The dust has settled after the 2016 Raw Nationals Powerlifting Competition and I still have taken my time to write a re-cap post! I had mixed emotions from Nationals, considering I didn’t even think I was going to be doing them this year I didn’t really have big expectations.
I set a goal at the start of the year to compete at Nationals, unbeknown to me that they were scheduled for the same day as Kyle’s Body Building competition in which he could qualify for the Natural Olympia in Las Vegas. It wasn’t until about 13 weeks out from Nationals that I discovered that they either changed the date, or the date was incorrect on the calendar that I had seen earlier in the year, Nationals were actually the week before Kyle’s competition…. cue me frantically checking out flights and seeing if we could make it work!
Flights, accommodation, registration and a lighter bank account later we were flying down to Christchurch on a Thursday morning ready for me to compete on the Friday. Given this was only my fourth ever competition I really didn’t have any huge expectations. I had set a goal for a certain total I wanted to get but the last couple of weeks of my training plan I realised that it wasn’t likely to happen. My body was just aching and tired everywhere and to be honest it still hasn’t quite come right, 12 weeks of squatting three days a week was a huge hit for the body when I was used to squatting once a week!
I’ve never been so nervous for something my whole life, the week before the competition I was starting to get nervous and we weren’t even in Christchurch yet! Usually after a competition the nerves subside once I’ve done the weigh in and started warming up, but they were still there with me throughout the whole thing! It wasn’t until we got to the deadlifts (the last of the three lifts) that the nerves started to disappear, I guess because it’s my strongest lift and I knew what I could do.
I always thought I was decent at squats until the last couple of competitions where there were some ladies with crazy good squats, think 10-15kg more than me, in the same weight class! I opened on 100kg which was my final lift at my last competition, so I was happy with that increase. I then did a 105kg for my second squat and decided I would try for a 110kg for my third lift (I’d done it the week before in training) but I kind of knew that I should have gone for 107.5kg, I missed the third lift. Looking back at the video I was pretty close to being out of the hole, but I’m still happy I increased my total from the last competition.
Bench press was up next and has been the bane of my powerlifting life for the past 4 months, I just can’t get past my current PB – I can match it without a problem most days, but I just can’t increase it. I started on 57.5kg (which I’d done for reps the last couple of weeks leading up to the competition) and then moved to my PB of 62.5kg – both of which I got no problems. The minimum you can increment in a competition is 2.5kg, unless you are going for a Record (I am well off a record in Bench!), so I had no choice but to attempt 65kg – which I didn’t get. I am so close to ticking this one off though and my attempt at Nationals was the closest I have ever been to getting it up, I was so close to getting past the sticking point! I have always known I am a narrow bencher and one day I would have to work on going wider so this is my plan going forward!
And then we came to Deadlifts! Deadlifts can be a funny one because it’s at the end, so by then sometimes you are kind of over it. Luckily this competition was run really well so the morning wasn’t a big drawn out ordeal like they sometimes are so I was feeling pretty fresh for deadlifts still. I opened with the biggest deadlift of the class at 132.5kg, a weight I had done for reps a couple of weeks out and knew I could do. I had discovered earlier that day that the deadlift record was 140kg for my weight class (a weight I had previously done for the third attempt at my last competition!) so naturally I was going to give it a try and my next attempt I went for 140.5kg which I got and this pushed me into second place overall! I wasn’t the only one going for the record though and it was broken a number of times that morning. It was a game of backwards and forwards with the record, in the end I did a last minute change to try 144kg instead of my planned 143kg, knowing that someone else had already put down to do 145kg. I contemplated increasing it to 146kg to try and get ahead but I knew that the other person would have just gone up higher and I wasn’t too sure how high I could get given my current deadlift PB is 146kg. Whether I got the record or not would not matter when it came to the overall total as there was no way I could catch the person in first and the person in third could not catch me so it was all just a matter of boosting the confidence and doing a weight I could do and know for a split second I broke an NZ record.
I’ve put together a video of my best attempts at each lift below!
Overall I increased my total by 9kg from my previous competition total on the day or 7.5kg on paper, as we found out later the NZ Record was broken the day before by a Junior in the same weight class so the deadlift totals got relegated back to the next ‘legal’ increment (well I presume this is why?!) which means even though I lifted 144kg my total reads as 142.5kg. I didn’t hit the totals I wanted to on the day but I still improved from the last competition and that is always the goal!
Where to from here? I’ve got my eye on another competition this year and next year I’d been entertaining the idea of competing a Commonwealths or another overseas competitions, I really like the idea of Commonwealths but I’m not sure if I can make the cut and it’s expensive to get to South Africa so we will see, we may go for a different competition but the goal is definitely to compete overseas in 2017.