It’s not often that you participate in a meet that could get interrupted by enemy attacks. One where contestants can’t hear the judge’s instructions to “press” or “rack” because F-16 Fighter Jets are screaming overhead on combat air patrol. Most people aren’t willing to risk life or limb in a backyard meet. Yet, that’s what happened as Kandahar Airfield hosted its second annual “1000 lbs. Club” powerlifting challenge in Afghanistan.

Let me back up and introduce myself. I’ve been in one uniform or another since my 18th birthday, having served in the Marine Corps and currently serving as an officer in the U.S. Army. This is my 3rd full tour overseas and second to Afghanistan. My training partner, Captain Ricky Santana, is a former NCO who decided to jump to the dark side and become an officer. He has 3 tours under his belt as well.

Besides an ever-present workload that never stops, there is nothing else to do.  We eat, sleep, and train. It’s kind of like prison, except with rockets.  The gym, dubbed oddly enough the “prison gym,” has just about everything you need to train. The NATO forces here host another gym, but you have to bring another set of sneakers in. There are a lot of short shorts on guys and odd exercises I’ve never seen before…the second set of sneakers is all you need to know.

Santana and I began our deployment workouts about 24 hours after landing in Manas, Kyrgyzstan. We started with a 30-day routine from Westside that more or less sapped my will to live and dinged my shoulder up. Shortly after, the main gym here on Kandahar Airfield decided to host a 1000 lbs. meet.  We found out about the meet only two days prior, but we decided to use it as a baseline and see where we were at.

Santana is a squatter and carried the day with lifts of over 500 lbs. I managed to crawl through, getting all my lifts to count and waving my last two squats because of a now semi-worthless left shoulder. My bench was an embarrassment. So it was time to get serious. I got on the elitefts™ site and began to devour all of the articles.

I was in charge of programming and ordered the various Westside manuals and studying Dave Tate’s “So You Think You Can Bench,” “So You Think You Can Deadlift,” and “So You Think You Can Squat” videos over and over again.  We built boards and boxes, ordered bands, and developed a 4-week program that would avoid over-training and included plenty of rest.

Amidst all of this, we were approached to run the next meet. So it was back to elitefts™ and more articles on the does and don'ts of training, and how to effectively run a meet and avoid pissing off your contestants. It was at that point that I decided to see if the folks at elitefts™ would like to sponsor the meet. All I’d really hoped for was an elitefts™ banner we’d sign and maybe a shirt or two for the winners. Ms. Ronda Blankenship from customer service immediately got back to me and soon told us a box of gear would be on its way to our Soldiers.  The support was overwhelming, and I can’t thank everybody enough here for their help.

We held meets on two nights. The first was a women’s meet with a 300 lbs. goal that they completely blew away with the top two contestants totaling 660 and 665 lbs., respectively. For future meets, we plan to raise the bar to 500lbs.

The next night was the men’s meet. Our overall goal was to make this one as efficient as possible, being that our meet several months back had been slow and long.  We also had the responsibility to avoid injuring any of Uncle Sam’s children.

We had 13 competitors with our top lifter managing 505lbs on the bench, a 500 lbs. deadlift, and a 540 lbs. squat. Albeit by a Smith Machine per some arcane KAF/Army regulation that may or may not exist, he was able to put up some very good numbers. He beat the standing record by 10 lbs. (KAF doesn’t bother about weight classes). Some guys lifted in uniform, others in combat boots and shorts, but the enthusiasm among the competitors and spectators was contagious. It’s hard to judge when you’re screaming for a guy to get his lock out, but Santana and I managed to muddle through.

This will be our last competition as organizers. We’re both on track to lift more than 1400lbs in the next meet. Once we get stateside shortly after Christmas, we’ll be looking for a gym in the Fort Knox area to take us to the next level.  Again, I can’t thank elitefts™ enough for supporting our Soldiers and for the articles and videos that have really shaped our training over the last several months. We’ll be sending a flag flown here on Kandahar for Ronda, Dave Tate, and the team, and I hope to see it at some point on Dave’s table talk videos.