NASA Iowa State Meet Recap

Results

Body weight: 213.9 lbs

Squat: 155 162.5 (F) 162.5 (F)

Bench Press: 115 117.5 122.5

Deadlift: 182.5 190 195

*Weights are reported in kg unless noted otherwise.

Total: 472.5 kg (1041.67 lb)

Performance

I did a lot worse than I had originally planned but did about as well as I expected going into the meet. The reasons I signed up for the meet include: motivation to continue training when life gets busy, experience a PL meet, see what I can do under real judging. I fulfilled all of those goals and despite my poor total (and awful squatting) I really enjoyed the meet. I had hoped to set PRs or at least match gym PRs. That didn’t happen, I sabotaged that opportunity a long time ago.

How to Stop Progress and Sabotage Your First PL Meet

When I first started Callador’s 4x4 method I changed my diet up in order to lose some fat and hopefully maintain strength while I drop down to a solid 198 lbs (~220-225 just before I started). Cutting calories and drastically changing food types (regular decent junk to low-carb paleo) is not a good way to progress. I lost 10-15 pounds in about 2 weeks and got sick. It really screwed up what had been some really good progress. I don’t think the program was flawed at all, I just made changes that I knew weren’t smart but thought I'd somehow I’d beat the odds. 

Scheduling was a bit out of my control but it certainly played a role in my final weeks leading up to the meet being not very useful in preparing for a solid performance. I had to sell my house, write and defend my PhD thesis, get a job prepare for a PL meet and be a normal Dad/Husband over the last 2 months. If I could have entered a meet at a different time I would have but I didn’t know where I’d be in May (graduation date? job somewhere?) and this was really the only meet within reasonable driving distance that I could find. Smashing all these responsibilities into a small time frame made juggling life trickier than usual which caused training and proper nutrition to take a back seat for a while.

I don’t list this stuff as a bunch of excuses, my performance is what it is, but just put it all out there to put my PL performance in context. 

Overall

The meet was a positive experience. It was way busy with 46 male lifters in the unequipped powerlifting group so probably ~60-70 lifters when the equipped men and all the women are added to that number. It was held at a gym that was built and is owned by an old school Olympic lifter and had plenty of racks squat stands and bars and weights for everyone to warm up with. It was dusty and dingy with the walls were covered with all sorts of strength athlete posters and pictures from magazine pages (BBers, Olympic Lifters, Powerlifters, etc). Most of the equipment was custom fabricated (which I find way cooled than commercially produced stuff because it has character). The people attending lifters and spectators made up a pretty diverse group of people (families with little kids, a bunch of college and high school wrestling teams, and more of the Jim Wendler looking dudes) and all of them were super cool and congenial (very different from other more mainstream sporting events). I had a great time and plan to do another meet in the future (probably next spring, don’t know which one).

Moving Forward

My future employment requires me to live in Milwaukee, WI for ~2 months, then in July I’ll move to Columbus, OH. I’ll get a temporary membership at a good gym in Milwaukee then in Columbus I’ll drive over to Rogue and pick up a rack (no shipping) to set-up a proper home gym (no more wooden squat stands Stroup). I’ll deload a bit and work up to handling decent volume over about 6 weeks, then ride the full body TM for 6 weeks or so then switch to a split routine (perhaps TM for a while or maybe I’ll go back to Calladors 4x4). By this fall my meet PRs should be sets of 3-5 and I’ll be ready to push PRs again.

Meet Video

My good camera died so the first two squats aren’t here. Also my phone lost the sound of the recording when I sent the files to my computer so I hope you don’t mind a little PJ.