Watering Young Seeds

How do you grow the sport of weightlifting? How do we make it more popular, more of a "cool" thing to do and be a part of? CrossFit turns Reebok and blows up. The world goes bonkers over 21, 15, 9 and falling to the ground bloody and the feeling of death. I DID. I started as a CrossFitter. A strong CrossFitter, hence began weightlifting. I loved CrossFit. Still do, and still respect it....from a distance, but now my love is found on the bar. It's a fine line between the argument of these two worlds. One would say CrossFit is being a well rounded best at everything. Ok.....well rounded, yes....but best, I'm not convinced? To be the best or the greatest you have to take your focal point and center it on something. Whether that be running, or gymnastics, or olympic lifting you have to be dedicated to that certain thing. Then, you have to slave in hours and hours and hours of work on just that. You want to be the best kipping pullup guy and you better believe you're going to be doing a hell of a lot of kipping pull ups.

Anyway, back on track here. Weightlifting. What do we do? How do we get our kids involved because they are the gateway to our future. My daughter goes to every local event around, sits and watches almost every practice I do, and cheers me on on every lift. SHE thinks it's cool. She think I'M cool! But how do we further that? I don't ever push her to want to lift but becuase of all the time she watches me put in she just naturally wants to do it too....maybe? She has a bar in which she does the lifts on her own. I add in a few coaching ques but am hesitant to "coach" her yet becuase right now it is just FUN to her. I want it to stay fun. Lord knows it's a twisted form of it once you get to this point. She makes lifts and smiles saying, "Look, I'm strong like my mommy!" It definitely encourages me to lift more! She does the snatch, clean and jerk, and when she's really wound up she combines the two in kind of a split snatch/jerk thingymajig! Either way, I like it because she's up and moving around.

I have another girl, Marin Chew, who in the same way watched me and started being intrigued. Her parents are friends of mine. Mom dabbled in some CrossFit for awhile but primarly is doing training for figure competitions and her dad trains Muy Thai. She came in to watch though when all our paths crossed. She's a tiny little thing who until recently was not one to really do the "sports" thing. After months of watching she, (cute, little bitty, young girl) Marin, wanted to lift big weights....LIKE MEEEE!!! I've been working with her now for about 3 months and the girl is an animal! And most of all...she LOVES it!! She has been saving up her money for the last few months  AND BOUGHT WEIGHTLIFTING SHOES WITH IT!! Her form is prestine! Her lifts are increasing every time she comes in. She's rocking leapord tights and tank tops!! She watches all my videos and reads my blogs! She knows everyone on my team from watching too much Youtube and you better believe she's stronger than all the little boys in her class!!!

So again, I ask...how do we make this sport more popular? It all starts right here with US! It starts with the Lindsay Taylors, Donny Shankles and Jon Norths. We are paving a road to all the younger people out there that WANT TO BE LIKE US! We have to stand strong as role models. We have to convince these little people that we are cool....AND WE ARE!?! We have to show them we are having fun and that hard work sure pays off! We get one little Marin through the door, and she goes and tells all her friends and they tell all their friends and soon we will rule the world!! RIGHT? Ahahahaha, well maybe not rule the world but hopefully we will grow this sport to a higher degree. What blows up fast comes down fast......long steady work holds strong. Hopefully we are the sport of the future? 

Team California Strength 2012

*missing from picture is Kevin Cornell, Robert Blackwell, and Tom Sroka