Meet Report from “StillGrowing”

StillGrowing is a Canadian lifter named Mark. Last weekend he competed in his second powerlifting meet and sent me a write up of his experience. There are some pretty funny parts to his story, so I edited him a bit and posted the story in its entirety. Enjoy.


I’m 18 and have been lifting (properly) for just over a year now. I started on the Starting Strength program and switched pre-maturely to Texas Method before my first meet back in June. After my first meet back in June I went back to SS, and worked up to 345x3x5 Squat, 215x3x5 Bench, and 405×5 Deadlift, at 180 bodyweight. By that time I was stalling out pretty hard, and went back to TM which I have been on since then. My second meet was December 11th with the Canadian Powerlifting Federation.


After weigh-in we (my parents and I) had a few hours to kill, so we went out for a quick lunch. I foolishly had a pulled pork sandwich – something we’ll get back to that later. I was lifting in the second flight, so I was warming up as the first flight was lifting. All was going well until we got up to 3 plates and someone put the pins up. I went for my last warm up, a single at 315, just like I always do, but the pins were too high and I bounced the bar off them causing me to miss it. This threw me off a little, but I got my composure back.

I stepped up to that platform with a 370 opener, crushed it, but my belt was feeling a lot tighter than usual. I have a lever belt and I know for sure it wasn’t in the wrong hole. My second attempt was an easy 400 because I wanted to leave some in the tank for my last attempt. I crushed it, but the belt still felt too tight. I went up for my third attempt of 430 – I had done it in training twice – so I was confident I’d hit it no problem. Unracked it, waited for the command, sunk down, and barfed; the pulled pork came back to bite me in the ass. I managed to keep about 99% of it in my mouth, but a bit came out on to the mono-lift. This wouldn’t have bugged me very much, but it caused me to miss my squat. I swallowed what was in my mouth (which was gross), apologized to the judges, and went to clean myself up and swear.

Now I was pissed; I hated missing that squat. It’s still bugging me now and it will until I make that much or higher at a meet. After I was cleaned up I went to look at the current results. I was in the Under 19 class even though I signed up for the open class. I decided I’d still try to beat all the other 82.5ers regardless. I was ahead of most of them with the 400 squat, but one guy had 420. This made me angry, but it was bench time, so I had to focus.

Warm-ups went as usual, no problem. Opened with 250, crushed it, and called for 260. About 5 lifts out from mine, we were notified that the hand off guy was busy so we had to find our own. I went and grabbed my dad to do it for me, explaining in detail what he had to do. I get up there, he helps me unrack it and position it, I’m ready to press…wait something isn’t right…”LET GO OF THE BAR DAD!” He let go and I nailed it. Call for 265. I looked at the projector screen and the same guy with the 420 squat; let’s arbitrarily call him Joe, called for 275. Now you never want someone to miss, but I wouldn’t mind it happening. As I went up for 265, I was pretty nervous as I’ve always been pretty shit at bench, but I got it pretty easily. Joe was right after me, and he was goddamn close to getting that 275, but he missed about 2/3 the way up, leaving him with 260, and me only 15lb behind.

While the third flight was benching I chatted with Joe for a bit, He was 23, had been training for about 6 months more than me, and I had no clue if he was clean or using. We talked about deadlifts; he was opening with 410, and hoping to get 480, I was opening with 440, my second was 495, and third would be an iffy 500; being good natured I told him all of this. As I walked away I did some quick mental math, and that would leave us both with 1160 totals, and he was a couple pounds heavier than I was. That would give me the “win” even though I wasn’t in his age class (I’m competitive, so sue me).

Stepped up for my first Deadlift; I smoked it, but Joe smoked his 410. I called for 495 while Joe called for 475. Joe made his lift as I was pacing the warm-up room with DMX blasting from my iPod. I chalked up and stepped to the bar. I pulled it off the floor and it started to slow down after it got above my knee, but I locked that S.O.B. out. Then I called for 500. Now, I don’t know whether Joe was as competitive as I am, or if he was just feeling reckless, but he called for 490. As I watched his attempt, he couldn’t get it off the floor, but I applaud him for trying. I was next; I have failed 500 7 times in my training, but already had 495 in the books, so I was going for it. I started the lift and it felt about the same as the 495. I thought I was going to make it, but as I got above my knee, it halted, completely; I pulled like hell, but to no avail.



In between my lifting I had a chance to watch the third flight lift; it was inspiring to say the least. One guy had a 615 squat, 500 bench, and a 750 deadlift and a few others weren’t that far behind. It’s damn impressive what the human body is capable of when pushed, and this is a great example of it.
I ended up with my 1160 total to Joe’s 1155, and there were 3 others in the 82.5 class that were between 1050-1100 totals. All in all, most would call that a good day, but I’m not most people. I’ll be back in the gym on Friday, pissed off, going for my 430 squat.

For anyone who’s thinking about competing, you should go for it. Even if you total a couple hundred pounds under the top of your weight class, you’ll have a fun day, meet some really awesome people, and you’ll be motivated to train harder to get your total up. For ~$75, that’s a Bargain.

Thanks again to Justin for giving me a hand picking my attempts.

Note: I helped him choosing some of his opening attempts in the 70’s Big Chat Room. We are going to have a chat on Tuesday evening, and then have a weekly chat on Sunday evening (since that’s what you guys voted for).