Witwatersrand University South Africa

Welcome back to our third post in our blog series on our summer adventures to South Africa and Zimbabwe. Last week, we updated you on our outreach to a high school in Johannesburg South Africa where we worked to introduce many of the students to the benefits of powerlifting as a sport. We also explained the benefit of using powerlifting as a tool to improve their performance in other sports. This week, we take you to Witwatersrand University, also located in Johannesburg, where, nestled amongst a college, a top notch powerlifting/weightlifting gym, 5E Fitness, resides.

This gym is owned and operated by Andrew Anthony, and Antoinette Kriel who was with us at the high school. Both people have a huge passion for the sport of powerlifting and weightlifting and they have seen many world class lifters come through their door. Antoinette was even the person who contacted us at LIFT4LIFE to come visit them in South Africa! Our visit had one mission which was to help inspire others and help build up the sport of powerlifting in South Africa to level never reached before.

To that degree, with the University World Championship being in SA in 2017, we set out to meet with members of the SAPF to plan on how to grow the sport at their Universities. In our meetings, we decided that we would identify singular athletes at Universities that we could contact about assisting them with developing teams at their Universities. Knowing that the easiest way to grow teams was to start where we already had connections to athletes, we settled on this approach. From there, we have assisted the SAPF and Antoinette in compiling a college email list to make students aware of this great opportunity in their country. We are staying in close touch with them to help as much as possible. Our expertise in growing a university team and getting it registered within the SAPF is extremely valuable to them. We are excited for this endeavor as it aligns closely with our mission of growing the sport. This is an ongoing process, but we know with the SAPF and Antoinette we can take university powerlifting to new heights both in SA and abroad.

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