Are USAPL 2025 qualifying totals too high? | One Good Question

0:08 Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to Friday's episode, where we take one question, one topic from y'all. If you want to get involved, good companydiscord dot com. Not only do you get exclusives on apparel first looks, but a like minded community were we're always chatting in there, but there's a tab where you can ask us questions. Today we're on the hot topic of I guess powerlifting federations, which is always going on, but in particular, the USAPL has been under the heat the microscope for the last couple of weeks here one because they opened nationals to qualifying totals that may or may not happen in the future, and it was first come, first served, like always, whether it's planned or not. Then it seemed like they opened or set a personal invite to pros. I don't know if that's because of the arguments that were happening on how they moved about this, or if it was already planned that way. But on top of that, to add the sandwich the cherry on top, they put out their new qualifying totals for twenty twenty five and I'm a little bit behind an information Again, we're not CNN News I don't have all the data and stats. We're not a powerlifting reporting podcast, but obviously it's in our blood, So I don't know what the twenty twenty four qualifying totals are last time I checked. I obviously just like get a decent comparison of my strength over the years versus the qualifying total, and that's how I kind of justify how they're moving in the past. You know, twenty ten to twenty fifteen, raw USAPL Nationals was very very small, started graining a lot of attraction in fourteen fifteen sixteen with the likes of Omar esof Johnny Candido

1:40 and Barbara Gay and a bunch of people started showing some love to some raw natural powerlifting, and then the use of APL exploded with many other people contributing. But at the time, you know, I could total with like a push pull and qualify easily, and I was decently strong, you know, looking at some of the totals at the time, I probably finished in the top five for many years. But obviously this sport expanded, the talent pool got bigger, people streamlined their training, took a more serious and now people are crazy strong everywhere. You know, there's ninety kilo kids squatting eight hundred pounds, which at the time was untested two seventy five level squads. You know, so the game has come very far in the last fifteen years, but now the qualifying totals. So this year's the argument was that they're letting anybody in this meet right the barn doors open. You don't even have to have your total. You just have to get up before you get in.

2:31 The to Nationals that you could apply, get into the meat, then qualify, then get in, which is a pipe dream for a lot of people. You know a lot of people who knows who got into the meat that aren't even close to the total or will hit it. And then it seemed to fast forward to I might be wrong. I haven't had a chance to look at the data because I literally saw the new QTS this morning before we podcasted, so I didn't get to check the data. Loosely, but on a whim, I think the ninety kilo qualifying total is like a top ten total at Nationals last year in twenty twenty three. I might be wrong there, but a seventeen thirty total in the ninety kilogram is insanely strong, might even be top five, I don't. I don't know. So that seems to obviously go from floodgates open to building a damn you know, for a drought freaking hoover damn. Yeah, what I'm I'm just looking at it at a post for Pete Spence. The little thing that was done comparing the twenty twenty three qualifying totals and the twenty twenty five qualifying totals, and the percentage changed that he is showing here is between three percent and seventeen percent increase.

3:42 Yeah, he has such a huge difference. Three percent, all right, that makes sense. Yeah, and that's like low weight class women. Yeah, seventeen percent for any weight class, Yeah, seventy six and I guess that's that is six and a half for women at seventeen percent increase. Yeah, seventeen percent is probably not crazy aggressive if they want to make USAPO national smaller. But seventeen percent, yeah, maybe that's just maybe I'm behind in my data because it seemed bigger than that, Like seventeen thirty at ninety kilos is so insanely strong. Yeah, So then the ninety is a nine percent increase for the men's nineties. Yeah, oh then, yeah, it's not as big as I thought then, because I knew it was like in the sixteens, fifteens. I mean, people are just getting stronger. I guess then maybe my outrage is unjustified. I mean it is stronger, and I know people are getting weird with it. Seventeen I mean seventeen pounds increase or seventeen percent increase is pretty drastic. You know that audit obviously just cuts out.

4:41 It automatically cuts out seventeen percent, right unless unless though bottom half gets seventeen percent stronger in a year, you're cutting out seventeen percent of people competing in nationals. And maybe that is their goal. Maybe I know they're trying to up their pro series. I know they're trying to make regionals more important, so maybe this is just a step in that direction. So maybe overall it is a good thing. Seventeen fifty eight is the nineties nineties. Yeah, that's fucking strong man, that's very very high. Yeah, that's strong. So yeah, if that is the goal, which I don't mind. I think nationals, and we've talked about on millions of podcasts over the time, was too open door. Yeah, like it should mean something. When you're a national level, it's thirty, twelve hundred and fifte hundred people.

5:23 Yeah, so if they want to make that even more competitive than that, I would say, fucking up at fifty percent. Only get the top ten or twenty people there. If you're supposed to be a national it's like the Olympia, right, If you made it to the Olympia as a bodybuilder, you're the guy. You're top fifteen in the world, you're one of the best. Yeah, it should mean something to go to nationals, and then you just have to work on using your resources and making regional meets cooler and more important. Also, it's the follow up. Yeah. I think however, though, when you're cutting down the number of lifters, you're probably also cutting into the number of people who are going to pay us see it, you know, potentially. Yeah, I think it's a balance, right. Yeah, if you cut, in my opinion, if you cut seventeen percent, you're doing exactly what you said. You're just cutting away people to come watch. But then I think if you cut enough and you make it the super Bowl, now you're making it more important. Yeah, well, then maybe make it a pay per view event. Because you know what I mean, only so many people are gonna come maybe maybe for sure, But then I think you then then it should be competitive enough that it's more entertaining to watch. Right Now, Nationals isn't that fun to watch until the prime time, right because all these people are just from all over the map, Like you said, like two thousand people compete that weekend. But if you make it very consolidated and it is the best of the best of the best going head to head, now, yeah, it might be more online viewers than in person, but then you can use your resources differently. You don't have to rent out a huge auditorium. You could rent out a cool little venue, right, so you still have a thousand people watching in person and then

6:54 more online because you put more resources into X y Z. And obviously the financial part makes it all a little bit more difficult. But if you up the regionals importance resources, the look the meat itself, how well it's run, you can make the money there and use some of those resources for hopefully Nationals being important. I mean, that's what this like. The amount of money that goes into the Super Bowl isn't always just made at the Super Bowl, you know, it's made throughout the season. You know, they use the resources and the money and the hype in the marketing to build up the super Bowl like the straight you know, profit loss on just the super Bowl. I mean, the super Bowl is obviously a bad, not the best analogy because it's the event of the fucking world. But you'd imagine the NFL as a whole looks at the profit and loss from the entire playoffs, not just the super Bowl. I guess see what I'm getting at. Well, I guess too. It depends on what kind of sport you think you have, because you don't have to Let let's look at the World Strongest Man.

7:50 You don't have to personally know those people. You just have to be a fan of the sport and how and how it plays out. Whereas a big national powerlifting meat, if you want a lot of people to attend, you have to have a lot of people participating powerliftings, always in their friends or whatever, and only the very top people are going to have fans who come there just to see them. Yeah, and that is going to be a more limited number. Powerlifting has just always been that way. The only people that watch powerlifting have competed in powerlifting, yeah, probably ninety eight percent, where there's tons of people that enjoy watching strongmen that have never lifted a stone in their life, right, Basketball, same thing, Baseball, football obviously been that way. Maybe you played when you were younger or whatever, but a lot of people enjoy those sports that aren't active in that sport, where the vast majority of people that watch a powerlifting meet in person or online are currently competing in the sport. It's just that way, and I do agree, and so the balance is fine. But if you want to, you know, escalate what it means to be a national lifter, I guess this is step one, but it has to have the follow up of being more special to be there, whether that's money, whether that's opportunity. And then you have to have the other branches of the tournament, whether it be a state meet to a regional meet to a national meat means something and have and have something real. I mean even state meets they've been a joke forever, Like, they have to be well planned, they have to be built, they have to feel special, have a qualifier for that. They don't have a qualifier for regionals. They don't. So you have to build and we've

9:20 said this literally since we podcast for twenty goddamn years, that you have to have some kind of That's what CrossFit did so great. Yeah, you did a cool online one that was hard and you had to qualify. Everybody could do anybody can do, but you got to be like top one hundred and two hundred. Now you go to regionals. Now you have to be top ten. Then you go to the games, and you gotta obviously be podium to win money. Like all that makes so much sense. Every other fucking support of the planet does it. Obviously, that's even the college football which would never built that way, even went to that model because it just makes so much more sense to have a real tournament style. So if they want to do something like that, and then they obviously have the money, they obviously have the participants for now until Powerlifting America comes across and starts whooping your ass, which may happen so they I know it's hard to organize these things, but this isn't territory that's never been done. Sports have been done forever, individual sports, wrestling, track and field have been done forever, and they've made way more sleek ways to get there. So you gotta get your act together quick because the competition in the natural powerlifting world is growing with powerlifting America. So I don't care one way or the other. I don't.

10:24 I wish the sport was less split, and it probably is less split than it used to be. Right. We used to have twenty federations that were semi legit, and now we have like three. Yeah, there are definitely Yeah, so that's kind of cool, I guess in the broad scope of things, but we still need to tighten that up in my opinion. No, I agree, But basically we're talking about a fundamental restructuring of the way top level powerlifting competition runs. And are they prepared for that? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either because don't know because like I see them that I mean, unless this regional structure builds out the way you know they would, they want to them taking in significantly less money and they're already not doing much for for athletes. Yeah, they do nothing for the athlete.

11:05 Yeah, there's nothing done, there's no opportunity, there's no marketing to build it up. They've done a little bit better over the last year, but I mean that's what Why is the UFC. The UFC because Dana White's the best marketer in the world. He's the best character builder in the world. He's the best superstar builder in the world. NFL and NBA and MLB are really good at it, but UFC is literally the only reason. And I think he learned from Vince McMahon. Yeah, Vince bicmahon watching, Yeah, superstar builder, even though he's he just down to a giant. Yeah he's in the hot suit, but but yeah, he's talented at marketing. And that's all it is. And so if and again, it's not like these things have never been done anywhere, right, we have, you have models to follow after, and very sports is out there. For sure, every fucking sport MMA, jiu jitsu is doing better at it the powerlifting, and jiu jitsu is probably the best connection to powerlifting we have in terms of a sport being so niche a lot of people that watch jiu jitsu do jiu jitsu. Yeah, I mean, there's ways to do it. And I don't know what that organization because I've never died to dove into the politics of the USAPL and I never will and I don't care. But I don't know how they're organized, but someone should try to get their shit together because yeah, again, Powerlift America's coming strong. It seems like with their talent pool moving over. Yeah, with a talent pool, they I don't think that they have anything like the infrastructure now because they don't even have qualifying totals.

12:20 Yeah, you just have to compete in Powerlifting America to go to QTS. But that'll switch quick. And I don't know who to run in that world either, but I'm I'm assuming they're they're they're preparing for the storm because they're going to get a lot more people in their meets in twenty twenty five. Yeah, I mean, there's got to be some kind of changing of the guard at some point within the the power structure of the of the USAPL and and probably what they should do, if they're being fair, is to say, the best thing for our for athletes in our sport is to be able to compete on a national level, and we're not going to provide that the same way that an IPF affiliate. They just don't and just and either become just a bunch of regionals or or just step out all together and seed it to powerless doing America. That sounds very drastic in people who are you know you s APL diehards are not going to like that message, but I think that I think it's inevitable. I think there's very few real USAPL diehards.

13:20 They'll act like it, but like people that act that, we have been in the sport for three years. Yeah, you know, so yeah, changing the guard may happen, may not. We'll see what happens. We may be there, may not. I think I've be signed up. I think it's in Utah. So yeah, maybe we'll see you there, and maybe we won't. And we will see what happens over the next couple of years, but it will be interesting. Ladies and gentlemen. New episode Wednesday and Friday. Share this with your friends, shared on Instagram, Twitter. It always helps, and we'll see you in Discord good company, Discord dot com, Threus dot co for all your apparel needs. I'm selling Mike and I mean I am. I can't even speak right now. I am at the Jim mcdan and all the social media. This show is fifty percent of facts. For percent is a word in the fifties number thirty percent facts.

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