Did you win a medal for that?
I totaled 622.5kg/1370lbs., 217.5/165/240 at my last meet. I wouldn’t call that “good numbers”, but that won’t stop me from competing and getting stronger. You have to start somewhere, and competing is a skill in itself.
It never occurred to me to compete. At my gym I’m only above average on those totals. I get to show off a little with the power snatches and clean and presses, but that’s just because no one else does them.
Thanks, but no, I haven’t. I’ve always been at gyms where I’m a B+ lifter, if you don’t mind the academic metaphor, and my doctor is on my case about my A1C levels so I’m really stressing Olympic-style lifts and volume squats right now to lose weight.
Then why are you trying to discourage someone else from competing? Until you are at a more advanced level (like national or world championships) you are really just competing against yourself. This isn’t like boxing or MMA where you will get knocked out if you aren’t that good, in powerlifting you will just lift less weight. Nobody is going to laugh at you.
That’s them. Who gives a shit about them? Don’t discourage the kid. He’s
got heart and wants to compete against himself. Fuck everyone else.
You’re definitely comparing him to yourself if your baseline for competing is within 8 lbs of your own lifts, lol. Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t be that self-unaware.
I remember I didn’t want to compete in a powerlifting meet until I felt that I could potentially hit an elite total, which I did. This was the only meet I ever competed in, and I doubt I’ll have interest in doing it again.
The reason I’m sharing this story is that, when I was preparing for the meet, I felt very engaged/interested in the sport of powerlifting. I thought it would be awesome to hit an elite total, and continue to build to international elite, and maybe even better than that. But upon competing, I realized just how much I don’t care for the actual sport/competition. This is why I would encourage competing sooner rather than later. You won’t actually know if this is for you until you’ve gotten a taste for competition. It would have been a mistake if I had decided to hold off on competing until I could hit bigger numbers, or a higher benchmark, because it turned out, I didn’t like it that much in the first place.
Strongman, on the other hand… that’s where it’s at!
OP one other thing - make sure you mention lb or kg.
I was thinking kg when I saw your numbers and thought to myself “shit he’s strong”, then I saw others assumed lb.
In powerlifting international competition it’s all kg 
In local US I think it’s lb, so both can be used and gets confusing.
“My biggest mistake was not waiting to compete until I had a 2000lbs total”… Said no one with a 2000lbs total.
seriously? he said he’s a newbie. You couldn’t possibly have thought he was talking in kg, could you?
80%+ of users on this site use lbs anyway.
You make a very good point. When I did my first meet I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy competing, my performance didn’t go too well but I had a good time and I wanted to compete again. I just get pissed off when they do shit like not tell you the flights or lifting order until 30 minutes before your opening squat, but that shouldn’t happen too often.
Ray Williams totalled around 2000 at his first meet, but he’s pretty far from normal.
A 17 year old kid weighing 300 lbs. and pulling 700?
Lol but he didn’t specifically just not compete until he could total 2000. He just happened to be a fucking freaking of nature in every way haha.
Lol wasn’t Leeman close to this? I guess it could happen.
if this bothers you, you probably should not ever try Strongman, lol. Last strongman show I did, I got 6 total warmup reps. 3 at 135, 2 at 225, and 2 at 315. And you generally find out lifting order for events as the events are going. Like if the first event is a log press, they’ll just call the first 2 competitors names to get ready, and the each next one just hears his name 1 person in advance. So basically 2 minutes to prepare. from the time you here your name to the time you’re standing on the platform.
Haha, which is why it is so helpful to have friends there to help you listen to your name.
Promoter: “Frank Z, you’re up”
Friend: “Frank’s in the bathroom”
I agree though I hate it haha. I had 35 mins to go from warm up to my opener of 760. Def a warm up PR.
What event was that?
My concern is that you have a much higher risk of injury if you can’t warm up properly. In the case of a strongman comp., I imagine you would be pretty much warmed up after the first event or two and you’re not working up to a 1rm most of the time either. Also, if you know that in a competition you won’t have time for more than a couple warmup set then you can adjust your training so that you can get used to that. If I’m working up to a 450 squat I will probably do about 6 warm up sets, not counting 2-3 sets with an empty bar.
There was a guy who used to post here named Carlos Moran, he posted something elsewhere (facebook?) a while back saying he was pissed off about one of the Boss of Bosses meets for the same reason. If I remember correctly, he had to lower his opener and then hit another warmup set before his second attempt, which was his original opener. If your opener is 600+ then only getting 2-3 warm up sets is a recipe for disaster. I would consider walking out.
I don’t know why it matters what event it was, but it was Metroflex Strongman show in Plano Tx. It was a USS show. And it was one of the most well run shows I’ve competed in. The problems were just par for the course, it’s expected in the sport.
You’re way out of your depth here, man. Just read some threads on national strongmen shows, and you’ll see what kind of shit show it really is.
So a few things… Yes, injury risk is higher when you aren’t allowed to properly warm up. The problem with a lot of these shows is that there is no warm up area the way there is in powerlifting. So once an event starts, you generally sit cold until your number is called. So yea, people get injured. Welcome to strongman.
Also, I’m not sure why you think you don’t do a lot of maxes in strongman. Every show I’ve done has had at least one max event, usually 2, and I’ve seen as many as 4 max events in a show. And every event is max effort, for sure, even if it’s not a 1RM. A heavy yoke 60 feet for time is as dangerous as any 1rm attempt will ever be.
Let me ask you this… if it was possible to ‘adjust your training to get used to limited warm ups’, wouldn’t powerlifters just do that too? Just kind of funny that you think this would be the case. Trust me, When I had to hit a max deadlift with only warmups up to 315, it sucked balls. And there was so much downtime between events, you could hardly say that previous events were just keeping me warm. A log press for reps 2 hours earlier, followed by 3 keg tosses for height an hour earlier, somehow did not provide me the proper warmup that I would prefer to have leading up to a 600 deadlift. It’s simply how the sport works. Some people do complain about these things, there’s just nothing to be done about it in most cases. And this was a local show. Nationals have waaaaay more downtime because there are so many competitors, and you have far less opportunity to warm up with the implements for the same reason.
You certainly would get no opportunity to warm up with an empty bar. That would be insane at one of these comps. It would be a waste of everyone elses time. Someone might actually punch you if you tried to do warmups with an empty bar. Powerlifters have it way easier than they think they do. They’re like golfers, they feel like everything needs to be just perfect to perform optimally. I see more bitching about really minor shit in powerlifting. It’s part of why I dislike the sport in general.
Here’s the thing. In powerlifiting and strongman, everyone is performing under the same conditions as each other, for the most part. So if Carlos Moran is going to complain about warmup issues, he should have the self awareness to realize everyone else competing against him is dealing with the same thing. If he chooses to adjust his attempts based on this, he should also recognize that everyone else is doing the same, or assuming a higher injury risk than he is. So be it, right? Lifting heavy is hard. Deal with it.