[quote]Airtruth wrote:
SprinterOne wrote:
Before I started competing I thought equipped lifting was unfair and stupid. When I first began competing I did my first 3 meets raw. I now train exclusively for geared lifting.
My take on this is, if you don’t compete then your opinion doesn’t mean jack. Until you get in front of an audience and judges and compete against other very strong people then you don’t truly know.
Us non-competitors would happily keep our opinions to ourselves, except many of your friends question why the sport doesn’t gain popularity. How come ESPN doesn’t show it instead of video game competitions? How come there isn’t a higher reward for winning competitions? It sure would be nice to know if I’m waiting through a commercial to watch a guy bench a weight, or a shirt.[/quote]
Is that what this is all about? A couple of powerlifters hoping for their sport to be more widely recognized?
Because I could have sworn for a minute there, it was about people thinking someone could bench 1000 lbs raw, oh wait…nevermind, it was about football players wearing lighter pads…ah, damn, wrong again, it was about a general concern for the health of the lifters because of the supposed dangers of lifting such unreal amounts of weight…wait…
In the two threads about this, there have been 6 different reasons following the phrases “The only thing that bothers me is…”, “I wouldnt have a problem with it…”.
If someone wants to bitch about video game competitions on a SPORTS network, fine, let them. I dont see how you can compare thinking that video game competitions on a sports network is comparable to bench shirts in powerlifting. Powerlifting is for and by the lifters…not for the keyboard warriors on some forums who bitch and moan about how equipped lifters are cheating.
This is like walking into an IFBB conference and launching into an anti-steroid tirade. Its useless. No one is going to listen to you because they dont care. Youre not changing anyones minds, so stop wasting your time complaining about it. If it were anything beyond a personal self-esteem issue, I think many of the people complaining about this would have stopped a long time ago.
Its not YOUR sport, its not YOUR decision to make, its not YOUR problem. Everyone just shut the fuck up about this already.