Suicide of America's Strongest Woman

Very interesting article here:

Yup. Anthony Fuhrman is my coach and he’s a pit bull with this stuff. He goes all in on whatever he decides to do, and getting her justice and getting this kind of abuse out of strongman is his life now. I hope it changes.

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I read the article but I’m confused by this. What is the goal of JusticeforRebecca? Like what is justice in this case? Have her boyfriend/coach kicked out? Drug regs in strongman?

Wasn’t sure about that either. I think there’s a big sentiment going around now involving establishing firm rules about coaches banging their athletes. (Read an article about that in the tennis world today.) But I’m not sure what the “justice” is for in this sad case. A pre-damaged person enters an insane sport, takes lots of drugs, gets injured and loses her identity, makes bad choices about a man… not sure how a hashtag campaign is supposed to fix that.

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Pretty much my thoughts. Im not taking the situation lightly, it sucks. I know when something like this happens especially with suicide, we’re all left with so many questions it feeld like we have to do something. I just don’t know what that something is.

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This seems like a really tough thing to accomplish. There isn’t a regulating body for strength or physique coaches. Someone might get a certification for personal training, but they aren’t required to. I know “coaches” that are just good at their sport, and others pay them for programming, nutrition, feedback, training together, etc… They are just picking the coach based on the results the coach got for themselves, or for others, not a certification. I can see why. A certification doesn’t mean much if there isn’t proof of this person helping others or themselves accomplish what the client wants to accomplish.

In some ways, I’d think the free market could solve this problem, but it doesn’t seem to play out that way.

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Specifically, for Rebecca, get her abuser band from comps/federations.

More generally to update rules for ethics about coaching and create an open dialog for people to speak out against known abusers and keep them away from the sport where possible.

I’m not in the know on any of this, but I think that the guy in question was also more closely involved in the sport than coaching. Like sponsoring/commentating est. And I think allowing him to do those things is in part facilitating his credentials and putting him in contact with his victims.

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Have these strongman contests expanded to the point that they have governing bodies for coaching oversight?