powerlifting competition

They thought I was a high school kid. I found this rather amusing.

Listening to the rules!

I hate it when I fail at something, but I like honesty, and I should practice what I preach. I bombed my squats, which was the first event. You better believe I was all kinds of disappointed. :[

In the midst of descending. From now on, I’m doing the “ass to grass” variety–then it can’t possibly be too high! :D

With each “bad” experience, however, I am a firm believer that you can learn a wealth of information from it.

I didn’t screw over my squats because I couldn’t lift the weight (the judges could tell it was an easy weight for me). I’d just had the misconception that going parallel was all I needed. I think I was a little high on the first one, so I went for parallel on the second, which is probably when they realized that I wasn’t aware that you had to go lower. (Hooray for not reading the rulebook carefully/forgetting that bullet point entirely. Having a video of myself lifting would probably have been a great idea too, because I can’t exactly see if I’m going low enough when I’m in the squat rack. On my third attempt, one of the guys there offered to tell me when I was low enough (I also hadn’t been aware that that was even allowed), but I descended too slowly and was too tired to get back up. :[

I also probably psyched myself out. Do not ever underestimate the power of your mind. Negative self-talk will be the death of me.

I was told that I had a beautiful arch. <3

For the record, I absolutely adored the fact that there were people there to rack the weights for me. <3 <3 <3 Having spotters was also pretty awesome. (The lack of a spotter is one reason why bench improves so very slowly for me.)

This weight (259 lb) ended up being pretty easy for me, so I guess I should’ve picked something heavier. Next time!

Looking up was super helpful for deadlifts (probably would be for squats too).

In any case, since I bombed my first event, I wasn’t eligible to take a fourth attempt to beat the state record for Virginia on deadlifts. :[ But it is a-okay. I apparently hold the state deadlift record for my weight class, so you know what? I’ll take it. :] What doesn’t kill me will just make me stronger. Now that I know what to expect and how everything works (for the most part), I have full confidence that I can and will beast the next one I enter. :] I will be practicing wall sits to the floor so I don’t eff over my squats again. :O

Read more about what I learned here!