Got back from Ohio a couple hours ago- only got to go on Saturday but I’m going to need the rest of Spring Break to recover from this! My roommate and I went mainly to support our friend Andrew Hollenbeck who was competing in 165, got to see plenty of everything else too.
All my impressions, pics and videos to come tomorrow. I think I’m going to start with all the PL pics and then get to the Expo.
Here’s a teaser of the USAPL Platform at 7:30 am before the lifting started:
Oh yea, keep in mind too that some of the numbers and totals and going to be off by a couple pounds due to conversions.
Here’s a glimpse at what the outside crowd looked like around 2 o’clock- it was a little more civil at 7 in the morning.
This really doesn’t give any perspective of how many people there were- one of the Security guys told me that 100,000 came through the doors on Saturday alone. I don’t have any pics that can express the massiveness of the Expo, hopefully Nate Green will have some when he updates his trip.
I saw basically every supplement company that has an ad in the muscle mags, unfortunately no Biotest or T-Nation booth.
This was the first meet that I’ve ever been to and it was awesome one to start off with.
Here’s Harriet Hall’s opener squat of 473 lb woman’s superheavy weight class. She was 60, from Alaska and a fan of whiskey. She went on to a 506 lb squat, 264 bench and 451 deadlift for a 1221 total.
Ashley Awalt was one hell of a lifter- 4’10" and 114 they called her Pocket Dynamite. This was either her 396 squat or 412. She had a 231 bench and 380 deadlift for a 1023 total and $1000 for the best female lifter of the meet by Wilk’s.
This was one of Eric Oishi’s squats, his 627 I believe. He came all the way from Brazil to compete and set a South American Total record on his opening deadlift and set it again on his 3rd attempt. He ended up with 649/423/621 for a 1694 total. He was beaten in total by Eric Nickson by 2.5 kgs but won his weight class by Wilk’s formula.
This was Greg Doucette’s opening deadlift of 583. This guy was in 181 and you only get a vague impression of just how much mass he was carrying from the picture. He put up 588/506/616 for a 1710 total.
The man was crazy- he’d competed in the Con-Cret Raw comp the night before and got 467/412 (!!) /583 for a 1466 raw total. Two powerlifting comps in two days, and he was two weeks out from a bodybuilding competition!
He was by far the most impressive lifter that I saw at this meet.
[quote]IronAbrams wrote:
This was Greg Doucette’s opening deadlift of 583. This guy was in 181 and you only get a vague impression of just how much mass he was carrying from the picture. He put up 588/506/616 for a 1710 total.
The man was crazy- he’d competed in the Con-Cret Raw comp the night before and got 467/412 (!!) /583 for a 1466 raw total. Two powerlifting comps in two days, and he was two weeks out from a bodybuilding competition!
He was by far the most impressive lifter that I saw at this meet.[/quote]
Andrew didn’t have that great of a day; he hit better lifts in the Squat and Bench by 30+ lb in training but was having a bad day on the platform. He did however pull a great 650 deadlift which was a 20 lb PR for him.
We headed to the Expo after the 181 and Below was done at 11:30 ish. We missed Arnold by a couple hours but I saw him for about half a second up on the Expo Platform presenting some awards.
Feeling really sick right now, hopefully I’ll be better tomorrow. Had to leave the gym after 5 sets or so because I was going to puke. Not surprised, my immune system has got to be shot after little food for 3 days and an 8 hour drive down and back.
More pics to come.
This is one of the guys in the Strongman booth that was set up- they had a hub lift, a 200 lb stone, a 140 lb Inch Dumbbell replica and a 130 ish log. Very helpful guys, had some great conversations.
