Powerlifting Basics: Bombing Out of the Meet

In “Powerlifting Primer: The Basics” I commented that I had made about all the mistakes that you could think of in strength training. Turns out, I was wrong. After competing for four years, I just managed to bomb out1 of my first powerlifting meet. Afterwards, one of the personal trainers at my gym commented “we don’t like to talk about our failures, only our successes”. I thought about that for a while, and think that it’s a mistake. We should discuss and learn from our mistakes. They will often teach us more than our successes.

I was fortunate enough to compete at the USA Powerlifting (USAPL) National Championships this year, and went eight for nine on my lifts. I didn’t getting a single red light until my last deadlift2. Although it was a great meet, I don’t think I learned nearly as much from that event where everything seemed to go right, as I did from this last meet where I went three for nine and bombed out on my squats.

I thought that I would share some of the lessons I learned from bombing out.

What Went Wrong?

One of my mentors once told me that a major catastrophe never stems from a single event. Rather it is the result a chain of events, each one building on and multiplying the effects of the last. Think about the last time you were late for work. You weren’t late just because you forgot to set your alarm the night before. Rather, you had gotten up early the day before and shut the alarm off so it wouldn’t go off later irritating your wife. Since you’d gotten up early you were tired that night, fell asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow, and forgot to turn your alarm back on. You woke up 30 minutes late. It’s raining that day, and since it rains so seldom in the Seattle area, people don’t know how to drive in it-traffic is backed up right to your front door. It just happens that it’s the day the new construction project starts on the highway, closing one of the lanes. I think you get the picture.

It’s a silly example I suppose, but I use it to point out that most of these variables are under your control. The trick is to break one of the links in the chain and prevent (or at least minimize the impact of) the catastrophe.

I did not recognize that there was chain of events building as I went into my competition. I therefore did not react in time to salvage it.

• I had been fighting a head cold for a couple weeks prior to the meet. Although it hadn’t been too severe and hadn’t yet been sapping my strength like a bout with the flu might have, it sent me into a couple of fits of coughing the night before the meet, keeping me from getting a decent night’s sleep. The dark circles around my eyes as I got to the meet should have been indicators that I should play it a little conservatively.
• The squat suit I had been using at previous meets had been getting pretty loose, so I’d ordered a new one. I had worked with it for a couple weeks, and hit my opener as well as a new personal record (PR) in the gym, but I did have to fight the suit to get the right depth. It was very difficult to breath in, and forced me to change to a much narrower stance than I had been training with.
• Going eight for nine at Nationals did have me fired up, but I also wondered if I’d played it too conservatively. I therefore decided that I would attack this meet a bit more aggressively.

With three strikes against me, I went into the squat event with a false sense of confidence. I’d hit my opener easily in several competitions as well as consistently in the gym-there was no reason I wouldn’t hit it again. The judges gave me three red lights on my first attempt for depth. I bumped the weight up slightly on my second attempt to try to force the depth due to the tightness of the new squat suit. On both my second and third attempts I found myself forcing the depth and ended up losing my concentration, then my balance, failing the lifts.

Breaking the Chain

There were a number of indicators that all was not well as I began the competition. Had I been paying attention, I could have made the right adjustments and finished a successful meet, including setting a new State record on the bench press3.

• Prior to the meet: I did not anticipate how badly the head cold I was fighting and the sleep lost because of it would drain me on the day of the meet. I should have been concentrating on getting additional rest throughout the week, not only to fight off the cold, but to improve my condition on the day of the meet. Regardless of my successes at the previous meet, this was not the day to get aggressive. I should have recognized my own weakness and been more conservative in selecting my opening attempts.
• Equipment: I normally do not train with lifting suits until the final weeks before a competition. In this case, however, two weeks was insufficient to break in and become comfortable with the new suit. I should have spent at least three to four weeks practicing with the new suit, and ordered a suit that did not force me to change my stance in the final weeks of training.
• Adjustments during the meet: During warm-ups, I needed one additional heavy squat to seat the suit and make sure I could hit my depth. Recognizing issues during warm-ups would have allowed me to switch to my backup suit, and possibly even lower my opening attempt. Once I missed my first squat attempt it was too late to lower the weight. Even so, I should have immediately switched to my backup suit, and tried the same weight for my second try-it was a weight I’d hit consistently over the previous year of training and competition.

Making even one of these adjustments would have likely resulted in a successful meet. I may not have hit a new PR total, but then maybe it’s unrealistic to assume you can PR every time out.

Putting it All Together

You will never learn near as much from your outstanding successes as you will from your catastrophic failures. I had assumed that I’d be able to follow up the best powerlifting meet in my competitive career with another successful event, hitting new PRs as well personal goals I’d set for myself. I wasn’t able to take the right lessons from that successful competition and adjust my training program to hit a new plateau. When things started to go wrong, I did not recognize the problems early enough to make the adjustments that would have salvaged the meet. I can only hope that such a disastrous failure will allow me to use better judgment, make better decisions in the future.

“Life’s too short to be small!” (Author unknown)

1. If you fail on all three attempts of a single event (squat, bench press, deadlift), you “bomb out” and are disqualified from scoring for the competition.
2. In powerlifting competitions, you have three attempts at each event (squat, bench press, deadlift). There are three judges scoring the lift, if you get two or more red lights on a lift it is no good.
3. If a lifter bombs out of a meet, they are not able to set a record in any of the events for that meet.

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