On April 29th 2023 the gym I train clients out of had a deadlift contest. I participated and dipped my toe back into the competitive waters for the first time in a long time. The last time I had competed in a sports related thing was back in high school, approximately 20 years ago. Waking up the competitive fires again was fun. It was fun enough I am doing a full powerlifting meet coming up in June. However fun this whole process has been I still screwed a lot of things up at the deadlift contest and learned a lot.
First off I need to come into new competitions in better shape. I got very tired during the contest between lifting myself, setting up for the event, and loading for other lifters. I just need to be in better shape to not have fatigue be at all an issue in the future. More GPP seems to be the answer to this.
My second flaw was that I needed to slow down and concentrate. Everything that happened when I stepped up to lift my weights was a blur. I got excited and stopped thinking. In fact I reached down to grab the bar at one point using a mixed grip. I have not used a mixed grip in years for the deadlift, but for whatever reason I grabbed the bar that way on that attempt. I corrected myself quickly, so thankfully no torn bicep that day. For my next contest though I will be concentrating more on my setup. This should keep me from just being scatterbrained.
Going into this contest I had some low back problems. This did not help me at all. In fact post contest I was using a broom to sweep a floor and the rotation made my back twinge a little. I feel like I need to build a more robust lower back and physique so that I am just more healthy overall. I am starting to get more 3 dimensional with my training and train in odd positions. This includes some rotational work and things like sideways farmer’s walks. I just want to be more robust overall to mitigate injuries as much as possible. My lower back definitely limited me on competition day and there is no excuse for that. I’ll be committed to being well rounded going forward.
I feel like I need to bring up some muscles to really help out my lower back. I think I can improve my lats, obliques, abs, and glutes. This sounds like “hey I need to be better at everything!” and it might be that way. I want to do what I can to get better at these areas to take as much pressure off the lower back during lifts as I can. This work should help my squats and deadlifts both.
Overall the deadlift contest was a good experience and a learned a little bit. I found some weaknesses to fix and its full steam ahead working on those. I am doing what I can before my next competition to address these problems. I know I don’t have a lot of time before the June 24th contest so there will not be a large change. After the competition though I will be deciding if this powerlifting thing is a one time thing or something that I want to repeat. If I decide to compete more then I’ll have a good list of weaknesses to bring up before the next contest.