I first saw Preston at the 2010 Texas State and he’s…grown a bit. Now he’s 19 years old and kicking ass in USA Powerlifting. He’s a 120kg/264 lb lifter who competes in single-ply gear and has recently squatted 821 and deadlifted 650 at Junior Worlds. His raw bench is about 550. He ended up benching 300kg/661 at the bench only meet on Sunday and missed a second attempt 312.5/688.94.
Preston is friggin’ stout, and he’s a really nice guy. Again, there are a lot of good people in powerlifting. Keep training hard, Preston, and good luck.
Sorry folks, there’s not Q&A. I’ll also save my reading list for next week. There are still more posts that will be trickling out today from the Arnold including an interview with the young Preston Turner, the Arnold Strongman Classic Finals, the bodybuilding finals, some clips of Arnold, clips of me dicking around with one of the booths, random expo footage, Jeff Martone, and Mark Bell (probably put Bell’s up next week).
This post is where you should tell us about your weekly training PR’s and training updates. You may have some overall training goals for 2012, but now reverse engineer that and tell us what your goals for March are.
I know you guys really wanted me to harass people, but most of everyone I met was really nice (even the fitness models –> more on that in another post). This was some giant eastern European or Russian guy who was competing in the amateur strongman competition on Friday morning. I can’t remember his name and can’t hear it well in the video, but he was a big dude.
Some people haven’t seen a warm-up room at a meet, much less one at a national or international level meet. Here are some videos we recorded on Friday morning before the fellas lifted in the powerlifting meet.
Here is the powerlifting warm-up room:
Here is the USA Weightlifting warm-up rooms. There was one right behind the stage and another across the hall.
Edit: I messed up the kilo/pound stuff on bench, thanks to Tsypkin for correction
Squat
277.5/611.78
290/639.33
300/661.38
Bench
157.5/347.2
165/363.8
170/374.8
Deadlift
270/595.24
295/650.36
320/705.47
790kg/1741.6 lbs Total
I met Chris when I moved to Texas in January of 2009. A few weeks earlier he had severely injured his shoulder in a weightlifting meet when attempting a jerk. He probably should have had surgery, and it was never properly diagnosed. Over the months we became friends, I rehabbed him back from his shoulder injury (starting with a 15 pound bar), and we became training partners. Chris weighed about 245 to 250, was squatting in the low 400s, deadlifting in the mid 400s, and literally was pressing and benching zero pounds due to the shoulder injury. There was even a three month period in 2009 where he couldn’t squat due to a hip injury.
I say all of this because he’s come a long way. People may look at him and just say, “Dude is a beast, a freak!” He had a nice base of strength, but he was pretty far off from a 600 squat or a 700 deadlift. He told me his goal was to deadlift 600×5, a hefty goal at the time for a guy pulling 445×5. Chris has trained hard every week of his life since I met him and has made consistent progress. To me, Chris embodies the 70’s Big attitude. It’s not that my other friends don’t have this attitude (they do) or that they haven’t made progress (they have), it’s just that Chris has been my closest friend during his journey in strength training and I’m proud as shit to be friends with him (the same goes for Mike, Alex, and Brent). One time his dad asked him, “What drives you to in powerlifting?” Chris said, “I just love it.” Remember that line.
