PROSVAWE - Promoting Sport Values through Weightlifting

Weightlifting is a considered as a niche sport, resulting in lower recognition among European public compared to other sport (e. g. football, skiing, tennis etc.). Despite the fact that weightlifting is a sport that has been practiced for centuries, it is still underrepresented when it comes to its general positive effect. It is considered to be a side sport activity to many other sport disciplines, which are much greatly known. The PROSVAWE project aims primarily at promoting the weightlifting as a sport discipline among general interested public with a special focus on how this sport discipline can help vulnerable groups to raise their social, health and mental conditions. Weightlifting is much more than just lifting different weights. It is a sport with a long tradition, an activity that is part of every other sport (to help improving muscle tone of the body) as well as a therapeutically method in physiotherapy. These three elements have been many times disregarded by general public, which mainly knows the competitive side of weightlifting. Therefore, the project puts a huge emphasis on popularization of the weightlifting in all before-mentioned disciplines. Since weightlifting is not only a sport, but an integral part of other non-sport activities, we wish to highlight its cross-disciplinarity. To this end, our focus groups will be vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and how weightlifting can improve their quality of life. We will demonstrate the positive effects of weightlifting in therapeutical methods and physiotherapy. Doing so, we believe that we can well transfer our sport values to other sectors and disciplines, thus contributing to better understanding of the sport itself as well as improvement of quality of life of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.