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.