Michael Massik, CEO of the USAW discusses the future of the organization and its relationship with CrossFit.
Gabriel Romero sat down with Michael Massik, CEO of the U.S.A. Weightlifting (USAW) organization for a Q&A session. CrossFit first teamed up with USAW in 2010 for the inaugural CrossFit/USAW Open. Here, Massik discusses his ideas to expand weightlifting as a sport, how to get more athletes involved in the United States, and the future of the relationship with CrossFit.
What made you decide USAW was where you wanted to be?
USAW leadership has expressed a strong desire to be good; to be a better organization across the board, and that’s appealing to me. When I look at the coach’s clinics that we have put together, and the numbers and how much demand there is across the country, I say, ‘Yeah, this organization has the potential to be great and to develop great coaches.’ And that’s the greatest part, because without great coaches you can’t have great athletes. It’s a fascinating time for us.
How do you rope in a direction for the future of USAW?
I come back to community, and the overriding philosophy is that a strong sense of sports community allows that sport to really evolve to the next level. And, you can argue and disagree about anything within that community, but if you’ve got an attitude of professionalism, and courtesy and respect, everybody feels they are included and everybody wants the sport, as an entity, to do better, to be respected, to function better for its membership. It’s always more fun to win than lose, so performance is in the brochure, as well.
You mentioned winning. The United States hasn’t been overly competitive internationally. How will the U.S. improve?
Our job is to pave a road so the coaches and athletes have as easy as possible (of a) time to achieve their maximum performance. As a sports organization, we are first and foremost about athletes and coaches. As people working in the office, it’s our job to create a clear and logical pathway to increase performance. That’s what it boils down to. And the more clear we can be, the easier it is for our athletes to have their best performances. It sounds easy, but it isn’t.
What I’ve learned in growing a sport is that you develop your athlete pipeline by starting it with people of a young age, so by the time they get to their peak performance years, they have a lot of experience. When I first started with fencing, the ideal age was about 13 or 14 years old, and the other countries were starting them much younger, so we designed programs so that we could get them involved when they were 5 and 6, and we had to look at the competition, so we looked at soccer, football, ballet — you name it, because moms and dads knew those sports, so we had to get the message out that fencing was pretty cool, too. Some of those kids that (we) were able to attract, are our top fencers today. We have the same objective with weightlifting.
Do you have an idea for the program? And how does it change as athletes get older?
Kids in these programs will ultimately do this for fun; it must start that way. Losing is a part of this, and it doesn’t have to be a bad experience for them. And slowly, the older they get, the more the expectations change until, eventually, you develop a talent pool. And the larger the talent pools, the better for the sport.
That said, you must have room in your sport for the person that lifts here and there, and the person that trains because they want to be the best in the world. Supporting all (of) those levels is absolutely paramount to maintaining interest and participation. That’s what sports are for. Sports are a universal way for people to have a healthy and active lifestyle — simple as that.
I like that you started from the beginning with kids, but what about the existing talent pool?
To me, weightlifting has one of the most unique aspects to it because we are able to recruit from other sports when they (the athletes) have had success, but moving on in the sport is not in the cards for them. We can say, ‘Hey, congratulations your career in football is over, and here we have a place for you.’ It seems logical to me. And not just football players, but anyone that has learned to be an athlete and understands the level of commitment it takes to be successful, and to be coached and to be developed. Putting this together is one of the first things that need to be implemented in my mind.
If you don’t have to wait for the next generation of athletes to be successful, and you can take an alternative road, and it seems that we’ve got one, why not take it? You’ve got CrossFit people doing Olympic weightlifting; who’s to say, they may have the ability to succeed as an Olympian? I don’t think it’s that far fetched, and it’s certainly worth exploring.
Along with training and developing athletes, you must grow overall awareness. How do you do that?
The problem with the less-featured sports is that they only have one time to shine and that is at the Olympics. So, what we are focused on is preparing for the Rio Games so we have athletes that are prepared and have opportunities to reach the podium four years from now. Once you reach that level, you have the opportunity to build on it, but you have to get there first. The difference between fourth place and the bronze medal is everything; it’s life changing for the athlete and the sport.
The road to getting there is the tough part. When a person moves from 14th in the world to eighth, it’s not going to make the news, and that’s the difficult thing. There is a ton of overlap between the CrossFit community and USAW, and the passion there is what will help to propel this information to the general audience, however that may happen. It may not get a lot of attention now, but down the road, little by little, you must be prepared for that moment when it becomes big.
One of the things that will be interesting will be to see where CrossFit and USAW are in five or six years. Neither organization is going anywhere, so why not work together to continue to move forward, and to positively get the best out of athletes and coaches and to simply build the community? I am always looking toward the future and I like what I see.
How has CrossFit traversed its way into USAW, and how has that affected what is being done?
One of the things that I’ve learned is that with the rise of CrossFit, we’ve had a concurrent rise in the USAW coaching courses. So, we are working furiously to not only add more courses, but to add even more levels beyond level one … even all the way up to level five — obviously five being a very challenging level to reach. So, the rush on our part is to satisfy the level-one coaching and build the coaching pool from there.
What has the response been to these courses?
The response from these courses had been overwhelmingly positive. Right now, the demand outweighs the supply, and that’s something we have to work on. We certainly are not going to try to satisfy the demand, however, with unqualified coaches. The overwhelming majority of people that take the class have a positive experience and that must be there. We’re going to maintain that quality course even if that means we will have less of them.
What is your experience with CrossFit and how familiar are you with our community?
One of the things that strikes me is the sense of community that CrossFit has. I’ve only been exposed to it for several weeks now, but the overwhelming intangible of belonging to a community is quite apparent. That is important because it exposes people to Olympic weightlifting at its core, and any exposure is a tremendous asset to the future of the sport.
How do you see the relationship moving forward between the CrossFit community and USAW?
I think that the folks in this organization recognize what CrossFit has brought to USAW, and what our goal with CrossFit is to make sure that we can make a stronger and stronger effort to have more training available to make sure they are trained properly. We need to get coaches to a level that makes everyone better by passing along the best possible training to the people they work with every day.
Do you have new coaching development in place? Will you?
We now have people in place whose sole responsibility is coaching education. Under this guidance, I think we will be aware of who is taking these courses and how we can get them the training and education they need. How this will happen is one of the things we are working on.