sking's log

[Alexis]

Fuck Yeah!

[Briks42]

Great work steve. Can't wait to hear about the experience.

[sking1001]

Wow, thanks for all the kinds words, everyone! The support here is truly appreciated. Yeah, thanks for "buggering" me into doing this meet, Carlos...hope I didn't make you look too much like an idiot, haha!

I'm pretty far behind on these boards. I did a ton of traveling across the state visiting relatives on Easter. Thanks for being so patient. I'm still hoping to train on Monday even though I'm staying up all hours of the night to get this out.

This is like a novel, so I divided it up into sections if you want to skip around. It's also so long that I have to divide it into 2 posts:

The Cut
Monday - I ate a little healthier and didn't eat as much, since I was thinking I might be able to make 181.
Tuesday - I drank a lot of water, still ate healthier and took in fewer calories, but I didn't start thinking about a serious cut just yet.
Wednesday - nearly 2 gallons of water, getting serious now. At bed time I weighed 193.4.
Thursday - In the morning I weighed 187.4, so I lost 6 pounds of water weight overnight. That day I had 2 gallons of water again, but this time by 7pm. The last 32 ounces were gatorade. 7pm or a little after was the food and water cutoff. I went to my son's soccer game and didn't get home till nearly 11pm. I took a very hot bath and shower, bundled up, and sweat a lot. I also bundled up in bed but was so hot that I couldn't sleep. I got up at about 1am to cool off some and went back to bed at about 1:30 just cool enough to sleep.
Friday - In the morning, I weighed 184.4. I got off work at 12:30pm and came home to finish mowing the lawn and pack. I took a hot bath and shower, bundled up and sweat, and this took me to 183. About 3pm, I repeated the bath/shower/sweating, and got to 181.6. That was just in time to leave for the hotel and hit the sauna, or bath if they didn't have one.

The hotel didn't have a sauna. The first thing I did when I dropped my bags off in my room was to find a scale. I found one in the fitness center, stripped down and weighed in at 185.5!!! What?? I asked around and was told that the scale was probably not accurate. I think not! So I have no way of knowing my actual weight at this point. So at about 6pm, as drained and THIRSTY as I was, and as much as I did not want to do it, I figured I should try to cut a little more to be sure. Turns out the hotel room, although nice, did not have a bathtub, but only a shower. I'm really glad I did most of the cut at home. Not as effective as a bath but more comfortable, I took as hot of a shower as I could stand, bundled up, and sweat until about 6:30. I cooled down, got dried off, and went down the hall to the weigh-ins. This was a tiny meet and they were doing the weigh-ins in a bathroom, so I only had to wait about 45 seconds for my turn to weigh in and got in about 10-15 minutes before 7. I was a little worried not knowing where I was, but I weighed in at 178.8!! I was happy, but a bit frustrated. Actually, that Gatorade I drank as soon as I stepped off the scale was so wonderful, I don't think I felt anything but pure ecstasy, haha!

Thinking back, I'm certain I made weight at the house before I left. I think my scale at home weighs heavier than the NASA scale too. I should have just relaxed at the hotel. Next time I'm going to take my own scale. Live and learn.

Meet Experience
I drank nearly a gallon of Gatorade and water the night after weigh-ins and never had to pee. I finished off a really big double cheeseburger and fries and had some milk, oatmeal and bananas later that evening in the hotel room. It was a lot harder than I expected to eat after the weigh-ins. One of my sons went with me to the hotel, and my wife and other son joined us later that evening. My daughter also came up Saturday for the meet. It was so nice to have my family with me!

I entered the novice division in the 181.75 pound weight class. I could have entered masters 1 or masters pure, or even multiple divisions. Being my first meet, I thought it would be best to enter novice, but I think I would have been able to at least go for some state records if I had entered one of the masters divisions. I should have asked someone, but I don't think anyone in the novice division is allowed to establish any state or American records. The reason I say this is I kept hearing announcements that someone was going for a state or American record when they were lifting less than me. It turns out there were only about 30 lifters at the entire meet, which included more than just unequipped powerlifting. This made things go more quickly, but sometimes it felt like it moved too fast, plus it was disappointing to only have one other 181 novice to compete against, and it was a high school kid. Since this was all new to me, I had some extra stress trying to figure out the timing of things. For the squat, I finally figured out to start wrapping my knees when I was 3 out. Once the bar is loaded, I only had 1 minute...there was a little stress there. For my first squat attempt, I even forgot to wear my belt, haha. More on this later.

[sking1001]

Warm-ups
Although I was expecting it, it still messed up my groove to have to wait around for other lifters to get my warm-ups in, to figure out what weight to put on the bar in kilograms, and to try to work in with the weights others were using. I never ever have to wait for anything in the gym. Also, in the future, I'm going to do a lot more preparation in kilograms. I recorded my warm-ups accordingly, although some of them may be off by 2.5kg, because I can't remember which warm-ups had collars. During warm-ups for the squat, I messed up when I loaded 150Kg on the bar, since I had planned to do 140 first. So a little closer to when I thought I would be on the platform, I did the 140x2, pausing the first rep.

SQ - 20x10, 60x5, 80x5, 100x3, 120x2, 150x1, 140x2 (first rep paused)
BP - 60x8, 80x5, 92.5x1, 100x1
DL - 62.5x5, 102.5x5, 142.5x3, 162.5x1, 185x1

Lifts
SQ - 167.5/185/192.5 kilograms or 369/408/424 pounds
As mentioned above, I was kind of flustered with trying to time the wraps, etc, and forgot my belt on the first attempt. I buried it a little deeper than I needed, which others were confirming, so that actually made if feel heavier than I expected. After I racked it, one of the judges said, "Belt?", haha. Three whites on the first attempt. On my second attempt, I think I had the timing down a little better and remembered my belt this time, although I still felt flustered. Also, I thought my wraps felt looser than normal, although there is no doubt that I wrapped them exactly as usual. I really couldn't even tell you how my technique felt. I'm telling you, I had so many things going through my head and I was also somewhat nervous. So I squatted the 2nd attempt just about as deep as the first, and I nearly didn't get it, but there was NO WAY I was going to miss this. The world would have to end before I was going to miss a second attempt! I gave it everything I had, thought I might have actually crapped my pants (I didn't), and got 3 whites. I think everyone was pretty impressed with the effort I put in, but I was just in disbelief that it was as hard as it was. Totally different than being in the groove in the gym. Everyone told me that the adrenaline would make up for it, but I guess I just didn't have it. So I should have been smarter for my 3rd attempt, but instead, I made the big jump to 424 as planned, because my mind didn't want to accept anything but a 1200 total. For my 3rd attempt, I got an extra revolution out of my wraps. Either I'm getting more used to them, or they have stretched out a bit. Like I said, there were so many things in my head to stress about and mess up my groove, I'm not even sure I could tell that the wraps were helping. There's just no way that I had the focus I needed to hit that lift. I missed my 3rd and even later felt like I gave up too easily. I was probably already defeated in my mind before I stepped on the platform. There is so much I'm going to change for my next meet. It's going to be like night and day compared to this one! So I got 185 kilograms or 408 pounds for my squat...still a 3 pound PR.

BP - 110/120/125 kilograms or 243/265/276 pounds
I didn't have the stress of wraps, but I still didn't feel like my technique was on or my focus was as sharp as in the gym. I was really surprised that 265 was as hard as it was, and 276 was much worse at the meet than it was in the gym. So I got 120 kilograms or 265 pounds for my bench...not even close to a PR.

DL - 205/220/227.5 kilograms or 452/485/502 pounds
I'm probably bummed the most about my deadlift, because I was counting on this lift to redeem myself. As I was warming up, I was noticing how weak a lot of the other lifters' technique and bar speed was. Like I said, this one was going to make it all better. So 452 went up easily as expected. 485 went up pretty much like I thought it would too. I've never lifted 485, so I expected it to be pretty hard, and it was. Now, looking at the video, the bar really swayed on the right side where my hand is supinated. Someone who noticed this told me that my grip was about an inch uneven, like the right hand was further from the center than the left. I appreciated the advice, but I wasn't sure I've ever done that. Well, with the way my head was operating at this meet, I supposed that was possible. Now, this 3rd attempt for a crazy PR is what I needed to redeem myself. However, thinking back, I'm not really sure I believed I could do it. I tried to really get psyched on the platform, but I've actually felt more pumped in the gym. I made certain that my hand placement was even, but like the recurring theme, I'm just not sure I was able to clearly focus on my technique. It was too heavy. Reviewing the video, the bar swayed just like my 2nd attempt. Now I know I've seen this before, and I don't think it has anything to do with hand placement. I was just not keeping it close. I'm really going to try to be more focused at my next meet. So I got 220 kilograms or 485 pounds for my deadlift...still a 10 pound PR.

Placing
Results are here:
http://nasa-sports.com/Results/Resul...%20Results.htm
Scroll down to the "Unequipped PL". There were a whopping 17 lifters in the unequipped powerlifting event, sorted by a coefficient scoring, and the bottom 2 were women. As you can see, a couple of lifters entered multiple divisions, and one guy entered about every division he could. So I placed 8th in total coefficient scoring. Of course I placed first out of the two 181.75 novice lifters, beating out a 173.4 pound high school kid totaling 1014. If I had competed in the 198.25 class, I would have been the only one in the novice division, but I would have been outlifted by all 3 other lifters, coming very close to the 3rd. It would be nice to be placed among more lifters, but I really want to improve on this meet.

Thoughts on Performance
Okay, I'm going to redeem myself in the gym. That 1200 total will be forthcoming! I don't know, at first I thought that the cut didn't affect me, because I did feel strong. I really didn't have access to a good scale when I was trying to get back to my normal weight, but I weighed Sunday morning after the meet at 187, which is just 5.4 pounds more than when I left the house for the weigh-ins, so I'm not so sure now. There are a lot of factors I will be considering for my next meet. My wife said something to me that really made sense. I was putting so much energy into things as small as converting my intended warm-up weights to metric to whether or not I was going to miss my name being called, and I really need to put all that energy into my lifts. I need to get to a point where I'm comfortable enough at a meet to get my head in the place it needs to be just like I do in the gym. My technique needs to be at the front of my mind, rather than the fear of being disqualified, because I didn't get to the platform within a minute of the bar being loaded! Cutting weight is another art that can be refined. Like I said before, my next meet is going to be like night and day compared to this one!

I'll get the video edited and uploaded sometime Monday.

[Mac Ward]

Steve,

Thanks for the write up. Your learning curve sounds as steep as it was for me and Gillian when she did her first meet. I was her "handler" which helped tremendously. I was able to do all the things that your wife pointed out that you were putting too much energy in, and she basically did what I told her to do. Perhaps you can get your wife to help on the next one, or take a buddy, or maybe your son.

Great job on the meet! I personally think you are being a bit ridiculous, you set two PR's, (actually three since all were firsts in a meet), and arguably, the paused bench was a PR. You crushed it!

[mcclamic]

Congrats Steve! Thanks for the write up and good work at the meet! You didn't bomb out and set two PRs in the process, pretty good I think! Plus at the next one, like your wife said, you'll be more relaxed and able to focus on lifting versus the "small" things...

[sking1001]

Steve,

Thanks for the write up. Your learning curve sounds as steep as it was for me and Gillian when she did her first meet. I was her "handler" which helped tremendously. I was able to do all the things that your wife pointed out that you were putting too much energy in, and she basically did what I told her to do. Perhaps you can get your wife to help on the next one, or take a buddy, or maybe your son.

Great job on the meet! I personally think you are being a bit ridiculous, you set two PR's, (actually three since all were firsts in a meet), and arguably, the paused bench was a PR. You crushed it!

Thanks a lot, Mac! Sorry for all the whining. It really helps to just get it out, haha. My problem is that I put too much hope into getting 1200 at the meet. You are right, I should be very pleased, and the more time passes, the more satisfied I am that I gave it my all.

Congrats Steve! Thanks for the write up and good work at the meet! You didn't bomb out and set two PRs in the process, pretty good I think! Plus at the next one, like your wife said, you'll be more relaxed and able to focus on lifting versus the "small" things...

You are exactly right, Mike. Thank you.

[Oldster]

That was a fabulous write up Steve and it explains a lot to someone like me who has never been to one.

I STILL think you did GREAT!

[Dwayne_KONG_Wint]

Great write up. If I told this all to Steel, he would say to me, "You think too much." So I'm saying it to you:--> You think too much! Look at all the valuable experience you have gained and like Mac said, you hit PRs. You've got to be happy about that!

You did a great job and just think about your next wave of training and how you are going to kill it at your next meet.

[Mac Ward]

Agree with Kong, Steel would say exactly that, you think too much.