Non-Sanctioned Meet Recap

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Justin

The following is a post by AC. This past weekend he handles some lifters in a non-sanctioned powerlifting meet. I talked to him throughout the meet, and there were some things that occurred that ticked him off pretty well. Here goes…
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This past weekend, the college I currently attend held its annual “Show of Strength”. It is a school-run event directed by employees of the university’s rec center. I had a few people I coach (for free) lifting in the meet so I decided to go and help them. This was the school’s 5th annual meet and you would think they are pretty proficient at running a competition by now, right? Wrong . . . Wrong. The meet director had no prior experience in powerlifting and the head judges were incompetent as well. I’ll get to that soon. I had a bad taste in my mouth to begin with because of the people running the show, but during the rules briefing my suspicions of a poorly run meet were revealed to true.

Right off the start this 150 pound young male puts on his microphone to welcome us to the “5th annual show of strength”. He goes on about how the each lifter will have three tests to complete. Yes, tests. Not lifts. He calls each lift a test, rarely calling them the lift that they actually are. This was really annoying (Note by Justin: I’ll vouch for how annoyed AC was. I was on the phone with him during this briefing, and he was livid about the usage of goofy terminology). After that one of the head judges proceeds to call the lifters over to one side of the bleachers for the rules briefing. He goes on for a few minutes on why we should listen to him in the first place; he has experience in “strength and conditioning”, worked with some college football team, and has helped the L.A. Angels. This obviously means he knows lots about powerlifting. The briefing goes on for a few more minutes and consisted of three demos on how to do each lift and what to listen for with the commands.

Now in my experience you do not show up to a powerlifting meet not knowing how to squat, bench, and deadlift so it wouldn’t make sense that the lifts had to be described and taught to the lifters. I can understand explaining the commands, but not getting (crappy) tips on how to actually perform the lifts.

The warm-ups start and fifteen or so lifters have ten minutes to warm up. It’s ok though; there are three squat racks and a smith machine available to warm up on. Yes, they were told to use the smith machine to warm-up with. The silliness kept increasing.

The squatting started, so far so good. The bars were loaded in ascending order just like any other meet. There were few enough people to were all the weight classes went in one flight. My friend Brittney, who I coach, crushed all three of her attempts on squats, so that was pretty epic. When my other friends were lifting later in the flight I noticed some inaccurate judging. The more the “Tests” went on the more the judging degraded. Some squats were two or three inches high and they were getting the thumbs up. Just about no one, besides the people I coach, listened to all of the commands. The “Rack” command apparently became an option. Even the judge who gave the rack command was accepting attempts when lifters didn’t listen to him. The guy who gives the fucking commands! Can you believe that?

The biggest squat was 460 from a guy who I overheard weigh in at 199. His was a high bar squat that was 3 inches above parallel and he didn’t wait for the rack command, but he got two enthusiastic thumbs ups from both judges. My friend Dylan squatted just fine, but Justin S. got called for a “double-bounce” on his first attempt. I guess it was invisible to my eyes. He nailed his second and third attempt. Justin also got held at the top of the squat for about 7 seconds because the judge’s thoughts were lost (probably thinking about how good his biceps look), so I had to yell to remind this fool to give the rack command. He eventually did.

I am not going to go into too much detail on the bench press. My friend Taylor made a prediction that only the people we had coached would actually follow any of the commands. Actually, one other guy actually followed the rules, but just one. The judges gave thumbs up for people that didn’t wait and the spotters kept taking the bar before the judge gave the signal. There was a multitude of things that went wrong on bench. The silliness was accepted by the inexperienced staff.

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Justin S. actually follows commands on this bench attempt

The deadlift…oh jeez. First, the judge only gave an auditory signal of down at the top of the lift (and did not give a hand signal) which is almost impossible to hear when you are actually deadlifting a max attempt. You were also allowed to drop the bar from your hands. So everyone who deadlifted “a lot of weight” got to drop the bar like a bunch of goons. Some of the ugliest lifting was occurring at this point in the meet with horribly rounded backs. Brittney, Dylan, and Justin all PR’d on their pulls which was awesome. I’m so proud of them, AND they all lowered the bar back down as well. Gustavo (who posts here) was also there and I believe he had some PR’s as well. Dylan pulled 575, and then on his second attempt they mis-loaded the bar which caused him to miss the lift. This was disappointing. There was another guy who pulled 575 at 199, and it was pretty impressive.

All in all this meet was horribly run, the judging was poor, and most of all I was really hungry (Note by Justin: This means AC was growly).

–AC
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Instead of looking at this as a big bashing article, look at it as a warning to any competitions you may find yourself in. If you’ve been following the site, you know that we really preach on putting yourself on the line in some form of competition. However, there are federations that have a sanctioned set of rules for a reason. As with licenses in certifications, it guarantees some baseline competence with the quality of the product. In this case, a sanctioned meet from a credible organization dictates how the lifts will be judged, and some baseline requirements for how the meet is run. Imagine if you were beaten by the lifter who was allowed to ignore the judges’ commands and squat three inches high — you’d be pretty pissed if incompetence prevented you from winning. Also, the more experienced the meet director is, the more smooth the meet will run. Be cognizant of these little details so that you can get the best out of your competitive spirit.

Amarillo SC Powerlifting Meet

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Justin

My friends Ryan and Heidi at Amarillo Strength and Conditioning hosted their first powerlifting meet back on March 13th. If I recall correctly, they were looking to get the event sanctioned, but by doing so it would have delayed the date. They just wanted to have a competition, and they weren’t worried about it being officially official, at least this first time out.

They had 20 people participate and Neil Eddins, who holds some national Masters powerlifting records in NASA, stopped by to help out. The meet went well, and they had a lot of their lifters set PR’s, and they raised some money for the Rockwell Road Baptist Church Children’s Ministry.

I commend the Amarillo SC crew for having this meet for a few reasons. First, it got a lot of their lifters to lift in a meet environment. This is good for the lifter and coach, and everyone learns from doing it. The lifter learns all that stuff about themselves, the coach learns all kinds of stuff about handling lifters at the meet, and then the meet director learns about running a meet — all important things to learn if you’re going to be involved in this kind of stuff. Some of you may be thinking, “Well, it wasn’t sanctioned, so it doesn’t count, so what’s the point?” I think it’s good that they ran a meet once before they did it for real. This way they won’t screw up the official one, they’ll have the experience, and they will be ready for it. It was also a nice, harmless way to introduce their lifters into competition since they didn’t have to travel away from their own gym, and probably didn’t have to pay a bunch of money for something that they hadn’t done before.

In any case, everything went well, according to Ryan when we talked about it. I’ve never been to Amarillo SC, but Ryan frequents the comments and always has good things to say about their lifters. I will be visiting Amarillo SC on April 24th for the first 70’s Big Workshop (more on this tomorrow). Below are the top finishers in the two weight classes per gender (they had light and heavy weights) as well as a video compilation (Ryan apologizes for some sideways shots, it was his first video — oh and the high squats were red lighted, so don’t worry about bitching about them).

All results were determined with the Wilks Formula.’

Top 2 Lightweight Males (<185 lbs)
1. Brent Gunnels
BS of 375
BP of 330
DL of 450

2. Jason Rel
BS of 375
BP of 250
DL of 405.

Top 2 Lightweight Female (<145 lbs)

1. Heidi Coffman
BS of 200
BP of 130
DL of 260

2. Whitney Rel
BS of 175
BP of 95
DL of 200

Heavyweight Male Winners (>186 lbs)
1. Brent Story
BS of 500
BP of 340
DL of 500

2. Grayson Benson
BS of 385
BP 0f 275
DL of 470

Top 2 Female Heavy Weights (>146 lbs)
1. Tina Lucero
BS of 220
BP of 135
DL 0f 340

2. Lindsey Criswell
BS of 230
BP of 125
DL of 250

The Overall Winners were Brent Story and Tina Lucero

Your First Lifting Meet

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Justin

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

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Justin

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

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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.

Your First Weightlifting Meet – Part 1

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Justin

Thankfully some of you are now committed to compete. This is good. Now we are going to talk about what you are going to be doing in preparation of that meet. We won’t get through all of it today, but consider it a little series to look forward to. I just want to go over the last week of training before a weightlifting meet. My friend Phil Stevens (who is in town right now with Charles Staley) will be our source for getting ready for a powerlifting meet.

You should be set up on some kind of strength program. If you are a novice, you should be on some kind of linear progression to get the most out of your body’s potential for strength gain from a local and systemic standpoint. Even a weightlifter should be taking advantage of some kind of linear progression, and it is easy to derive programs from the Starting Strength model.

What your program will consist of is dependent on if you know the lifts or not. Go back and read some of my posts on Getting Into Weightlifting, because you need to be taught the lifts. The programming for an early level weightlifter is dependent on so many variables, and it leaves the scope of this post (perhaps it will come later if you want to hear what I have to say). In any case, the lifts need to be learned and you need to have a decent amount of strength (which is sort of a relative term, but I digress). We are going to assume you are set up on some kind of strength program that incorporates the lifts. If you are not currently doing the lifts, you should probably progressively add them to your program to eventually look something like this. Easing your way into doing more snatches and jerks is a good idea so that your joints and structures can adapt to the new kinds of movement. I know I have had acromioclavicular joint (there is a little ligament that holds your collar bone to the shoulder blade, and it is near that pointy tip of your shoulder on top — for you non-anatomy folks) problems when I go from not jerking a lot to jerking a lot (stay focused in that sentence). It would prevent me from jerking heavy — usually nothing over 120 kg. I never had an issue with my wrists or elbows, but some may, so it is better to be safe than sorry.

Bill Starr said: Patience + Persistence = Strength

Now, let’s assume you are on a strength program that incorporates the lifts (my novices use the program I linked above). You really don’t need to do any tapering until the week of the meet because you are a novice. Tapering is something that will be dependent on the training advancement of the athlete (meaning what stage they are in their requirement for adaptable stresses) as well as other things like possible injuries or overtraining. However, in most situations, you will only need to change your program the week of the meet, especially if you are a novice.

The week of the meet you have a basic outline. Assuming the meet is Saturday, you will go heavier on Monday, medium on Wednesday, with an option of going very light on Thursday. Monday can either be a “max out day” if it isn’t clear what the person will open with or if there is potential to easily hit a weight that is higher than what the lifter has done in training (this person would be less experienced with the Olympic lifts, or they are still progressing quite well). If they are a bit more advanced, then the lifter would work up to the weight that they want to open with conservatively.

The opener for the snatch should be something the lifter can smoke and annihilate, especially if this is their first meet. You want confidence, you want ease, you want to put on a show. Shit, it doesn’t even matter if you are only power snatching and cleaning — that is preferable with some novices. I will say that again — you do NOT have to squat your snatch or clean. I see lots of new weightlifters unnecessarily squatting their lifts, which makes them slow and inefficient. There is no rule that demands you squat, and if the weight is light enough, there is no reason to do so. In my first meet, I power snatched 115, and 120, and did not finish my pull when I missed 125. So open with something easy, and power snatching is okay.

Work up to something that is very reasonable for the first attempt on that Monday training session. Do the same with clean and jerk — because you do NOT want to miss your openers. You don’t want to get into a rut at the meet, especially if this is a hobby for you. You want to set yourself up to be successful instead of being stupid and going for weights that are too much of a challenge. Remember that what you did in training means jack shit, you have to have it count in a sanctioned competition. Your third attempt may even be something under what your gym PR is, and that’s okay, because your goal, especially in the first meet, is to hit your lifts, have a good time, and feel confident that you had more left in you on that day. I promise it will be better than bombing out (I have had both scenarios, just trust me on this one).

Wednesday’s training session consists of working up to your last warm-up. This means that in both Monday and Wednesday, you are going to warm-up as you will on Saturday. For most people this means they will be taking less warm-ups, so just go ahead and get used to that on Monday and Wednesday. The idea on this day is to not miss any reps, continue the high you got from Monday’s training session, hit an easy last warm-up, and call it a day. One of my lifters, 15 year old Kyle, had a really good Monday and Wednesday training session. He didn’t PR on Monday or anything, but everything was running smoothly. This gave him excellent confidence while going into the Bill Starr Memorial Meet, and he PR’d on snatch, clean and jerk, and total. He had a really good day because we handled his week delicately to get his confidence high. I was extremely proud of him.

Thursday’s training session is only going to be some light stuff. If it were me, I would only snatch around 80 and clean and jerk 120 or so, and I did 130/157 at the meet. In other words, just some nice, easy light stuff to get some technique practice. If the lifter has specific cues they have been working on, this is the time to work on it. Realistically, this day isn’t necessary. If you need another day of technique to be comfortable, then keep it, but I dropped it out of my training (because I wanted my AC joints to rest).

That would constitute what you could do to prepare the week of the meet. There are plenty of ways to go about this, but I have found this little method works pretty well to get a beginner ready for a meet. However, the whole thing is dependent on the training program leading into this week. Over the next few days, I will get into what will happen the day of the meet, as well as some other considerations.