Tales From the Milk Drinker

Last weekend on May 13 I was in my third Powerlifting meet. This was one year plus one week after I did my first one ever. It was in Lower Sackville, which for all intense purposes can be considered a suburb of Halifax.

Starting on Thursday I started overeating like mad for Saturday's meet. Overeating has almost a drug like effect on your body as far as building up strength, especially if your body is used to normally taking in the same amount of energy from food that you are using up every day. One thursday and friday I almost polished off a box of Quaker Harvest Crunch cereal, on top of my regular meals. I ended up weighing in at my heaviest ever, as a soggy 210. No doubt about five pounds of that was extra food and water that have since departed me.

The powerlifting meet consists of three events in the following order - The Squat in which a barbell is held across the back of the shoulders and you bend your legs until the upper thigh is beyond parallel to the floor, the Bench Press in which you lie on a bench facing up to the ceiling and lower a weight to touch your chest and the Deadlift in which you simply pull a barbell from the floor to waist height. I was all fired up and having the time of my life in the warm up room where all the lifters practice the lifts with increasingly heavy weights. For contest purposes we get three tries at each event in front of the three judges who verify that you are doing the lift properly according to the rules. You pick your own weights. I picked something for my first attempts that I was really confidant I could do, then my second attempts would be the most I had lifted in the gym in this past few months of training and then my third would be a few pounds (10 or 15) more than my second if all went well.

I never missed a lift all day getting myself a 465 squat, 15 more than I had ever done in my life and a whole 40 more than I did three months ago at the meet in Cape Breton. I benched 395 which was 10 more than i had done in the gym and 30 more than cape breton. Deadlifts went to 450, ten more than the gym and 25 more than cape breton. In the afternoon after the powerlifting a bench press competition was held where we focused on only that event which tests upper body strength and I was able to best my morning efforts by a bit pushing the big 182.5 kilo up (402.23 lbs). I was incredibly pleased since I had made so much progress in the three short months since cape breton.

Powerlifting is split up into many age and weight categories so many people go home with medals or trophies that they got simply for showing up and not bombing out (this is what we call it when a person uses up all of their attempts without getting any lifts in that satisfy the judges that the proper technique was used). I fell into this boat getting a silver medal both in powerlifting (where they create your score by summing your best squat bench and deadlift) and also another silver in bench press. Yep yep uh hu. For my effort in bench press I also qualified to do that event at next year's Canadian Nationals to be held in Halifax for 2007. This is my first time qualifying for Nat's and I hope it works out for me to attend. Qualifying happens by meeting certain numbers laid out in a qualifying chart - it has nothing to do with your final placing in the contest. I agree with this and think many sports benefit from this sort of 'you're in you're out' type of sorting. You must reach a firm set goal to win the right to go to nationals, not just show up and win at some little contest where no one else was even in your weight class.

Overall the meet was awsome and I'm really glad I got to do it. The whole day was like one long addrenalin rush. And the other lifters there were great. I think we all realize how hard everyone works training for this sport so there's an instant respect as soon as you meet someone.