notification so that corrections can be made.

Clearly, no strength sport is as challenging as all-round weightlifting. If you are in need of motivation, have another look at the incredible depth of strength feats these lifters have accomplished, chalk up, pile on the plates, and challenge yourself in ways most dare not.