Weightlifting expert allays stunted growth fears

The Performance Director of the Ghana Weightlifting Federation (GWF), Dr Kyle Calhoum Pierce, has assured Ghanaian parents that children who wish to take to weightlifting would not suffer from stunted growth.

According to Dr Pierce, who serves as the director of the Weightlifting Development Centre at the Louisiana State University in Shreveport, USA, he was personally involved in a research published last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine which proved that the sport does not damage growth plates in children.

"For the sport to spread throughout the country we need to get rid of many misconceptions, especially that which says it stunts growth and is bad for children," Dr Pierce said yesterday when he paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Youth and Sports, Dr Mustapha Ahmed, at his office in Accra

"Research has shown that if it's done right and under qualified supervision, it doesn't stunt growth. Parents have their teenagers pick up heavy items all the time such as jugs or buckets of water but as soon as a kid picks up a barbell of the same weight they get worried that they are going to be short

"The best weightlifters are generally short just as basketball players are tall but that does not mean that playing basketball makes you tall and vice-versa," he added.

The minister commended Dr Pierce for his commitment to the development of the sport in the country and urged the president of the GWF, Ben Nunoo-Mensah, to take steps towards making weightlifting a mass sport by introducing it in schools.