UPA IL championships PL meet
10/12/13
weighed in the day before at 198.0
It was my first meet, so of course I didn’t have a damn clue what I was doing. It all ended up going pretty smoothly for me, although there were some issues with events being switched around (but not announced audibly in the warmup room) at the last minute and some technical difficulties which delayed the start of my deadlift flight. It seemed organized enough apart from that, and everything worked out fine in the end, so thank you to the organizers!
I had to pick my openers by weigh-in the afternoon/evening before. I decided to open with 130kg/286.6# for the squat which was probably my most aggressive opener (my last squat day ~2 weeks before was 3x5@120kg/265#). The great thing about this meet, though, was that the squats didn’t need to be paused as long as they hit depth. I had done a decent amount of paused squatting in training, but not having to obviously helps put up more weight. I warm up pretty quickly in the gym, so going into my first lift I had warmed up much earlier than I was used to and with much more standing around. Previous experience indicated that doing so was bad-- when I had half warmed up in the gym, taken a break (i.e. to show beginners how to deadlift and the like), and then finished my warmup/worksets, the results weren’t pretty. For whatever reason, though, it was fine at the meet. 286 felt like 225. Since my PR was 300, I made a conservative jump to 135kg/297.6#. This was also easy, and the announcer commented on my excessive depth (again). The same announcer (who, by the way, picked probably half my 2nd and 3rd attempts that day) suggested I should make a bit bigger of a jump, so my 3rd attempt was 145kg/319.7#. On this one I finally felt some slight T spine rounding (which I have on heavy squats), but it still wasn’t bad.
On to bench. I warmed up to 185#. I wasn’t sure where bench was going, because prior to this I had gotten 190 for 5 but failed 205 for a touch and go single. Then the week leading up to the meet, I wanted to hit a moderate paused single to be ready for the meet, and ended up getting 195 fairly easily (5 lbs off my touch and go PR). My opener was 87.5kg/192.9# which was pretty easy. Still going somewhat conservatively, I took 92.5kg/203.9# as a second attempt which was still not hard. By this point I was picking up on the fact that I was having a very good powerlifting day, so my 3rd attempt was 100kg/220.5# which still wasn’t bad.
For deadlifts, because of the technical problems I warmed up half way (to ~225 lbs) too early. Once things got started again, I hit 315 as my last warmup before my opener of 155kg/341.7#. This was about the weight I’d typically hit before moving on to heavy singles, and at the meet it was easy. I decided to jump all the way to 172.5kg/380.3# for a second attempt. I second-guessed myself a bit while waiting for it, because only a few weeks prior I hit 380# for a very ugly single (after failing it the first time) and I had been stalled at 375 or lower for months. My second attempt turned out not to be much of a struggle, though, so I jumped to 177.5kg/391.3# for my final attempt. I finally had some minor form breakdown at that weight, but definitely a hell of a lot less than the 380# a few weeks prior. I think it’s pretty safe to say I could have hit at least 182.5kg and probably 185kg/407.9#, but I wanted to go 9 for 9 and I obviously wasn’t anywhere near competitive at the meet (being in the first flight out of 3, sorted by ascending opening weight).
All in all, it was a good learning experience and putting a total of 51.5 pounds of PRs on my lifts made it that much more enjoyable. Thanks again to all the organizers, spotters, loaders, etc.
Edit: deadlift opener was 2.5kg off of what I originally thought it was.