Chris Papillion discusses Westside issues

Some interesting material has popped up on powerlifting watch regarding the the Westside Pro-am meet. For the few of you that haven't seen the issues surrounding the meet here is the skinny.

Essentially Westside ran a meet that had a number of records broken, once the youtube videos surfaced on the face of it there were a number of squats that looked very very far from legal that were passed easily.

Pretty soon the shit started to hit the fan on the forums with the usual assortment of Westside hatters and defenders squaring off. Now despite all the dumb shit a couple of genuine posts emerged that centred more on protecting the integrity of the sport and the impacts of shitty judging.

One of the those was from Chris Pap who I thought articulated the issues surrounding the meet with an accurate and passionate summary.

Here is the video, check out the lifts on powerlifting watch then review Chris's points below.




For me the vision is pretty damning but I will reserve my comments to similar issues at a  few local meets.

I believe powerlifting should be similar to Olympic weightlifting i.e. no fuckers on the platform, or near the platform unless you are wearing a judges shirt.

Too often I have seen morons lying down near or in front of the judges calling depth. Now I thought it was an individual sport and my belief is if you cant work our where depth is without someone calling it for you then fuck off and try something else. Oh what's that you say but with equipped gear I find it hard to work out where depth is??? So let me understand this, not only do you get 1-2 hundred pounds from the suit but you also want someone to call depth!!??

I think the sport needs to smarten the fuck up and run itself professionally. Chris Pap's rant is a good example of someone who cares about the sport and doesn't want to see it screwed up.

Stay Strong
Thomo