What I learned doing my first Powerlifting Competition
I don’t need external motivation to lift other than wanting to be capable and build capacity. Building those attributes are reward enough for me to have been lifting for over two decades and to continue doing it for the rest of my life. I also love sharing the gift of strength with others and have been a strength and conditioning coach for 15 years. My clients have found the health and longevity benefits of strength training to be life changing and it becomes a permanent part of their lifestyle.
With that said, I also enjoy testing myself. I don’t think it’s necessary to do so for the average person who simply wants to be generally healthy and increase their quality of life; but neither is hiking a mountain or completing an obstacle race. These are just things that bring me joy in my personal life. When one of my powerlifting coworkers encouraged me to try a competition for the first time I thought that sounded like a fun experience. And one that might increase my experience and knowledge in ways I have not yet explored.
I’ve never had to plan to peak my strength to hit specific numbers at a specific time. Planning for a game time athletic moment was new territory for me. I wanted to share my experience because I had a great time competing and as a coachless newbie I didn’t have much guidance to really know what to expect on competition day.
Training prep and planning for Game Day
I used MAPS Powerlift from Mind Pump for my prep. Anyone from a beginner to advanced can use this program and benefit from it. It is very basic but it will get you strong as hell. There are other great programs out there but they can be overly complicated for someone like me who is trying out competing for the first time. It is an 11 week program but if you have already been training heavy and know your 1RMs you could comfortably cut out the first three weeks and just begin your strength prep. MAPS Powerlift does a great job getting you strong and peaking your performance for the big day, but it won’t contain any guidance on how to determine your openers or warmups. I did weeks of research over multiple sources to plan meet day. My intention was to be conservative since it was my first time competing and I wanted to focus on absorbing and learning the logistics of the event without the stress of hitting PR’s.
I’ll outline what I did and give a few suggestions on ways to be more aggressive in your attempts if that’s the approach you want to take.
If you don’t know your 1RM and you follow MAPS Powerlift the program will help you estimate your 1RM in week three during 8RM testing. Based on your estimated 1RM or your known 1RM you can begin to plan your openers for meet day.
According to my research the first attempts should be pretty low pressure and something to get you on the board. It should be a weight that you’re comfortable with, you’ve done before and could probably do for three repetitions. I went with 92% for my first attempt on each lift. It was quick and easy and built my confidence up for my next attempt and was also kind of a “last warmup” for me. I will touch on commands later in this post but this will also help you to experience the commands for the first time in competition with a nice easy weight. Or you could just do what I did on my first Bench Press attempt and totally skip every single command and botch it. At least I got that out of the way.
After each attempt lifters must go to the judges’ table and tell them what your next attempt is going to be. If your first attempt felt smooth as butter and you’re feeling great, you could give yourself as much as a 6% increase. If it felt heavy and you’re really not feeling like you’re going to perform well, you can ask what the minimum increase is and go with that or you can go with a 3% increase. If you’re an experienced lifter and desire to be a little more aggressive, the second attempt is where you can go ahead and perform a previously set PR so you know that you’ve put all your chips on the table before your last attempt.
For the last attempt, if you’re going the conservative route and just trying to get your first competition under your belt like I was, use the 3%-6% rule again. If the second attempt felt grindy and difficult, you can either go with the minimum allowable increase for your final attempt or try for a 3% increase. If you crushed your second attempt and made it look like a warmup bump yourself up 4%-6%. Lastly, if you’re being aggressive then go for a new PR and just feed off the competition energy in the room.
Programming warmups
Use the same warmups in competition that you used during your prep so that you know they work well for you. Many of these are personalized because of any imbalances or mobility challenges that individuals may have. For me, I like to do the McGill Big 3 on Squat and Deadlift days, along with some banded side steps and monster walks. For Bench days I have my own shoulder mobility issues so I will run through some specific mobility drills for myself and then get the muscles activated with some banded rows and banded external and internal rotations.
Before I begin my normal programming for the day I will work my way through some light to moderate weight with the exact movement I am performing for my heavy lift. I got this warmup series from Jeff Nippard’s Powerbuilding programming and it has worked very well for me both in training and the day of my competition.
| Percent 1RM | Reps |
| 40% 1RM | 5 |
| 50% 1RM | 4 |
| 60% 1RM | 3 |
| 70% 1RM | 2 |
| 80% 1RM | 1 |
To be clear, this is simply what worked for me and what I composed after my research. I’ve run a few Powerlifting programs in my own personal training routine over the last five-ish years. I am an instructor for tactical athletes, general population and post-rehab clients but I am not a Powerlifting coach and this is simply my writings and conclusions for myself as a first time competitor in the sport. So if you have a Powerlifting coach who has trained successful athletes and he/she is telling you to do something different, by all means, follow their advice. I believe that I have a good perspective to share as someone who was experiencing the event for the first time because sometimes when we are the experts in our field, we assume the person that we are coaching knows what to expect and we take some experiences for granted. I found myself learning a lot as I went the day of competition. This is also why it is so important to have all of your attempts and warmups programmed and well thought out long before the day of. Even if you end up changing your attempts you originally planned, at least you have a guideline and you’re not just making it up that day. Luckily, I’m a planner and I planned everything I possibly could weeks in advance.
While I was technically coachless I had something WAY better. My incredible, supportive husband. He trained right by my side through the entire prep and was super excited to come support me the day of the competition. Once we got there and it was time for me to warm up, he totally took over my warm up progression for me and made it so that I didn’t have to worry about anything except moving weight from point a to point b. That did so much for clearing my mind and taking any stress off my plate so that I could just enjoy the process and learn about competing. I absolutely loved being a team with my husband. I am so grateful and he made for such a fun experience that we got to have together. In saying that, if you are coachless and you have a supportive significant other, this is a really fun thing that you can experience together.
Chris started me on my warmups about 40 minutes out from my first attempt which was the scheduled start time and when flight B was finishing their third attempt thereafter. There are other competitors working in as well because in a gym full of 50 competitors there are only so many racks and bars. Everyone at this competition was pretty cool and we all just kind of hung out and warmed up together.
Weigh Ins
After signing up for the competition I periodically received email communication from the meet director. About a week before the event, I received the email letting me know when the weigh in times were and those are done the day before competition day. There was a morning timeframe for weigh ins and an evening timeframe. They made it really easy to work around a job or other day to day life responsibilities.
Aside from the expected, which is getting your weight; this is the time where you will give the judges your first attempts for all lifts for the next day, figure out your rack heights for Squat and Bench, and get your gear checked. …all your gear. I did a Raw competition and opted out of using sleeves, wraps, or a belt so there wasn’t a whole lot to check. One of the things I stressed a little about as a woman first timer was if my sports bra was going to be legal or not. I can at least speak for WRPF in that they do not check your sports bra so you can wear whatever makes you feel comfortable. However, be prepared for a slightly awkward moment when they ask to check your underwear. They have to make sure you aren’t gaining some sort of advantage by having supportive or compression type legs or material. Use legless briefs that do not provide compression or extra support in any way.
I did find that the competition shirt I purchased from A7 was not WRPF approved because it had elastic in the neckline. This was one of the things that caught me off guard and I had minor panic about at weigh ins but thankfully they quickly followed it up by saying I could use the free event tee they had just given me. My A7 singlet was approved, as were the deadlift socks and my Inov8 barefoot shoes. I also saw several lifters using Converse Chucks if that’s your lifting shoe of choice. Lastly, I personally like to use a mouthguard because I find that I really tend to grind my teeth when I lift heavy and that can sometimes strain my neck and jaw. WRPF allows mouthguards and they don’t seem to feel the need to inspect it but I did show mine to the judges just to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I currently use the Airwaav Endurance, the Miami Vice edition of course, as my husband and I are Miami Vice fans. I’ve also used the New Age Performance mouthpiece in the past but I found myself having to trim that one quite a bit to make it fit and then I had some sharp edges to deal with, but it is another highly recommended mouthguard for Powerlifting and I did see a couple lifters at this event with New Age.
Food is fuel
I really like to keep things simple. I’ve done some other competitive events in my life and when it comes to food there are a million opinions out there. I know what my body is used to and I don’t change a thing when it comes to a competitive event. The last thing I want to find out is that dinner the night before or breakfast the morning of didn’t agree with me when I’m standing in my flight waiting to make my next attempt. I ate a dinner I would normally eat, then ate a breakfast I would normally eat the morning of, brought my favorite snack, LEGENDARY Protein Cinnamon Roll. Lastly, for lunch I brought PB&J. I really didn’t feel hungry or underfed at any point but I had some extra PB&J’s just in case.
There was a lot of candy consumption happening. I think that would have made me sick but I know there are many people who use candy in training, so if that’s what your body is used to and you feel it gives you the competitive edge you need then go for it! I just recommend that you don’t try anything new the day of competition.
Game Time
Competitors get divided up into flights as determined by the meet director. There are many ways they can divide up the flights and it does not have to be class or weight related. I’m sure most competitions are run similar to this one where women ran first in flight A and they ran it from lightest to heaviest attempts. With that said, I found that the order would change slightly following attempts because of the weights selected by competitors. So, pay attention to the order after each attempt. This is another place where my husband helped keep me on track and paid close attention to my order in the flight and helped me know where I was in the queue.
As a newbie to the sport I did not know to look up state records beforehand to be able to claim them. If breaking records is something you are interested in make that part of your planning process in the weeks and days leading up to the competition. The process for that is to claim to the judges that you are going for a state (or national if you are participating in a national competition) record as you are approaching your attempt on the platform. To look up the records go to your chosen federation and find the records for your state (not the state you’re competing in) and your class. You are representing your state of residence when you compete, so even though I was competing in Maryland, I would have been setting a record for Pennsylvania.
Commands
Commands are the thing I was concerned about most going into the competition. I watched lots of YouTube videos about it and even asked my husband to help me with them in training. In spite of my concern and constant studying of commands in training, on competition day I was overly stressed about them and even had a bit of difficulty with them. Squat is the first lift of the event and even though I didn’t miss any squats, I did get a red light on my first two squat attempts for “jumping” the squat command. For an attempt to count you need two out of three white lights. If any of the three judges give you a red light, you need to find out right away what the red light was for so you don’t make the same mistake in the future. When they told me I “jumped” the squat command they were telling me I started the attempt before the judge gave me the command.
Chris was there taking video of my attempts which was awesome because I could learn from any mistakes right away and fix them. I was having trouble seeing from the videos that I was jumping commands so what I have learned is that there does not need to be any rush at all. You have an entire minute to perform your attempt after the judge says “the bar is loaded.” So, I can unrack the bar, get the squat command and still give another one to two second pause before beginning the movement. Just take your time.
By far, the thing I was most nervous about was commands on Bench Press and being able to pause at the bottom long enough and under load. I practiced this in training but I’ve spent years not practicing this in training so there is a lot more accumulation of training not pausing and causing that to be a weak point. I really got in my head about this on the first Bench Press attempt and I just went in there and skipped every command. I joked with friends over text and said “no one tells ME when to bench! I bench when I’m damn well ready to bench!” But with that out of my system I came back out on my second and third attempts hitting every command and having successful lifts. If I decide to compete again at some point, I feel very comfortable now with the commands.
Enjoy the process
What brought me the most joy in this whole journey was experiencing it with my husband. I’ve never been one to need a training partner to stay on track and progress but I have really enjoyed having Chris as a training partner from day one of working out together when we first met. Not only was he supportive and excited about my training and competing but he actively participated in training powerlifting alongside me and, unexpected to both of us, was how he prepared all of my warmups and helped me with all of my logistics on competition day.
Through the whole process we both got stronger and helped each other achieve our strength goals. We learned a lot about ourselves and each other. Even more exciting to me than my competition was the next day when my husband got to test himself in our garage gym. No games, no gear, just man versus weight.
Don’t forget to enjoy the competition. Yes, you are competing against others and that can be a great driving force. You are also competing against yourself and that means being stronger than you were yesterday. Train smart and compete strong.
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