One Little Gal’s Meet Review

Thunderthighs and Antigen are regular 70’s Big readers. This lifting couple competed in their first meet this past weekend, and ThunderThighs gives her account here. It’s kinda lengthy, but I enjoyed it and preserved it in its original form. Enjoy.

Hello stronglings! (if you didn’t catch that reference, it is a term modeled after yoda’s gender neutral reference ‘younglings’ to his students in training)

I am not quite sure what to say. I’m not really as wise as the great yoda…but…I have finally competed in a powerlifting meet! I wish I had some great insights for you, but I don’t. I’m so excited about competing that I would just love to share some of the story with you all.

Before I begin, I must try to stress just how much I think each and every fucking one of you needs, needs, needs to compete. This is something that has been stressed multiple times on this site in the past. Well, guess what? It’s true. It’s so motivating. It’s so inspiring. It’s so FUN. seriously.

Ok, so where do I begin? How about the preparation? Honestly, when I first considered registering for the meet, I seriously doubted that it would do me any good. I was convinced I wanted to focus my training on the olympic lifts, and frankly, I’d rather lick a toilet seat than train the bench press most of the time. But I gave it some serious thought and realized there were a few perks to trying it. It was a good excuse to eat. I had most recently competed in the 63 kilo class at an olympic meet, which left me at least three inches taller than the girls I was competing against and hungry much of the time. The weight classes are a bit different for powerlifting, and I chose to shoot for the 67.5 class. Damn, I’m going to miss those post workout meals. (who am i kidding, i just finished a pound of ground beef as i typed the first paragraph…and i’m not training today) Anyway, it was also a good motivator to get my squat and DL up—I had been losing steam in those lifts. Having the meet marked on my calendar really helped me focus and train with some tangible goal in mind.

So I set my goal—I wanted to meet or exceed a total of 500 lbs. I knew this could be accomplished even if I didn’t make any PRs in the three lifts on the big day. I figured it would pressure me into hitting solid numbers, but allow me to stick with weights I was more or less comfortable with, yet still relatively proud of displaying. Does that make sense? I mean, considering it was my first meet and I had no fucking clue what to expect out of the day, I thought I should be primarily focused on not bombing out while still reasonably challenging myself.

Have I mentioned I hate being hungry? I ate and ate and ate and a week before the meet I realized I may have exceeded the class. Oops! But no worries. The night before I simply soaked in an Epsom salt bath and gave up drinking for a few hours. Saul cooked two pounds of bacon the night before the meet and I packaged it up but saved the fat. The next morning I got up a bit earlier than necessary and used the fat to cook an additional two pounds of grass fed beef. I also hard boiled thirteen eggs and packed up a few slices of beef liver we had cooked recently. (side note—i hope to goodness you all have discovered the incredible, magical strength gaining powers of beef liver. it’s dirt cheap and full of protein, iron, and all sorts of good shit i can’t think of right now. if you don’t already eat it, you must start.) I also cooked up a chinese yam for recovery between sessions. For additional highly dense energy, I threw some shredded coconut in our cooler, as well.

Oh my goodness, it was quite hard to avoid food and liquids before weigh in. I didn’t realize how long it takes to check in at a powerlifting meet. If I have any advice for you, it’s to get there early! I brought along my coffee pot because I know myself well enough to know I wouldn’t perform well if I didn’t at least somehow retain part of my morning habits. So after I weighed in (I was 66.4, a whole kilo under. Looks like my nerves got the best of me and I really didn’t have to get so dizzy in that damn bath—is this another lesson? don’t get so wrapped up in nervous energy that you accidentally act in a self-defeating or destructive manner thinking that you’re doing the right thing?) I made a really fucking strong ass pot of espresso. Heaven. If you haven’t read the research, please do a quick search of the effects coffee has on lifting.



But, damn. I had very little time to warm up my squat. I literally squatted four weights—I didn’t even get to check my nervous system preparedness with the bar. Some douche bag guy started putting weight on the bar in the warm up room even though he wasn’t going to be squatting for another couple hours—what the fuck? i mean, seriously? I meekly requested to squat the weight he had put on before he could put more on, and he let me go. so I did a couple reps with 95 lbs, 135, 155, and 170. I swear it felt like I only had ten minutes to warm up.

Before I knew it, it was time to start. Wait a sec—nobody told me I’d be squatting on carpet. I’ve never squatted on carpet before. Rubber, yes. Wood, uh huh. Carpet, huh? I took the weight—187—out of the rack and struggled to get my feet where I wanted them. My toes weren’t quite at the angle I like and my heels wouldn’t budge. Well, it started to get heavy so I just went with it. It wasn’t comfortable, and it wasn’t a very efficient set up, but I couldn’t dance around on that damn carpet any longer. I’ve also never squatted with a very large, hairy, incredibly intense man hovering one inch away from my ass and yelling various encouragements in my ear, either. Now that was something I should have prepared for. Mildly erotic, moderately distracting.

I was also unfamiliar with the set up of the attempts. Although this was a pleasant surprise! It’s quite nice that each person takes her first attempt before anyone begins her second, regardless of weight on the bar. I was prepared more for something like olympic lifting where you may or may not have only two minutes between attempts, and the bitch before or after you can change the weight of her attempt to catch you when you are still tired or force you to wait until you are cold. lame. So I got a little more comfortable as the next few minutes progressed.

I was also unprepared for the jumps I had to make—2.5 kilos minimum—this meant I had to squat a weight that I thought would be too similar to my opener, or a weight that seemed like a little bit too big of a jump for me. Well, I chose 198 because, well, I don’t know. It turned out to be a bad choice and I missed my second and third attempts. Whoops. You know, it didn’t even feel heavy. I still was a bit shaky in my confidence to set up on that damn carpet (not making excuses, I promise–just an observation about my ‘feelings’ at the time, which as you may know, can get much in the way of a very able and prepared skeletomuscular system). I furiously looked down and searched the floor and stared at my feet as I set up, which can be seen in my videos. Not a very solid start to a squat.

By the time bench rolled around, I had become acquainted with the spotters. They nicknamed me smiley and were incredibly encouraging. It was so great to be surrounded by that intensity and positive energy. What a blast. As I mentioned, I’m not a huge fan of the bench. But in this case it was exhilarating! Again, the jumps were a little tricky for me. After benching what was just under my max, I had to attempt a weight almost five pounds above my max—a pretty big jump for me in an upper body lift, especially considering my attempts were under 100 lbs, meaning each jump was a higher percentage of my attempt to begin with. I normally make one or two pound increases on that lift from week to week. So, that’s definitely something to keep in mind for future training of max attempts in preparation for a meet. These choices can be tricky!

So, about the deadlift. Gosh, that was fun! I feel as though I may be writing too much and you may not actually be interested…but I gotta tell you about this part. So, I opened with 209. Easy. I jumped to 220, which I don’t think I’ve ever actually picked up. See, I hit 225 last June (you may have seen my hysterically excited post about it on the site). But since then, I have not once been able to surpass 215. Mental block? maybe? I don’t know, so I just went for it. EASY! So I was like, shit son—i’m gonna fuckin PR! Let’s do this! So I chose 231, a six pound PR because the jump seemed manageable and the PR didn’t seem too greedy. I was afraid if I got greedy I would be punished with failure. even easier!

The only problem….

I pissed my pants.

A LOT.

Remember that coffee I told you about? Well, yeah. It was now running down my thighs. Thankfully my singlet was tight enough to hold it in until I ran to the showers.

So when the weight was halfway up my thighs, all I could think about was:
1) CAN ANYBODY SEE THIS??!?!!! i can’t get it to stop!
2) if i’m going to piss my pants, i’m definitely not going to fail. i will not set this down. you know, you can’t just piss your pants on a failed attempt, it’s just not worth it.

I didn’t think about my form. I didn’t think about my back. (which on the video i think look lovely)

I just kept pulling and peeing. it was life altering.



So, that’s my day in a nutshell. I’m not sure what else to share, but I must say I learned a few things. Mainly, competing truly legitimizes training. It gave me a concrete goal, a time line to complete that goal, and a day to look forward to where I could share my hard work with my peers. Not only that, but I often get discouraged when I see the numbers other women are capable of pushing around. Not to be negative–I think it’s great–holy shit there are some strong women out there! But I sometimes feel as though my struggle to squat what others around me are benching for reps makes me look like I don’t try hard enough or train seriously enough. But when I was setting up for my lifts, it didn’t matter that my weights were a fraction of some of the other competitors’ lifts—the spotters treated me equally. So did the other lifters. They were all so supportive. They rooted for me just as much. They encouraged just as enthusiastically. They acknowledged that my attempts were heavy—maybe not heavy for them, but to me. At the same time, the crowd got behind every lifter that had the balls to get out there and try. It was a great time to cheer each other on as we all challenged ourselves.