The sport of powerlifting revolves around a total score on the Big 3. The Big 3 are the bench press, squat, and deadlift. It is the classic way to test your absolute strength. All 3 lifts require so much of your body and take a lot of skill to perform safely at a heavy load.
The YOTB Big 3 Competition
For our competition, anyone who wanted to participate just had to weigh in and get ready to lift. In the week leading up to the event, we had standards videos to show what would be a good lift and what would be in no rep. When you’re competing, everyone has to be sticking to the same movement standards. A squat is not a good squat if the crease of your hips does not pass below the top of your knees for example. Without some pretty exact standards, we couldn’t be consistent.
Each day of the week, we tested a new list. We gave Thursday as a remake day, where you could try to better any of your lifts.
Now everyone wasn’t competing against everyone else, because it wouldn’t be fair for someone who only weighs 175 to compete against guys over 240 lbs. so the weigh ins allowed us to break us up into weight classes. We also broke people up into groups of “future beasts” and “current beasts.” So if you are new to trying some of these lifts, you didn’t have to feel disadvantaged.
How the week shaped up!
It was so inspiring! The first day with squats, and that got a lot of people off to a tough start because they want used to squatting the proper depth. Many people made great adjustments and started hitting good reps. As we got into the week, lots of healthy camaraderie and competition started to form. Everyone wanted to do their best and encouraged everyone else!
- We had 41 personal records set (PRs)!
- We even had 8 people set new PRs in every single lift. We gave them the title of PRTrifecta!
- 9 lifters totaled over 1000 pounds, with Shawn Swisher and me breaking 1300. The efforts were amazing!
As the week came to an end, I know everyone was sad to see it go. Almost everyone avoided injury and we definitely learned a lot. Trying to max out your lifts is a lot of fun but make sure you do it safely. Have a spotter and really work up to your maxes.
The game plan is to try this again in 18 weeks to see how everyone can improve. Most of us have combined Body Beast and a powerlifting program from Jonnie Candito to help push us towards these goals. It will be really exciting to see what everyone can do!
Here are my lifts from the week!
Isn’t this what it’s all about?!
Powerlifting might not interest you, but isn’t this what it’s all about? We all stepped outside of our comfort zones and pushed ourselves to see what our personal bests were. Everyone cheered on everyone else’s success! As much as I wanted to beat everyone in my category LOL I was so excited to see my competition put up big numbers.
This is the same feeling you get when you look at someone who might have a Max Out time that a little higher than yours when you do MAX30. You know the hard work they did to dig deep in get that extra minute. And it just pushes you to be better and better!
So what are you doing to be better? Are you enjoying the journey and celebrating all of your success? No goal is too small. Maybe it’s 3 more push-ups or finally getting your first set of unassisted pull ups. Whatever it is, you are succeeding! Celebrate it and get fired up to do more!
Bring it teamRIPPED!
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
