Weightlifting Stuff

I told Justin I would try to put something together highlighting the USAW Nationals while he was in Australia.

The weekend prior to Nationals was Junior Worlds. Heres a video of 85kg class Mike Nackoul killing it in Malaysia. Mike previously did 130/170 in Feb at Junior Nationals, and 140/180 in training, so he had an awesome meet in Malaysia and placed 7th overall. It’s an honor to be able to train with him occasionally.

 

 

you can read more about Mike’s trip (including his 150 flip-flop powerclean the day after) here:

http://www.8weeksout.com/2011/07/17/junior-world-weightlifting-championships/

Now some highlights from USAW Senior Nationals

Amongst questionable judging, one lift in particular really stood out amongst the women, Chioma Amaechi had a poor performance and bombed out at Junior Worlds the weekend before

‎”With two lifts remaining for Amaechi, the two-time Junior World Team member had a 16kg gap to make up in order to earn the World Team slot. After matching her PR of 132kg on the second lift, Amaechi went for it all on her final lift as she requested a nine kilogram addition to the bar.”

 

 

Amongst the men:

Chad Vaughn (77kg) won his class with a 150kg Snatch and 185kg Clean & Jerk. Chad missed the jerk on 191, which would have been a new American Record.

Kendrick Farris (85kg) won his class with a 157kg Snatch and 199kg Clean & Jerk. Kendrick narrowly missed the jerk at 204, which would have also been a new American Record.

Jon North (94kg) won his class with lifts of 160kg and 186kg (can’t find the videos for some reason)

Donny Shankle (105kg) won his class with lifts of 156kg and 203kg

and Finally, Pat Mendes won the 105+ class with lifts of 177 and 212
 

 
as you can see, on a scale of 1-10 take it or leave it, I’m around a 15 on figuring out how to embed videos.

 

Strength Training Is Love

When the 70s big gang went to USAPL Raw Nationals earlier this year, I met a girl there named Becca. She was a pretty lady lifting in the women’s session, and I was paying a lot of attention to her pretty much as soon as she entered my field of vision. I was paying so much attention to her that Justin had to remind me, “You realize you’re currently at a meet, right?” as he was pacing me through my squat warm ups.



Many of you won’t be surprised at my response – “Irrelevant, I can squat 200k in my sleep. First attempt will be ez pz.”



“It is a chore to be your friend,” Justin said.



Justin would use that line a lot throughout the weekend, like when he asked me how he could get my adrenaline going before my third attempt lifts:



“Just tell me I’ll never see her again.”



“Thin ice, Brent Kim. Thin ice.”



To add to the fact that this chick was pretty, she was also a competent lifter with some solid mechanics. I asked her what she finished with after her squats, and she told me that she didn’t know – her parental units, who were handling her, wouldn’t tell her what she was lifting on the platform because she has a habit of over thinking the weight. But when she went in blind, and just methodically repeated what she did in the warm up room, she performed well. I knew instantly that I loved everything about her. She finished with a 286lbs squat, 171lbs bench, and 303lbs deadlift in the women’s 181lbs class. I was sold. Didn’t think I could ask for digits because she was with her parental units, but Justin encouraged me to tell her about 70s big – “Do it or I’ll do it for you” – and I would try to stalk her on facebook. I would ultimately fail, and feel that I would never see her again, but she ended up finding me and after a month or two of chatting decided we should hang out.



We’re a pretty typical, gross couple now, i.e. holding hands in public, which I think is awesome, and we decided it’d be a pretty cool date if I came to lift in Maryland’s state powerlifting meet with her.



I ended up not being able to lift with her because of the 60 lifter cap, and I was a guest lifter so in-state lifter entries take priority over mine, but I still went to see her and help out at the meet.



I loaded and spotted for probably a third of the meet, which was a fair amount of work, partially because a lot of state records were being broken at this meet and there was a fairly strong talent pool present, but pretty satisfying at the end of the day when it was all over. This is the first meet I’ve ever been to in which I did not lift. Met quite a few people from 70sbig, and you can hear all about their exploits in the comment threads of previous posts. Most notable was something that JMOvechkin said to me as I was passing by, “Spotting isn’t a sport,” which I thought was FUCKING awesome.



His brother also asked me if he should take his third deadlift attempt, after rating his second attempt at 501lbs to be a 9/10 difficulty.



“You’re asking me if you should just stop at your second attempt?”



“Yeah.”



“Uhhh I’m never going to tell you to not take a third attempt, but I’m reckless. Quitting isn’t a sport.”



“Yeah,” he answered, “And I’m not a quitter.”



Boom? Boom.



He ended up pulling 507lbs for his final attempt of the meet.



Becca, who was the main motivation for me being at the meet, also produced a strong performance despite not making weight by 2lbs. She dropped 11lbs in about a week, but started cutting too late. Throw in about a hundred other factors that would screw with her preparation in the final days leading up to the meet, and things didn’t look good. She ended up lifting as an extra, but would break some PRs despite horrendous rest and recovery.



I asked her to type a write up for her meet experience, but she declined and asked me to do it instead, so –



She went 9 for 9, and squatted 281lbs pretty easily. Her squats were iffy in the weeks leading up to the meet so her step-dad and coach was conservative here, but she PRed by 11lbs in the bench press with 182lbs, and 17lbs in the deadlift with 320lbs. I loaded and spotted all of her attempts and it was pretty sweet to watch my girlfriend wreck shit. She brought some intensity into her third attempts, which is apparently rare – Becca says that she’s never made noises when she lifted, but she was pretty fierce, especially with her third attempt bench and deadlift. Her efforts would earn her best lifter. I’m pretty proud of her, and seeing her commit to every single lift reaffirmed that I like everything about her. Watching her on the platform reminded me why my heart yearned for her in the beginning. You can tell a lot about a girl from how she performs under the bar at a meet.



It would have been a lot cooler if I was lifting at this meet, but can’t really complain that I still got to help with keeping the meet operational. “Giving back to the sport” is pretty pretentious and sentimental, and Brent Kim doesn’t really do sentimental, but generally speaking, raw powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting wouldn’t survive in the US without a lot of volunteer effort. Running meets is a lot of work, and in Olympic weightlifting it’s pretty common that meet organizers lose money with the event. But the athletes need to compete, and someone has to put in the money and hours and not expect to get very much in return. It was a good experience to be on the other side of things, “the strength training community” means a lot more when a bunch of powerlifters work together to run a meet.



In short, strength training is love, quitting isn’t a sport, and help your fellow man.



Delta Command out. (When I called Justin to let him know I would be writing an article for the site, I told him, “Hunter Two-One this is Delta Command, we’ll be taking over operations on the battlefield until the situation’s been brought under control.”)

Night of the Living Dead Recap

Night of the Living Dead, Lifters Without Borders, and My First 600+ Pull
by: Stephen Winburn (blog)

This Saturday I had the honor of not only meeting some of the best lifters in the World, but also competing against them. Many of the lifters would have remained unknown to me were it not for the vision of Alex Campbell and the affronts of a group of people who pulled the Night of the Living Dead from the clutches of the USAPL, though I call it home. The opening of these doors brought a group with greater depth than could have been hoped for from a single federation to lift against one another and forged friendships and camaraderie where monolifts, the number of plys a man, or woman, wears, and whether or not he, or she, is subject to OMTs.

From across the country, and indeed across the seas, lifters descended upon Elizabethton, TN to bend over, grab a piece of steel laden with steel discs, and pick it up all to the applause of hundreds of fans in an unlit high school gym with smoke effects and deafening music. We call it the dead lift, a lift forgotten in the era of lifting equipment. From the smallest, Haydin Spradlin at only 62 pounds and still bearing the load of childhood, to the largest, Andy Bolton weighing a staggering 335 pounds. There were many with world titles and world records to their credit across the diaspora of federations powerlifting now has the sadness of trying to piece together. Great lifts were made and great lifts were missed, but everyone brought only their best and received the cheers of a frenzied crowd as they strode to the stage and faced the PRs of yesterday and the aspirations of the day of competition.

For the women first place was taken by Natalie Freed with a pull of 352.7 pounds at a mere 119 pounds of body weight and second place went to Rhonda Clark who pulled 440.9 pounds missing her third attempt at 463. The men saw the much-anticipated battle of Mr. Andy Bolton and Mr Tom Eiseman. This year Andy Bolton took the win with a Schwartz score of 214.9 via a third attempt pull of 964.5 pounds, wearing a singlet, a belt, and enough chalk to coat a smaller mans body. Mr. Eiseman made a second pull of 755.1, giving him a Schwartz score of 213.38, missing a third attempt at 771.6 pounds, which would have given him the win with a Schwartz score of 218.05, had Mr. Bolton not pulled at least 979.05 pounds.

The other twenty-one competitors did not fail to impress either, and I am humbly including myself in the same group. The complete list of the results, in pounds, is given after the video of my meet and pictures of the competitors, their families,, friends, and some of the people who made this all run smoothly.

For my part I had the pleasure of pulling my first 600+ pull with 606. Although I was unhappy with my training for the last few weeks to a month, and there was a twinge on my last warm-up in my low back, I conquered the challenge that I had set for myself on the platform and look forward to something even greater next year. I would like to thank all the lifters, Alex Campbell, the fans cheering, and the Elizabethton high school powerlifting club for making it such a great experience. I would also like to thank the woman who not only carried my son while I was off chasing dragons, but carried him in her womb until the moment Elijah came into my life. You are my world and without you I have no purpose.

2010 World Weightlifting Championships

The 2010 World Weightlifting Championships were over the last couple weeks in Antalya, Turkey. Unfortunately coverage is dismal for us Americans and the only videos we have are what we can scrounge on the internet. I’ll recap how the American lifters did and then highlight some other lifters.
You can find IWF results here, and you can see all of the medal winners here.
If you’re new to weightlifting, the number before their name is their weight class. Then their results are snatch/clean and jerk/total. You’ll also notice (hopefully?) that it’s in kilograms.

48kg Kelly Rexroad placed 17th with 74/84/155
58kg Amanda Sandoval placed 15th with 86/109/195
63kg Natalie Burgener placed 12th with 96/114/210
69 kg Layfield Danica Rue placed 19th with 90/115/205
75kg Erin Wallace placed 18th with 98/117/215
75kg Rachel Crass (who periodically posts on this site) placed 27th with 83/106/189
+75kg Sarah Robles placed 10th with 111/140/251

62kg Alex Lee placed 20th with 115/145/260
77kg Chad Vaughn placed 20th with 144/175/319 (I’ve met Chad a few times, he’s a good guy)
85kg Matt Bruce placed 25th with 150/180/330
85kg Kendrick Farris missed his three snatches and didn’t total. He’ll come back from it — we’re still rooting for you, Kendrick.
105kg Casey Burgener placed 25th with 162/189/351
105kg Donny Shankle (who is supposed to be crazy?) placed 31st with 155/189/344
+105kg Pat Judge placed 13th with 173/223/396
+105kg Collin Ito placed 25th with 146/200/346

Other Notable Lifters
My favorite lifter Dmitriy Klokov is always after the elusive gold medal. I couldn’t find what actually happened, but Klokov was in a heated battle with Marcin Dolega for the gold medal. I don’t know who attempted the 227 clean and jerk first, but Klokov missed it for his final C&J attempt (it was his only miss that day). In the video, he looks pretty pissed about some potential plate wobbling that caused him to lose it (it’s hard to see, but there doesn’t seem to be anything noticeable). Dolega hit the 227 either before or after Klokov to win the gold medal on bodyweight (they tied in the total). Klokov came away with the gold in the snatch, but the silver in the C&J and total. Dolega won the overall gold, gold in the C&J, and bronze in the snatch. I hope we eventually get some video on this battle, but here’s Klokov’s footage (it’s distorted vertically):



Here is a video from the crowd of Chigishev snatching 210 for gold. It looks pretty damn hard, yet it’s still 1kg shy of his PR from 2005. Chigishev bombed out of the C&J and therefore didn’t total. Bummer.



Those were just some quick highlights. If you’d like to add to the discussion by linking some of your favorite performances from the world championships, post them in the comments.

Nationals Vid and COW

Nationals from A.C. on Vimeo.

Comment of the Week
From the post about Brent

tonypop Says:
July 29th, 2010 at 4:06 pm e

I’m currently planning a trip this winter to go snowboarding down Brent’s traps.

I read this next comment a second ago and decided to do a double COW this week (since last week I didn’t do one).

High Voltage Says:
July 30th, 2010 at 6:45 pm e

Also, I met a boy on the street today. He was a friendly child, but he was very sad about the economy and seemed to be down on his luck. He asked me if it was true, the rumors he heard, that Brent Kim would be taking his Shrug Tour cross-country this summer.

I told him that all we can do is hope.

The count so far:
For those of you keeping score:
1 – Jacob
1 – StonewallWells
1 – tonypop
1 – High Voltage