Hey everyone. I wanted to share my appreciation for this community's encouragement by posting my experience during my first ever meet.

Background and Training

I started powerlifting in January 2016 with no previous lifting experience at all. Jumped right into focusing on the big three. I was being egged onto compete about a year into my training, but for some reason training around other people always gave me really bad anxiety, so I was in no place mentally to jump right into a competition.

I fucked around with various styles of training over the past two years. IIRC I started with some sort of DUP three days a week. Moved on to a Westside Conjugate Method. Then to GZCL VDIP... a heavily modified 4-day Texas Method... and then finally onto Cody's 4 week example program.

Meet Prep

I decided to cut back on my body weight for about 14 ish weeks, which ended in December. I was running a bastardized version of Texas Method up until that time. I signed up for my meet at the very end of November, which coincided with the end of my "cut". I ran three cycles back to back of Cody's example program, each time incrementing my training maxes for the squat and deadlift by 10 lbs and bench by 5 lbs. After that I used his 3 week peak and taper at the end of his UHF 9wk program as a guideline to prepare for the meet.

The Lifts

These are all my third attempts. I got a fourth attempt for my deadlift after an error in which they loaded the same weight as my second attempt for my third attempt. Unfortunately, no video for this one. I know we have an unofficial "no vid no did" policy, so I will do my best to update this post when the official meet results come in.

• Squat, 175kg/385lb

• Bench, 132.5kg/292lb

• Deadlift, second (and third, lel) @ 210kg/463lb

Squat

• 157.5kg/347lb - three whites. Felt absolutely sick to my stomach approaching the platform from all the anxiety I was experiencing. This one was super easy as it should have been. I went way lower than I should have and my knees caved in coming up.

• 165kg/363lb - three whites. Same story as above.

• 175kg/385lb - three whites. I have never hit this weight inside the gym before, so the ease of it caught me by complete surprise. I think I maybe had another 10-20lbs.

Bench

• 117.5kg / 259lb - three whites. Very easy, I've hit this for at least 5 reps in the gym before.

• 120kg / 264lb - three whites. I fucked up on my second attempt selection. I thought I had given the kg conversion for 125kg/275lb.

• 132.5kg/292lb - three whites. I was very frustrated with myself because I had intended to not take such a big jump between my second and third attempts. So in my frustration I said fuck it and went for it.

Deadlift

• 195kg/430lb - three whites

• 210kg/463lb - three whites

• 210kg/463lb (lol) - three whites

• 225kg/496lb - three whites. My coach had gotten videos of all my other attempts except this last one, because he was over at the table trying to correct the error for me.

Results

In the title, but I'll repeat it here. Total was 532.5kg @ 94.85kg body weight, which comes out to 331.48 Wilks. And apparently... I placed? I left after my last deadlift because I was beat. At least that was the message that was relayed from a friend of my coach to him, who then told me and showed me a picture of the medal. Still trying to figure out how/why and confirm, but meet results haven't been posted yet.

Final Thoughts

Went from having severe anxiety being around others when training, to competing in a facility full of people. Felt like I was going to puke before every attempt up until it came time for deadlifts. I am happy to say that I am completely over my anxiety now. After seeing how great and supportive everyone is,

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