Why I Love Weightlifting Part 6: Sabbatical
When I got involved in weightlifting in 2001, I could never have imagined stepping away from the sport—whether as an athlete, coach, or administrator. From the moment I returned home after lifting in my first Junior Olympics, I threw myself headfirst into weightlifting. I spent years consuming as much information as I possibly could: watching thousands of hours of video, talking to coaches and athletes, reading books and manuals, subscribing to multiple weightlifting publications, creating a team, hosting local and state-level meets, volunteering at the Arnold every year, even helping coach international Pacific Island lifters. You name it—I did it.
And then, it was over. As I mentioned in a previous blog, by the end of 2012 the team had essentially dissolved, and I had begun teaching at the high school where I’d been coaching. I continued coaching for one more year, but then I got married and moved to Toledo to keep teaching. That’s when my identity within the sport began to change. I actively wondered whether it was possible to stay connected to weightlifting purely as a fan.
Weightlifting doesn’t always get credit for being a spectator-friendly sport, and in my first year as a fan-only (2014), the experience was rough. There was no live media coverage of major events, and weightlifting social media was still in its infancy. The best you could hope for was watching a live scoreboard update during a world or continental event—live video simply didn’t exist.
But in 2015, everything changed. That year the World Championships were held in Houston, and ESPN broadcast all of the A sessions live on the ESPN app. My mind was blown. This wasn’t just a basic livestream—it had real production value and actual commentators. It was an incredible way to watch a Worlds.
From there, media coverage exploded: the 2016 Olympic Trials, the 2017 Worlds, the 2018 Worlds, the 2019 Worlds—all available on NBC or ESPN. European, Pan-American, and Oceania Championships began streaming on YouTube. Then Weightlifting House entered the scene, broadcasting Worlds, Europeans, and Asians through a pay-per-view model. Suddenly it was possible to be a true weightlifting fan without being actively involved in USA Weightlifting. I did not miss a session of live World Championship during those years and the regular podcasts by Weightlifting House also made it easy to stay current with the modern weightlifting scene.
It’s still amazing to me to see how easy it is to watch the sport of weightlifting in the new era. It has helped give the stars of the sport a pathway to more mainstream notoriety and it makes weightlifting feel like a mainstream sport as well. Anyone who is new to the sport can effortlessly find quality content on YouTube and social media to educate themselves on the sport and quickly become a fan when previously it took not only a great amount of effort to discover the sport but almost as much effort to obtain material to become a true fan of the sport.
All of this helped keep me engaged with the sport, but I still missed participating. I missed being in the gym every day, coaching athletes from broomstick beginners to national champions. I just missed weightlifting. I tried to coach at the high school where I was teaching, but that fell through. I even considered rejoining USAW as a referee. None of those ideas ultimately panned out.
But after a career change in 2020—and answering a phone call in 2022—I found myself on the path back, ready to be fully immersed in the weightlifting world once again.