My first powerlifting meet.

Back in April I competed in my first power lifting meet.

To re-iterate what a power lifting meet is, it is a 3 lift competition.  Squat, Bench Press, and Deadlift.

In each of these 3 lifts you get 3 chances ( assuming you don't bomb out, i'll get to that in a bit ) at each lift.

You start with the squat - there are 3 judges, each giving a white or a red light.  Red is bad.  a red light means one of the judges did not pass you for that lift.  It could be a variety of reasons beyond this post.  You have an opening weight for each lift.  You must get 2 out of 3 white lights for a lift to be good.

If you fail to get two white lights on ANY of your 3 squats you can not move on to benching.  The same goes from progressing from the bench to the deadlift.

The highest allowed lifts of each event goes towards your total.  This total is essentially your score for the meet.

The day before the meet you weigh in to find your weight class, then traditionally load up on salt and carbs to get some bloat going to hopefully aid you on meet day with bigger lifts.

Some lifters do a water cut which is basically a several day loading of water and salt consumption then a subsequent drop in intake followed with no intake of food or liquid to ideally have you at your target weight for weigh ins.  Then you can rehydrate and bloat up making you "heavier" and hopefully stronger on meet day.

This is how you see those UFC guys that don't look 180lbs weigh in at 180lbs ( very simplified here, but you should get the picture )

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The week of the meet.  I was going to water cut and compete in the 198 weight class.  I believe I was around 206 pounds at the front of the week, it should of been doable.   Others have taken more drastic weight cuts.

I chugged my water as I was told and cut liquids when I was told.  Something happened that Thursday of zero liquid and food.  I stopped urinating.  I stopped sweating.  Friday morning at 6:30am I was still 202 pounds.  That was 4 pounds off from 198.  I could have taken some drastic measures to hit 198, but I did not.

It was my first powerlifting meet and I did not stand a chance at winning "best overall lifter"- which is where a lifter is given an award for having the best total to body weight ratio.

So I decided to start hydrating and just weigh in for the 220 class.  I weighed in at 212 after re-hydrating on around 2 liters of water.

It was feast time.  There was a Perkins attached to the hotel where we were staying and also competing.  Awesome.

Breakfast AND Lunch was at perkins.  Carbs and more carbs.  Dinner was at a greek restaurant.  It was pretty nice.

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Meet day!

Warm ups went well.  I had planned my squat opener at 315.  This was a weight I knew I could hit without issues and was going to hopefully be a confidence builder.  3 white lights.  It wasn't so bad.

2nd attempts - 335.  I unracked the bar, squatted down and started to pass gas.  335 should of been handled strongly with some decent effort involved.  I was stuck at parallel.  Barely rising. I was afraid to keep passing gas as I didn't want to lose my tightness and miss the lift.  After what felt like an eternity .... 3 white lights.  I had a few congratulations for fighting through the weight.  It should of moved much easier.

3rd attempt on squat.  Well - pun intended - "Crap! I probably wasted too much energy on that, I should go conservative" I called for 345 ( you have 2 minutes after each lift attempt tell them what you want for your next attempt ).

345 was easy and got 3 white lights.  Normally 3rd attempts ( unless planning for a specific total ) are where you go crazy and aim for a big PR.  Sand bagged.

Bench press!!  My weakness.

1st attempt 200.  Knew I could nail it.  Did it.

2nd - 215, was confident this would be okay.  White lights all around.

3rd 235- went for full 20lb PR.  Failed. 3 red lights.

Deadlift - Yvonna one of the women on our team took an opener at 345, I had planned on opening fairly light.  Bumped mine to 345 in a bit of sexist machosim.  3 white lights.

2nd attempt 365 - done and easy.

3rd - never pulled 405 before. Called for 405.  Nailed it 3 white lights.

This brought my total to 960.  1,000 would of been nice and easily reach if I planned better.  No worries, it won me 2nd place in the Mens Open 220 weight class ( pretty sure there were just 2 of us in that class... )

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My first powerlifting meet.  Very tiring. Was not as mentally challenging as I anticipated for a first meet.  I had some fear in me about some things, but I walked away having done something most people wouldn't even dare to try and knew I'd come back stronger.


My next meet is September 21st, same place.  Same platform.  It will be brought.