Category Archives: Powerlifting

Your First Lifting Meet

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I started a little series called Your First Weightlifting Meet that went into detail how a trainee should prepare for their first Olympic Weightlifting meet. I will follow up that post with some general stuff you should know about the meet itself. There will also be a powerlifting version of this post, and it will be either written by or commented by my friends (and powerlifting veterans) Andy Baker and Phil Stevens.

Today, I’m just going to give very general guidelines for competing in either sport. This will not be comprehensive on purpose as it will help you start thinking about what will happen on meet day.

Get Someone To Handle You
No, they aren’t going to have their hands all over you, pervert. “Handling” someone at a meet means you are their platform coach, and you will be dictating their attempts. If you are going into your first meet, it would be preferable to have an experienced lifter helping you out. I understand that this is a luxury for most people, but if you can weasle your way into it, your experience will be profoundly different.

A good platform coach will count your attempts (weightlifting) and/or know where you stand in your flight (powerlifting). They can update you on this knowledge so that you know when to hit your warm-ups in the warm-up room, or they will even dictate your warm-ups. They will be your objective friend, deciding what jumps you should make in your subsequent attempts. If this is someone that has been working with you, they will also be able to help out with your technique. In other words, having a platform coach will make you feel better. I’ve been fortunate enough to coach with and be coached by Rippetoe at meets. He is very good at challenging his lifters when they need an extra kick in the ass. My friend Josh Wells has helped me out a lot as well, and I don’t know if I would have had the small amount of success I have had without them.

Be Smart
Choose an easy opener, especially on your opening lift of the competition. You should gracefully execute your first snatch and you should fucking annihilate your first squat. This will set the tone for the rest of your day. You will do something that you know you can do. This means you are hitting a routine snatch — something you’ve done in training plenty of times. In powerlifting, this should be something you know you could do for a triple. You want it to be easy so that you get on the board. If you bomb out (or miss all of your attempts on that lift), then you don’t total. Trust me, you don’t want this to happen.

Your second attempt can match a gym PR so that you can bring your competition total up. The third attempt should be your PR attempt. If you play it smart, then you’ll add to your total with each lift. Your goal in your first meet should be to go 6 for 6 in weightlifting and 9/9 in powerlifting. This means you’ll play it a bit conservative, but this is fine in your first meet. It leads me to my next point…

Have Fun
For fuck’s sake, you’re in your first lifting meet. You don’t want to go home disappointed, so purposely set yourself to enjoy it. You want to walk away knowing that there was more weight on the bar. If this happens, then you’ll already be thinking about PR’ing at the next meet. You’ll feel so razzed and accomplished. This is what is supposed to happen. The last thing you want is for your first meet to turn into a shit storm. So be conservative with your attempts. Open with something that is painstakingly easy. It should be so easy your teeth hurt. Do something moderate on the second attempt. This means that you would have had to have done it before. Third attempts are when you do something hard. Stick to this template. Have fun. For fuck’s sake.

Weight
Oh, yeah. Don’t cut weight. That’s silly. You don’t need one more thing to worry about if this is your first meet. If you think you are going to be competitive in a certain weight class, then you will deal with that later. Just sign up for the meet, don’t worry about your body weight, lift well, and then take stuff like this into consideration. Don’t be silly, just set yourself to have a good day.

The previously mentioned Andy Baker will also talk about how a novice would tailor their linear progression to get ready for a meet, so stay tuned for that.

USAPL Battle on the Border Recap

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USAPL Battle on the Border Recap

I was looking forward to this meet for a while since it is only the second USAPL meet I’ve been in. The week prior to the meet was my spring break, so my friends and I went to my Lakehouse, A.K.A. Dickhouse. It was dubbed “Dickhouse” due to the large amounts of sausage that were present the first few times. I spent the week maxin’, relaxin’, and tryin’ to eat as much as I could. On Friday my friend Dylan, who was also at the Dickhouse, and I started our drive up to Charlotte. 69 miles out Dylans car decides to break down around six o’clock. After this point everything that could gowrong WENT WRONG. The car broke down, then we had to get a tow truck to tow the car to a shop (which was closed), then we got a taxi to the closest rental car place — which happened to be the Greenville, SC airport, then we finished the drive up to Charlotte. In other words, it was the worst fucking day of my life. I fell asleep that night a little after midnight.

Second attempt squat


The morning of the meet Pat (another friend who would also compete in the meet), Dylan, and I ate some quick breakfast and were on our way. I will give you guys the recap of what happened to me, I won’t do Pat or Dylan any justice if I try to tell their story. So I went and weighed in and took care of some loose ends and I started to warm up. My dad drove up to the meet and gave me some encouragement in the warm-up room. As I warmed up the people at the meet couldn’t have been any nicer. All of the guys there were very respectful and courteous. My first attempt was 505. I have found the first squat of the meet is the most nerve-racking, but I got my first attempt no problem. The second attempt was at 534. I got real amped up for this one. Usually when I get ready for a max effort lift I begin to tear up before I approach the bar because of the adrenaline. One of the judges said that I had the most passion there for squatting. I nailed it. It felt easier than 505. My “limitless reserves of strength” gave me the courage to go for 570. With my dad saying go for it I decided to go big. Well I got into the bottom of the squat, got on my toes, and failed it miserably. Realistically I could have gotten around 555, but I went for the big number instead. Woops. 

First bench attempt


2 hours later after the Bench Only flights (which I am not a fan of) went, I was ready to blast my pecs. My opener was 358. My previous 1 RM was 368 and I crushed 358 like it was no problem. The next lift was 385. It felt really heavy. I got it about half way back up and my arms gave out. I attempted it again, but I just knew it wasn’t gonna happen. I wasn’t too excited to bench at this meet because in training my bench was around the same as my last meet. I had to reset it. But the shopowner and his son… that’s a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes. Nasty business, really. But, sure enough, I went on to the best lift ever. The deadlift.

Eight hours had gone by since my first squat attempt. I think everyone there was exhausted. I hit 562 pretty smoothly. I proceeded to go for 585 and failed it on two attempts. The third attempt actually came up higher than the first one. The meet was over. I didn’t do as well as I hoped with a total of 1,455, but I still won my division. I was so excited to show off my 70’s big shirt to the crowd to get in some free advertising, but instead in the locker room peeing into a cup while a grown man looked over my shoulder at my tiny dong. I was lucky enough to be drug tested. I came back up to find out that I had won first place. I gave a nice little cheer. I was happy. The end.

...nailed it


———-

So, essentially, AC had a weird meet. The week leading up to the meet may not have been ideal for eating and lifting, and then the day before the meet was a complete disaster. This battle of the border meet was quite popular, especially with the Bench Only division. It apparently took over three hours to get through all of the benching. Furthermore, it is hard to coach yourself on your attempts, and one should be more conservative than not. Because of the large jumps that were made, AC was unable to have some big PR’s like he is capable of doing — he will turn some heads at his next competition, I’m sure. Nevertheless, he still did well and won his division. And I’m proud of him, because he’s my beeeeeeest friiiiieeeeeend.

A guy named Steve that AC met at the meet (who also competed) was kind enough to film, edit, and post his lifts on YouTube. Thanks, Steve.

Monday

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“Quotes”

We just had a Starting Strength Seminar at the WFAC this past weekend. There were some 70’s Big readers there, so if they want to talk about how the weekend went, they can do so in the comments or send an e-mail that I can post. They all lifted well and there should be some good pictures…eventually.

In the mean time, here is a sweet video of AC squatting 495 for a triple — but the good part is at the very end. Oh, and if you assholes start sending videos or pictures, then I don’t have to keep posting videos of us (some of you have, and they are in line.

495×3 from A.C. on Vimeo.

Gary Gibson – Part 4

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The 2010 USAPL Florida State Championship
by Gary Gibson

The meet directors confirmed that I was not large enough to be considered an adult male. The first flight was composed of all the ladies and men in the 82.5 kg class and below, which meant that I got to lift with the women and the teenagers…the women and children. Ah well, if we were on a sinking ship, I would have made it out first!

It had been a very long drive from Geneva, Florida, to Fort Lauderdale. My sister and her boyfriend went along for the ride. Baby sis operated the camera at the meet.

Michael and Gail at 2010 USAPL FL State Meet

Michael and Gail at 2010 USAPL FL State Meet

That’s her voice you hear the loudest because it’s closest to the camera’s mic.

I only had her record the squat and deadlift attempts because my bench is never really worth recording and I was planning on playing it very conservatively on the bench for this meet. I’d not made any clear progress on it since my last meet and just planned to match my top weight from last time. Turns out I should have gone a little heavier. The 105 kg/ 231 was really, really easy.

I played it conservatively with my squats and went 5 kilos under my gym best, mainly because I wanted my last squat to be pretty and not get me all bent over. Squatted 418 on my last attempt and made it look pretty good. I matched my gym best on my second deadlift attempt and then bested that by 2.5 kilos on the last. I’d wanted to get in at least one pull over 500 lbs, but I might have done even better if I’d made the second attempt lighter and then went a bit higher on the last. Oh well, I’m not complaining about the 506.

I didn’t quite hit my targets of a 200 kilo SQ and 240 kilo deadlift, but as usual I still enjoyed myself thoroughly. I love powerlifting meets. I love lifting in competition. I love training and competing more than anything else outside of black pornograhy on the internet.

A real highlight of this meet was getting to meet 70sBig member and ridiculously strong deadlifter AJ. AJ’s about my height and currently just a few pounds heavier, but he is much, much stronger and a lot more pleasant to be around than I usually am.

I also got to see a few records set. April Shumaker came down from Minnesota and set an American bench press record on her second attempt…then broke that on her third! “Little Supergrrrl” powerlifter Maura Shuttleworth came down with April and her family and lifted strong and looked ridiculously cute doing it.

There were quite a few men and women competitors in their seventies. My heart swelled. Barbell training is as essential to a complete life as a good dog and it’s good to see people taking it up even in their later years. One of women in the Masters 70-79 division was the mother of another competitor at the meet in the men’s Masters 50-59. Her 50s-something son deadlifted well over 600 lbs and benched something over 500. The meet results aren’t up yet, but I believe those were also records of some sort.

Aftermath
Oh, my aching quads. Immediately after the meet, my hamstrings were singing and now two days later, my quads are burning. Upper body is feeling no pain because I just didn’t push the bench hard at all since I’d fail to make any measurable bench progress in the last cycle. I just matched my best bench from the last meet and left plenty on the platform. I’ve already dived right into linear progression with a fairly heavy bench day precisely because I didn’t tax my bench at the meet. But I did tax my squat and deadlift so even a light SQ x5x3 with 335 was fairly hard today. I’m hoping lots of meat and milk will sort me out soon. I’m going to take a few days off of squats, too, then hit 355 and go from there next week.

Next time we catch up with each other, I hope to have broken the 200-lb barrier.

Till then.

Competition

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“You can’t just go around killing people!”
“Why not? I’m a Terminator.”

At 70’s Big I have always encouraged people to compete in something so that training can be pinpointed to a goal. Competing is a lot of fun, it makes training more interested, and it gives you more of a sense of purpose than just exercising (which is what you do if you say, “I just want to get better at everything, tee hee!”).

Well, if you ever were interested in competing in the barbell sports (powerlifting or weightlifting), then you better get acquainted with the rules.

USA Powerlifting (USAPL) is a member of the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF). Their rule book is found here.

USA Weightlifting (USAW) is a member of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF). Their rule book is found here.

It’s a good idea to become acquainted with the rules so that you don’t have a booboo in a meet. Kinda like Jacob did on his third attempt squat…

Nevertheless, nice job, Jacob. I will let him recap the meet in the comments.