The Long Road to My First Meet

This past weekend I competed in my first powerlifting meet, but before I get into an account of the actual event, some background information is probably in order. I began lifting while in graduate school right around my twenty-ninth birthday. I got back into the gym because I wasn't in great shape and my family has a history of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and diabetes. In short, I wanted to lower my risk factors for these diseases, and I found school to be less than challenging.

Like many folks, I lifted in high school as part of my off-season work for football. To say that I hated lifting would be an understatement. I found it so intolerable that I actually signed up for track one spring just so I had an excuse to get out of the lifting program. I meandered into the weight room a couple of times in college to give it another try (peer pressure is a powerful thing) but still found little interest or fun there.

I can't tell you what the difference was when I began lifting seriously at the age of 29. Perhaps it was because it was something I decided to do rather than something a coach or a friend thought I ought to do. Whatever the reason, I became an incredibly disciplined lifter in a very short period of time.

Back in those days, I trained like and wanted to be a bodybuilder. I ate clean, and I did cardio. Heck, I even shaved. But for a variety of reasons (life, law school, injuries/surgery), I never made it into a bodybuilding show.

I was involved in the online bodybuilding community, serving as a moderator on a popular forum and giving out (largely free) advice to novices, but the level of drama in that community began to take its toll. I had become someone way too angry about things that were way too inconsequential. In short, I was burned out.

Epiphany

I still wanted to train and be strong(er) though. Fortunately, I had met some powerlifters online who turned me on to elitefts.com™ and some other websites. I began to read more and watch YouTube videos. It probably took me a good five or six months before I was ready to change my style of training from bodybuilding to powerlifting. The main reason for the change was the vibe of this community and the company that Dave Tate runs. (That probably sounds strange to many, but my background is in politics and human services, so values matter a great deal to me.)

Armed with 5/3/1 and all the training advice I could glean from this website, I began training like a powerlifter in January 2010. I didn't have any real desire to compete—just to train heavy and have a good time in the gym. Everything was good for a couple months. I was hitting PRs and getting strong(er), which was something amazing to me given that I had been lifting for ten years.

Unfortunately, in March of that year, I reinjured a herniated disk in my cervical spine. What began as spasms in my rhomboids after some shrugs gone awry turned out to be a major blow to my lifting career. I was unable to even bench 135 lbs. Time off and medication didn't bring about any improvements.

I continued to train my other lifts normally and just benched and pressed what little weight I could muster. Struggling through the emotional rollercoaster that was my training week (great deadlift followed by a bench press of 95 lbs) set off a desire to compete. Maybe it was my way of setting a goal so that I wasn't mired in feeling sorry for myself at that moment.

Surgery

In August of last year, I had surgery to repair the disk (decompression) and have been making slow, often frustrating, strides toward recovery since then. But this past spring I noticed a lot of pain in my right hip, particularly after squatting. I had an injection in the bursa to take down some of the pain and inflammation, but that wasn't enough. I consulted with a sports medicine hip specialist and had an MRI only to be told that given my hip structure I should never squat or deadlift again.

That wasn't a good solution for me, and with the encouragement of my wife (who is a physician), I began treatment with a chiropractor who also does applied kinesiology. He was able to figure out my flawed motor patterns and fix my hip.

I heard that the USPF was going to hold a raw meet in October but had forgotten about it through the stress of my dad’s hospitalization and my wedding and honeymoon. My wife reminded me about the meet when we returned. I looked it up and found out it was only a few weeks away. I was unsure whether or not I could even prepare for a meet given that I had just taken three weeks off from training and would have two weeks to actually train prior to the meet. I was encouraged by my wife, Matt Ladewski, and Jo Jordan to just suck it up and put some numbers on the board.

So I sent in the registration form and got to work on a quick two-week training cycle to get myself ready. I had no great expectations and plenty of anxiety, but once the check was in the mail, there wasn't any turning back.

The Meet

Weigh-ins were the day before the meet and while I had hoped to come in at 242 lbs, two weeks of prednisone had me blown up close to 260 lbs. Given that it was my first meet, I decided to just go in at whatever I weighed. I think that was likely the right decision, but I had been off the medication for four days and had dropped over eight pounds. So I may have actually been able to get down to 242.

The morning of the meet, I was both nervous and excited. I had set a goal to compete and I was about to do just that. It didn’t matter anymore that I was going to bench my body weight or that my squat was still a work in progress. I was only there to compete against myself.

My non-lifting friends and family had asked me what my motivations were leading up to the meet. I offered them this on Facebook—“People ask me why I do this. I do it because I wasn’t sure if I would ever bench again after I herniated my disk. Because I was told to give up squatting and deadlifting due to my right hip. Because some people think 40 is too old to be an athlete. But I do this to prove to myself, not to them, that I can do whatever I put my mind to.”

I picked all light openers based on advice I had received from more seasoned lifters. So with a whopping 315 on the bar, I walked up to squat and nailed it like there wasn’t even a load on it. This helped to ease my nerves but not enough for me to pick the right second attempt. I only went up to 330 and smoked that, too. Still having not learned my lesson, my final attempt was 360 and it went up ridiculously easy as well.

The same was true for the bench. I opened with 205, hit it, and bounced up off the bench so high you would have thought I had won a gold medal at the Olympics. But I was just happy to have a good lift in my worst part of the competition. The judges all told me to quit warming up on the platform and take a bigger attempt. I still wasn't feeling super confident and made incremental jumps on both. They were also successful, and I ended up with a 240-lb bench.

My warm-ups for the deadlift were something less than awesome and I lowered my opener from 420 to 405. Another rookie mistake as the 405 nearly went through the ceiling. Again, my second and third attempts were good but too small of jumps. I ended with a 440-lb pull.

So I ended up nine for nine on my attempts but left at least 100 lbs on the platform. Of course, that's just a guess and who knows if I would have been successful with bigger attempts. The other competitors and the judges all thought I should have gone bigger but understood that it was my first meet.

I had an amazing time at the meet and can't wait until the next one in March. I hope to add at least 200 lbs to my total (more if my recovery quickens). The meet ran smoothly, and the lifters were treated very well. Heck, I even managed to take home a trophy.

A big thank you to EliteFTS for all the training advice you provide to lifters. If it weren't for this website, I wouldn't be a powerlifter. Thank you, too, to Jo Jordan and Matt Ladewski for all of their support and encouragement.