What’s the point in experiencing life if you can’t tell the story?
This past Saturday six lifters from the WFAC competed at the USA Powerlifting Texas State Meet. I coach five of them and handled those five at the meet. These lifters will be your cast for the story that I will be telling over the next few days. The meet itself was a marathon – weigh-ins started at 7:00 AM and lifting didn’t stop until twelve hours later. USAPL allows some gear to be worn, but all of my lifters were completely raw (with belts). Of the five guys that lifted, three of them were able to set six Texas State Records.
Throughout Friday evening and all day Saturday, I put all of my energy into preparing these five men to do well in each of their lifts. The meet had two platforms, so two flights were lifting at a time. There were eight total flights, and four rounds of flights. This means that at times, I had two lifters lifting at a time, and most of the time I had two lifters taking attempts on the platforms while two other lifters were in the warm-up room. I made sure they were all prepared for the task before them, which at times meant I ran or sprint back and forth between the lifting area and the warm-up room. When they weren’t lifting, I was concerned with their conservation of energy physically, mentally, and emotionally since it was apparent that this meet was going to take all day (I think I told all five of them to “go sit down” at least 300 times). I was able to eat once during the twelve hours and take a few bathroom breaks, but other than that my focus was on my lifters, who are all my friends (three of them are some of my best friends). I can honestly say that throughout the day my lifters and I experienced every emotion a person can experience in sport, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. This is our story.
To understand the story, you’ll need to understand the characters, and these dudes are characters indeed.
Brent was the first person I had ever seen at the WFAC when I first set foot on the grounds. Back then he was a smallish Olympic lifter (5’5”) with a Korean afro of tizzy hair wedged on top of his glasses. Brent and I got along pretty well over the past 16 months (everybody likes Brent), and he is one of my best friends. Since last year he has grown (with the help of a linear progression) into a deadly strong Asian. It took me two or three months to convince Brent, an experienced Olympic weighlifter, to actually do the linear progression, but he finally flourished in size and strength (he routinely squats in the low 400’s at a bodyweight less than 180 pounds). Lately he has been on an intermediate type program that we devised to increase his strength while working on the Olympic lifts. Brent was competing in the 82.5 kg/181 lbs. class at this meet.
Mike is another best friend of mine who moved to Wichita Falls in the fourth quarter of last year because the Air Force told him so. When he got in town, he was quick to admit that everything he did in training over the previous four years was based on what he learned from EliteFTS. Nothing wrong with that, except Mike was lifting like a geared lifter and had never been coached before (and hadn’t ever really trained with anyone before, either). Slowly over time Rip and I broke his technique down, taught him our method of squatting and deadlifting (which I believe is for the best for the non-equipped lifter), and I switched him from a 5-3-1 to a linear progression. The 5-3-1 is a very good program, but Mike is young (24) and thus can handle more frequent lifting and volume (and needed the practice anyway). He has since moved onto the Texas Method but was still linearly progressing his presses (the press is a new movement to him and his bench is his lagging lift). After his PT test earlier this year, Mike went heavy and hard with his eating and gained 10 or 15 pounds – he topped out the 110 kg (242 lbs) class at this meet at 6’1″ tall. His goals included a 500 pound squat and at least a 550 deadlift (he’ll pull 600 soon).
Chris is very, very close friend of mine and is easily the strongest person I have ever coached. When I met him, he was nursing a pretty serious shoulder injury from the 2009 Texas State Weightlifting meet (hurt it on the jerk — he couldn’t lift a ten pound bar overhead). Over the last year we have been training partners and best friends – having a good training partner is one of the most intimate relationships that two dudes can have with one another (with the obligatory “no homo”). Early last year, Chris was deadlifting in the low to mid 400’s for five and we progressed that up to mid 500’s (he has pulled over 600 pounds before this meet). Also his bodyweight has gone up from around 245 to 285, and then back down to around 275 (at 6 feet tall). He was competing in the 275 class this past Saturday, according to a scale in the gym had to lose a few pounds in that final week. He weighed in 8 pounds under the weight – this was unintentional and I think the consistent inaccuracy of the scale is to blame. We set Chris’ goals a few months back, and they included totaling at least 1500 lbs total, squatting 600, benching 350, and seeing milking as much out of his deadlift as we could (which I think is around 700 if he were fresh).
Allen and Jorin are training partners and have been members of the WFAC for quite a while. They were bitten by the CrossFit bug a couple years ago, and their training revolved around conditioning workouts and barbell training. With the advent of 70’s Big, Allen got pretty motivated get stronger and a bit bigger (he did some powerlifting 15 years ago) as well as wanting to compete. Jorin committed to getting stronger full time a couple months back to prepare for this meet. Allen is about to turn 40 and Jorin is in his late twenties. These days their training has a good blend of barbell training and prowler and sprint work, and they dropped most of the conditioning to prepare for the meet. They are both good guys and have been good friends in the time I’ve been here. Oh, and both of their lovely wives also attended the meet and took pictures and video, so thank you to them as well as Allen’s daughter — thanks ladies. Allen competed in the 242 class and has talked about dropping to the 220 class in the future. Jorin competed in the 220 class (he gained ten or fifteen pounds going into this meet) and still has lots of strength he could gain if that becomes a primary goal.
Lon Kilgore was also competing in the meet, but was handled by his former grad student and friend, Dr. Mike Hartman. Lon had never competed in powerlifting, but he needed a total to qualify for Raw Nationals in July. Also he could set American Masters’ records in his weight class (82.5) and age group (low 50’s) in every single lift.
Our cast of characters is set, and the stage was Oakridge High School in Arlington, Texas. Chris, Mike, and I drove down the night before, and Brent drove from Plano to meet us at the hotel. When I stepped into the hotel, my mind was locked on powerlifting for the next 24 hours. I didn’t necessarily want it to be solely focused on this since it prevented me from sleeping well, but when you’re inexperienced in handling lifters at a powerlifting meet, have five lifters to care for the next day at a state meet, and have a website that is devoted to lifting, things get kind of hairy.
I have coached all five lifters in some way for quite a while and tapered them all in preparation of this meet so that they would hormonally peak for Saturday. This meant all five guys were physically prepared for the meet and got some good practice lifting according to the rules as well as foreign environments. The next morning, everyone rose nice and early, annoyingly chipper even though nobody got much sleep. Mike is routinely spastic and talkative when he’s hanging out with all of us, and 6:20 AM didn’t stop him from chattering away with his standard ridiculous comments. I stepped out of the hotel room after quickly showering and he took one look at me and said, “What’s up with your hair?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s outta control, you’re a loose cannon.”
Jesus, was it really starting this early? I shambled down the stairs and opened the door to his car, which has at least 500 random items that he seems to have collected over the past two years.
“What’s this baseball for?” I asked.
“It’s for soft tissue adhesions. What the fuck else would it be for?”
Oh god damn, Brent too? The only person not acting their normal self (meaning completely insane) was Chris, and this was because he was nervously stressed out. I filed this bit of info while Brent and I got in his car. He started the engine and immediately said, “Oh, I got something for ya,” and slams his tiny little Asian finger into his stereo. Daft Punk starts streaming out of the speakers. I looked at him, and he returned an empty stare and said, “You like that?” This was going to be an interesting day.
Well, it certainly got pretty interesting five minutes later when Chris and Mike almost died. Chris turned left at an intersection and either started drifting into the lane to his right, or was changing lanes. Either way, the blue mustang that was occupying this space wasn’t enthused, and slammed their horn as they swerved out of the way. Chris veered hard to the left to avoid the mustang, and Brent took this whole visual in and calmly said, “Awesome.”
It was apparent a few minutes later that Mike’s GPS device hadn’t been updates since 1937 since we were driving around as if we were trying to lose a suspicious tail. I called him on the phone.
“You’re on with Mike and Chris, go ahead. Okay.”
“Yeah, where the fuck are we going?”
“Woah, slow your roll. Why don’t you take some lean? We’re almost there.”
I hung up without saying goodbye.
We finally got to the venue, as Brent likes to call it, and the guys weighed in. Well, they did so after some fanatic trouble. There was confusion as to what was supposed to be done and in what order before actually weighing in (this pissed Chris off, mostly because he hadn’t eaten since the previous night). After the goofiness, they were all weighed in. Mike and Brent stood talking in front of me as I read over the handouts they gave us.
“How much did you weigh, Brent?”
“179, but don’t tell Justin.” He wasn’t 180.
“I’m right here you assholes.”
“Best Saturday ever!” Brent announced.
Mike ended up fitting in right under his 242 lbs. cap, and Chris weighed in 8 pounds less than his 275 cap. This astounded us since he was 275 on the gym scale the day before. We can do a better job of monitoring this in the future. Now that everyone had weighed in, it was time to feast. The four of us went and ate at a nice little sit down café down the street, then came back for the rules briefing. Lifting was supposed to start at 9:00 AM, but for some reason didn’t get started until 10:00 AM. And this is when my life morphed from a storm into a hurricane for the next 8 hours.
To be continued tomorrow.
