I am currently sitting in the competition venue for the USAW National Championships watching the 48kg and 53kg lifters do work. I wanted to give major props to USAW for the meet so far. Over the years, USAW has taken a beating for the quality of their National meets, meet venue selection, equipment and training area, and scheduling. With 400+ lifters at the largest National Championships ever hosted, many of us were poised for much of the same.
However, this is no skating rink and is not in the middle of nowhere Ohio. It may have taken a while but it seems as though USAW took the criticism to heart and is working toward improvement. The hotel is great and even the backup hotel is right across the street. When I heard the training area was in a Crossfit gym across the street, I expected nothing less than classic Crossfit equipment and a portioned off area for training as to not interfere with the Crossfit classes. Wrong. Dead wrong. The gym, Crossfit Brickwall, closed their gym to their members for Thursday-Sunday (A HUGE SACRIFICE) and the entire floor was outfitted with numerous, new Werksan bars and plates. In steep contrast to the shoddy training weights and environment at Nationals last year, the training room this year made most of us envious of our own training environments at home. The meet ran behind about an hour yesterday during the B and C sessions but so far today they are right on time and moving perfectly. That’s a hard feat to pull off especially with 400 lifters and two platforms. The competition venue is gorgeous. Sure it’s not an amphitheater or soccer stadium but the warm-up rooms are massive and well-equipped and the spectators have an awesome set up.
Hat’s off to USAW. I know the meet’s not over yet but barring any crazy slip-ups this will be one of the better meets they have put on. Anyone who has been around USAW for the last couple years remembers the American Open from 2012. Granted it took a bit of budgeting to get to the venue in Palm Springs, but the meet ran flawlessly and was perfectly setup. For a while that meet was an anomaly. I think we are slowly moving back that direction.
We’re not there yet but we made giants steps in the right direction this weekend.