Eric and Gary (and Mark's) Excellent Adventure at the Nationals

[Mark E. Hurling]

Part I

This started out to be about Eric and Gary’s excellent adventure at the USPA Nationals (in Vegas Baby!), but it turned into an unexpectedly excellent adventure for me too. We all learned things at this that might prove useful for others contemplating competing or even just going to watch and cheer. I am posting this in The Elderly section of the forum because although Eric is no geezer, Gary and I are, so age wins this particular vote.

Saturday morning had me looking all over the Golden Nugget for Eric. Since he posted videos of his earlier meet this year and is a self described 5’ 7” guy with a beard, it would ordinarily narrow down the possibilities. Except a lot of guys have beards around powerlifting meets, so no help there. The saving grace turned out to be walking out of the venue as 9:00 got closer for the start of the meet when I spotted a guy with a beard that just happened to be wearing a jersey with Eric’s last name on it. It’s a pretty unique last name, so it wasn’t like trying to sort out Smiths or Jones.

Sure enough, the beard part fit, as did the general looks you could glean from a video taken in the middle distance. But I’m not buying the 5’ 7” part. He looks two inches taller in person. Add to that, his black framed glasses, friendly smile, and square jaw and you find yourself thinking of the Clark Kent disguise and start looking around for a phone booth.

So DB and I made our introductions to Eric and his lovely wife, bought our wristbands for the meet, and found some good seats. I asked Eric if he wanted a liftoff for the bench press. His father and mother were coming to watch too, and he said his father would do that for him. Whew! Ducked that bullet. I’ve been giving liftoffs for decades in the gym, but never at a meet. New things give me the willies, especially when performed under the scrutiny of judges and a howling mob of supporters. So far so good. Eric admitted to being slightly amped but calm and in full control. His parents arrived, and Eric and his father went off to warm up and practice liftoffs.

Eric has already described his weights and attempts in his own log The Young and the Restless, so rather than reprise that, I’ll stick to my own observations of the proceedings; the pathos, the humor, and the drama. When you watch Eric squat, his hand positioning, grip, and setup are textbook for the Starting Strength model. Wish I could do that. His final attempt looked very solid as he started coming up, with hip drive fully engaged. I was sure he had it nailed, but alas, a quarter of the way out of the hole, he shook his head and the spotters rushed in to assist.

The squat is the slowest moving lift of most meets, what with rack heights and weight reloads. The bench press moved very fast in this meet. So fast, it caught everyone off guard because all of a sudden Eric was nearly the next up and his father happened to be out of the room. I was head down scribbling notes when his wife called across to me, “Mark! Eric’s up next and we don’t know where his father is!”

Uh-oh! My brain scattered like a covey of quail as I jumped up into the environs of the platform and muttered what had happened to Eric. Years of marriage train you to respond immediately when under the stress of female commands. I was seriously freaked out by this prospect because I didn’t want to screw it up. Which I promptly went and did anyway. After gripping the bar and watching for Eric’s signal to lift, I stayed right there ready to grab the bar as needed. All the while the head judge was swatting my hip and yelling at me to move off the platform so he could see the lift! I hopped sideways and sprawled out feeling like my face was on fire. The judge kept me there a bit after Eric’s lift explaining quite civilly to me what I had done wrong. “Not to worry, sir. I won’t be back up here again today. I was a last second, last ditch alternate.”

There are lots of good shirts with good stuff on them at most meets. The best shirt I saw there said “No one ever said I lost because I was too strong.”

So on to the deadlift Eric went. By then it was 3:47 and even the judges were looking a little tired. As with squats, Eric’s position over the bar was SS textbook. His shoulders were well over the bar with arms at just the right angle for pull. Rip would have been proud. We never got a full explanation of why the 2nd and 3rd attempts got red lighted, but I think they may have thought Eric hitched. I didn’t think so, but I did notice the bar digging in hard on his left middle quad and wondered if that hurt at all. I didn’t see any stopping in the upward movement, but then the judges were closer and had better angles to observe from.

The judging at the Nationals was not about protecting the self esteem of the competitors last weekend, it was about doing the lifts to the rules and requirements of the federation. And that’s as it should be.

I was exhausted myself after the day’s lifting was over. Almost as tired as if I had lifted that day, just lacking the soreness.

[Mark E. Hurling]

Part II

Meeting up with Gary the next morning was just as serendipitous as stumbling across Eric. I looked around for guys my age that I didn’t recognize from other meets that looked to be in the 220 class. As luck would have it, the first guy I said,
“Say I’m looking for a guy named Gary . . .”

“Ha! So I finally get to meet ‘the’ Mark Hurling.”

It was pretty humbling when Gary reminded me that I was the reason he was competing at all. I asked if he wanted a liftoff mainly out of politeness. After yesterday’s debacle with Eric, I wasn’t anxious to repeat that kind of humiliation. He did want a liftoff, and I crossed my fingers for later.

Gary and I chatted, getting to know each other for more than the online experience can provide. He’s a great, affable guy with a lingering New Yawk accent. He was nervous because he was the first up in the first flight of the day. Well that sounded familiar, because I had been in the same unenviable position myself in November of 2013 in this venue. So I told him to pay particular attention to commands and not screw it up like I did being first up.

He selected an opener of 303 and got under the bar. His hands too were the textbook SS model. The lift looked perfect but he got three red lights! I asked him what happened and then hustled out to one of the judges. He had anticipated the command to “Rack!” the bar. Even if the head judge starts to pronounce the command, if the lifter starts to lean in before the words are out, it is deemed a no lift for having failed to follow the commands.

Gary was a little rattled and asked if he should go higher for his 2nd attempt.

“Absolutely, forget what just happened, it’s in the past now and you did the lift fine and you looked and felt strong, right? Go after it.”

So that was my unexpected induction into coaching powerlifting. He nailed 319 with three white lights. As he came off the platform, the head judge, Alan Aerts, the number two official in the USPA hierarchy, came over to inspect Gary’s singlet. The legs had rolled up and Aerts explained how they had to be pulled straight or the singlet could be construed to be serving as multi-ply equipment. Since Gary lifts in the Raw division, this was an issue. Aerts was very friendly and conversational in the inspection and explanation of the whats and whys of this rule and Gary got everything squared away.

After some discussion for his third attempt, Gary picked 330 and nailed that too. I think he has 5-10 pounds in his squat yet to be realized in competition.
While all this was going on, I was introduced to Gary’s wife and camera maven extraordinaire who recorded all his lifts for posterity with a huge lens trained on the platform. We also started a friendly running discussion and duel for bragging rights with Roger, a 60-some firedog in Gary’s age and weight divisions.

Roger was coming up out of the hole on his 2nd attempt in the squat when I saw him wobble forward and it looked to me like he was failing. The spotter behind him thought so too, because he promptly grabbed Roger and assisted him up. Too bad, I thought. Then we learned he was getting a do-over. I’ve never seen that granted before so I asked Roger what had happened and how he had managed to get that. He said he was protesting “NO!” when the spotter grabbed him and the judges agreed that he should have another shot at the lift. Roger explained that he often wobbles forward and fights his way out of it successfully. I watched his attempts closely after that, and he did indeed do just that. But not so far forward as the lift he was “helped” out of.
Having learned how tiring just watching a meet can be, I went up to my room to decompress for an hour or so until the bench press started up.

Gary came into the meet with a slight shoulder injury which concerned him for the bench press. He warmed up and we rehearsed how he wanted his liftoff to go so it could be performed flawlessly this time. I’d told him about the spectacle I had made of myself the day before.

He opened with 238 in the bench press and got red lighted for anticipating the “Rack!” command. I asked how his shoulder felt and it was good. Then I told him to forget the opener and stay on his plan as long as he felt strong and with no shoulder problems.

His 2nd attempt was with 248 and the lift was flawless. So far so good with me getting out of the way expeditiously after the liftoff, too. While I was crouched at the edge of the platform, Aerts the head judge tapped my shoulder. After successful completion of the lift, he advised me that Gary stepped on the platform before he (Aerts) had announced “The platform is ready!” As before, Aerts was friendly and not at all dictatorial when talking about this, but he warned that it could result in having a lift red lighted in some circumstances for failing to follow commands. I passed this on to Gary and described my own approach for waiting for the platform. I had gotten part of this advice from a Masters lifter named Dave in my first meet in 2013. Watch the head judge, and make eye contact with them, he had said. It’s a show of recognition and respect for their authority. Too which I added my own deeply ingrained practice from martial arts of making a small bow or head duck after establishing the eye contact.

I asked Gary how his shoulder was doing and if it gave him any concerns. Nope, good to go. He had selected 259 for his 3rd attempt and then reconsidered and asked if I thought he should go into the 260’s for a PR. I said if the shoulder feels up to it, go for it. Unfortunately, his original selection had been rostered already so he couldn’t change it. His final lift was a piece of cake. That PR is waiting out there for him to collect it. He had also edged ahead of Roger in the totals thus far. But then Roger had a killer deadlift in him. At 5’ 7” and built like a fireplug, it afforded him an advantage over Gary who is 5’11”.

Everything came together in the deadlift at 1:47. This day moved faster than the previous one and there was more snap and energy in all the competitors. No problems with commands and all the lifts were good. Gary had a ligament injury on one of his fingers that concerned him and his ability to hang on to the bar, but it held up just fine. His first attempt was 341, and the bar sailed up. The second attempt was 375 and moved right along. His 3rd attempt of 385 was also easy. There’s room for more in his deadlift for certain.
As anticipated, Roger pulled a huge deadlift in the upper 400’s and got the better total. Too bad, but it made for a great friendly banter between the three of us geezers with encouragement from all. Of course I was more encouraging for Gary, but that didn’t stop me from wishing Roger well.

Eric showed up just as Gary finished and I introduced them. Gary’s wife snapped a photo of the three of us yukking it up on the sidelines.

There was a lot for all of us in this to learn from. I hadn’t intended to be this much a part of this story, but as Saturday wound down I knew there was still more I had picked up from the experience. This was the first meet I had been through all day that I hadn’t competed in myself. I was so beat from it; I decided I had to rest between main lifts on Sunday to keep sharp for support. The atmosphere at meets is just so contagious, you find yourself cheering people you have no idea who they are just to get them through their struggles to come up with a successful lift. It drained me and I’m still a little tired from it. Probably old age.

I also learned that I liked coaching although the responsibility was and is scary. I’ve been teaching martial arts for years but it’s different. Guiding people through complex movements that may never have to use in the real world is one thing. Advising people how to proceed in the right here and the right now and then have them attempt to do it in front of judges and an audience is very starkly immediate and real. You certainly don’t want someone to get hurt from your advice but you want to help them to rise to their best.

It was great being with those guys and it will be a long treasured memory. Thanks to you both.

[GaryP]

Eric-Mark-Gary-5.jpg

Picture of Eric, Coach Hurling, and me at USPA Nationals last weekend.

[Eric K]

Thanks for the support, Mark. It was great to meet you and your wife. Gary, it was nice meeting you as well, and congratulations on your PRs.