Scottish Powerliftng, Eastern Districts 2017

ATS had three lifters competing at the recent Eastern Districts competition, Reiss McCormick, Jason Gray, and Myself. We all had a good day in terms of lifting with Jason and I hitting personal bests, Reiss didn't achieve the weights he wanted yet still achieved 8/9 despite not having benched for 5 months due to a chronic elbow issue.
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Will:
This was my first comp of the year. The goal for this meet was to essentially do the opposite of what happened at my last comp. Stick to my normal lifting approach, make much better attempt selection decisions and not be too rigid in sticking to the expectations I had in my head. You can plan all you want, but you're only going to know for sure on the day.

​Squats: 190/200/207.5


Bench: 120/130/135x


Deadlift: 220/237.5/242.5


Total: 580 Wilks: 374.17

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Overall I was happy with the changes I made on the day. I cut numbers down, mostly due to feeling like I had very little gas in the tank. Unclear if the last squat, which was a mess, took more out of me than I thought, or if it's a separate issue related to on the day nutrition. I'll be attempting to rectify both for the Scottish classic in May.

​Jason:

I'm going to go over how I felt it went for Jason, having done his programming for this comp, then I'll put his own overview after the numbers. I felt his day was pretty much perfect for his first ever meet, his training up to the comp went very well despite a fairly demanding job and the American Football season starting up again, he went 9/9 and hit some new best lifts. We're now looking to the Scottish juniors for his next comp on September 24th

Squats: 150/160/167.5


Bench: 90/100/105


Deadlift: 175/185/192.5


Total: 465 Wilks: 315.49

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“I felt good in the run up to the meet, was reasonably nervous on the day. I felt like my openers went well but I would've liked to put a bit more on my third attempts, but I don't think that was there on the day. I'm really pleased with my total and super stoked to get into another comp!”

Reiss:
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“Quite a disappointing day all round, was aiming to go for somewhere around a 230 squat, 110 bench, and a 270 deadlift, but on the day I just had zero leg strength. Some serious elbow issues haven't allowed me to press since my last meet 5 months ago, so actually quite please to still hit 110kg without any training in that time. Deadlift was probably the most disappointing lift, I had high hopes of pulling near the 272.5kg / 600lb mark but my opener of 240kg was so slow that it was never in the cards.”

Squat: 210/215/220

Bench: 90/100/110

Deadlift: 240/250/255x

Total: 580 Wilks: 347.76
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“Ended up failing a 255kg deadlift which would have only been a 2.5kg comp PR and 7.5kg under my relatively easy gym PR. Competition PR total is 602.5 @105 so only 22.5kg away from a PR whilst injured and feeling sub par. I truly believe I am strong enough to total 650kg at the moment but just gotta put it all together in one healthy package. Main lesson learnt is not to go overboard with the intensities in the run-up to a comp. The last bad comp I did I had this same issue. I experimented with a lot of >90% lifts this cycle 3x a week for about 5 weeks and really dropped a large amount of volume. Every time I have gone over the 90% barrier for more than 2 weeks my performance has been terrible, so I either need to program that better or just do what always works for me and lift more sub-maximally in the lead up to comps / maxes.”