How The Powerlifts and Sport(s) Go Together Like Peanut Butter and Jelly

Few things combine so fantastically as peanut butter and jelly. Oreos and milk.

Spaghetti and meatballs.

Jedis and lightsabers.

Powerlifts and sports are up there in the hall of fame. But Kelsey, whatever do you mean?

I had the opportunity to wax poetically over at my friend Tony Gentilcore's blog today. Continue reading HERE.

Powerlifting Training for Sports

You must clearly understand the difference between basic training and special physical preparation. [SPP] is different for everybody; one beats up on a tire with a sledgehammer, another does figure eights with a kettlebell, and someone incline presses. Basic training is roughly the same in all sports and aims to increase general strength and muscle mass. Powerlifting was born as a competition in exercises everybody does.

— Nikolay Vitkevich

Don't you want to know more?

I wrote a guest post over at Concentric Brain you can read it HERE.

Athlete Spotlight: Amanda, the Unassuming Ironmaiden

Meet Amanda:

She is awesome, and not in the over-used sense of the word, but she truly is awesome. She started training at SAPT last September. When she first showed up, she was familiar with the barbell but was looking for further instruction in the iron game. Her words were, "I just can't figure out the squat. It's just a mess." But she wanted to improve at barbell lifts, specifically the squat, bench, and deadlift.

Her first pushup was on a barbell elevated up to her waist and she really struggled with any sort of single-leg movement. Lunges and split squats were tough and she hated how she wobbled. Not only that, but we started her goblet squatting with 25lbs to groove her mechanics.

Amanda trained, with intensity, three times per week consistently for months and months (and still does!). She was the perfect client: she was consistent, she focused during her training sessions, and she did exactly what we told her to do. Lo and behold! She accomplished her goal of losing 55lbs AND increased her total body strength by enormous levels. Here is a video of some pushups:

I don't know if you, dear reader, can grasp HOW MUCH WORK that took for her to get there. She trained pushups- and their variations- almost every session for MONTHS. Some days she felt as if her arms would fall off and would be sore for days afterwards. Guys, you have no idea how hard it can be for women to accomplish pushups (with great form, by the way) on the floor. It does not come naturally for us and it takes twice as long (if not more) to gain any sort of strength. The above video is a testament to Amanda's tenacity and overall strength gains.

Aside from her pushup accomplishment, Amanda decided to compete in her very first powerlifting meet. This past weekend, actually, was the date. Below are some videos from the meet. (I apologize, Amanda, they're not the most flattering angles, but I was behind the platform.)

Squat- 137.5 lbs (A far cry from that 25lb kettlebell!)

Bench- 81 lbs

Deadlift- 181lbs

I am beyond proud of Amanda and all her hard work!! What you can't see from these videos is that this meet was enormous and there was so much confusion and frustration behind the scenes. But Amanda handled it with a cool, determined attitude and she did fabulously well!!

Amanda has rocked all her workouts and has improved in so, so many areas and it's been a privilege and a blessing to work with her and I'm looking forward to the next meet!

What to Know About Competing in Powerlifting

“…Would be interested in hearing more about what it takes to enter a powerlifting competition: requirements, mentality, gear/no-gear, training, scoring/judging, what it takes to win, etc.”

This was a comment left on my meet write-up blog post from last week.  As soon as I saw it I thought what better way to talk about this than through a post for everyone!

Scoring and Judging/What it Takes to Win

Powerlifting consists of three lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift (they are performed in this order).  At a meet you get three attempts at each of these lifts.  At the end of the competition your highest successful attempt from each of the three lifts will be added up for your “total”.  Your total is what determines your placing within your division/weight class.  In my opinion your placing should not be a focus for you especially if this is your first meet.  Your goal should be to show up and to perform because most people won’t even do that.

The scoring is based on a lighting system.  Each of the three judges has a light and if they deem the lift to be successful you will be rewarded with a shiny white light.  If they feel the lift to be unsuccessful they will ruin your life with a red light.  Have no fear because all you need is two white lights for the lift to count!

I’m not going to go into great detail about what the judges are looking for.  To learn more about this here is the link to the IPF rule book…. http://www.powerlifting-ipf.com/fileadmin/data/Technical_Rules/IPF_rulebook_01_2011.pdf

Gear or No Gear

This is the only place where I feel things get tricky.  People get WAAAYYYYY too bent out of shape about this to the point of ridiculousness.  You have three ways to compete in powerlifting; Raw, Single-ply, and Multi-ply.  This is entirely up to YOU and your GOALS and don’t let anyone sway you one way or the other.  As far as I’m concerned it really doesn’t matter what you choose because at the end of the day we all have the same goal… to get stronger.  Nevertheless you will come across the close-minded people who will tell you gear is “cheating” (not sure how it’s cheating because geared lifters compete only against other geared lifters) or “not true strength”.  These elitists’ get under my skin because they have probably never been in gear and have no idea what it’s like to train in it, so therefor, in my mind they have NO room to give an opinion on the subject.  More importantly why do they care what YOU do?  The people who care about what others do have their own personal issues to figure out.  I have competed raw and single-ply and I love both.  They both offer their own challenges and are both fun to train for.  It’s weird and ridiculous to me that people get so up and arms about the whole thing, it’s like 5 year olds fighting about whose toy is better.  If you want to lift raw, lift raw.  If you want to throw on a bunch of gear then do that.

My only caveat to this is that unless you have two solid years of strength training under you than you shouldn’t wear gear.  It takes A LOT of strength to even handle single-ply equipment so unless you're going two years strong, just start out with a few raw competitions.

Training

This is the easy part.  Just get better at squatting, benching and deadlifting.  The best way to do that is to perform the lifts several times a week.  It can’t get much simpler than that.  If you want a good set in stone program just do Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 and I promise you’ll get stronger.  Don’t want to do that? Then use the Westside Barbell template.  People want to treat this like its rocket science.  They paralyze themselves with fear about what programs best fits their body, there strength level, etc.  If these are the questions you’re asking yourself then all you really need to do is get in the weight room and press something, squat something, and pick something up off the ground and work on doing it correctly and everything will fall into place.

Mentality

This encompasses a great deal of things which is why when talking about it I like to refer to Mike Robertson’s T-Nation articletitled, “7 Reasons Everyone Should do a Powerlifting Meet” (http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/7_reasons_everyone_should_do_a_powerlifting_meet ).  This is an awesome article and spells out everything in a very simple way.  In order to do a powerlifting meet you have to be able to do one thing… to truly say that you care nothing about what other people think of you.  Most of the time when people tell me why they don’t want to do a meet it’s because they are scared of other people.  They tell me they don’t want to embarrass themselves or they say there not as strong as everybody else.  No one cares that you’re not as strong as them and no one’s waiting to laugh at you for failing a lift or bombing out of a meet.  It is perfectly understandable to be afraid of putting yourself out there for people to see you fail.  However, it is unacceptable to allow that fear to control your actions.  It is your ability to face and overcome your fears that will define you as a person.  So what if you fail?  Failure is a marker of two things; that you actually tried and that you learned.

I don’t care who you are or how long you’ve been training; I implore you to go sign up for a meet.  It doesn’t matter what federation or where it is just sign up for it.  Find one that is 10-14 weeks away and go train for it.  Can’t squat, bench, or deadlift correctly?  Go turn in an entry form and your hard-earned money and I BET you will learn how to do all of those things pretty quick.  Don’t wait around saying “well, I’ll just wait a little bit until I get stronger” or “I’ll wait a little bit until I feel a little more comfortable”.  If your training for something you’re going to get stronger than if you aren’t, FACT!  Chances are if your excuse is that you’re waiting to feel a little more comfortable then you probably rarely step out of your comfort zone when it comes to other aspects of your life as well.  If you choose to test your limits then go to http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/and find a meet.

That first meet changed more than just how I approach lifting – because the lessons you learn from training and competition can be carried over to nearly every aspect of your life. -Mike Robertson

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2012 USAPL Richmond Open: Meet Results

I competed in the 2012 USAPL Richmond Open this past weekend and it was a huge success for me.  I hit a PR in the squat and deadlift as well as my meet total!  I competed at 181 and weighed in Saturday morning at 180.9 after cutting about 10lbs (first time I’ve had to cut weight).  For anyone who read my post last week you know that I was very unsure going into the meet so for me to come out with PRs and meeting my goal of an 1100lbs total (finished with 1136lbs)is a huge deal for me.  So without wasting any more time here is the video compilation of my attempts...

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The only thing that even remotely ruffled my feathers as far as judging went was on my squat.  On my first attempt I got red lighted for my depth even though I felt I was below parallel.  Then on my second I got a white light but the judge still told me I was almost high.  So for good measure on my third attempt I decided to hang out in the bottom so there wouldn’t be any question.

Bench press went alright.  I was hoping to get around 325 but after my second attempt I only took a little jump.  After all the trouble I’d been having with my shirt I was just glad to get on the board.  After watching the videos I noticed a bunch of problems.  My arch wasn’t as big as it could have been, I tucked my elbows too much then I didn’t flare them on the way up (this causes a loss in leverage), and for the position I started in I hit to low on my chest which threw off my whole stroke.

My deadlift went a lot better than expected.  I actually feel like I could have gone much heavier on my last one but whatever I got the weight and the total. I still need to sit back into my heels more and pull back more as opposed to standing straight up which is very evident on my last attempt.

Right now my upcoming goals are to get stronger and continue to refine my technique on my lifts.  I don’t like saying that I have to work on my weak points because as far as I’m concerned everything is weak and it all needs to be worked on.  Is this the wrong attitude to have? Absolutely not, as I’ve stated before I don’t like feeling content.  The moment I feel content and that I’m strong is the moment that I stop working hard and I don’t ever want to stop working hard.

I want to congratulate Carson on his first meet, he did a great job and we are all very proud of him.  I also want to thank everyone who came out to support me and who helped me out with my training and everything else.  Thanks to Gabe Naspinski who did my programming and also congratulations to him as well for totaling 2100 pounds at his meet in Tampa! Sean was a great training partner and it was a shame he couldn’t attend but he had some very important things to do in New York but thanks again man!  My friend and current SAPT intern Tadashi was my handler for the whole thing and did an awesome job taking the stress off me, wrapping my knees, picking weights, etc. so thanks a lot man I couldn’t have done it without you.  Steve was there to handle Carson but helped me out as well, he is a great friend and I’m glad he came down.

Tim Henriques was in attendance with his powerlifting team as well.  Tim is someone that I look up to in this industry and for him to help out and lend his support like he did was a huge deal for me so thanks Tim!

SAPT’s longtime client and friend Ron came down, which was awesome that he would take a whole Saturday to support Carson and I, thanks Ron!  Two of my buddies who I’ve been friends with for as long as I can remember came out as well which was cool for me to share this experience with them, thanks guys.  Part of my family made the trek to Richmond too.  This meant the world to me so thanks to my sisters, Sissy and Stephanie and to my nephew Trevor who is one of my best friends so that was doubly awesome that he came out.

Last but certainly not least I really want to thank my girlfriend Shannon for everything she did, has done, and will do.  She learned very quickly how important competing in powerlifting is for me and she jumped right on board. Without any hint of boredom or annoyance she listens to me day in and day out talk about my training successes and struggles which very few people can pull off.  She watches my videos and reads my articles and doesn’t think twice about it.  She made the trip with me to Philadelphia to spend two days watching a powerlifting meet that I wasn’t even in!  She even drove Tadashi and me to this meet and spent 7 hours waiting to film me and support me for only the 3 total minutes that I was on the platform.  I am truly lucky to have her in my life so thank you Shannon, I love you very much!

2012 USAPL Richmond Open: Opening Attempts

The 2012 USAPL Richmond Open is a couple days away and I’ve officially switched into competition mode.  This has been a very up and down training cycle.  I’m attributing this to trying to get used to my gear and my own impatience.  This is my first geared competition (single-ply) and I spent FAR too much time trying to get a lot of weight out of my gear.  I rushed into trying to get a lot of support out of my gear which in hindsight was the worst thing I could have done, why?  People spend years trying to figure out and use their equipment correctly; I tried to figure it all out in about 11 weeks.  This took all of my energy and focus off the NUMBER ONE thing…. Getting stronger!  Instead of spending those 11 weeks trying to get the most weight out of my equipment I should have just been trying to get stronger.  After all this time I’ve gotten VERY little help out of my equipment and didn’t get much stronger at all.  It was extremely impatient and immature of me to do that and trust me when I say I have learned from my mistakes.  I know now that learning the gear will come I just need to focus on getting strong.  With all that said I’ve sat down and examined everything that has gone on and what I hope to accomplish out of the meet and it’s quite simple…. Perform to the best of my abilities and get at least an 1100 pound total. I put all of this behind me a couple days ago and am now completely focused on the positive.  I can tell everyone one thing, no one will compete as hard as me and no one will leave it all on the platform like I will.

Opening Attempts...

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.  

-Theodore Roosevelt