Your first Powerlifting competition – Part Two

A beginners guide to your First Powerlifting Meet

Your first Powerlifting competition – Part One

The Evening Before

On the night before your competition, pack all of your equipment Into a bag, making sure you have everything, Including Socks, Jocks, Shoes, T-Shirt, Singlet, Powerlifting Belt and any optional equipment you wish to use including Powerlifting Wrist Wraps, Knee sleeves, Knee Wraps etc.

Pack some food for during the meet, even if you have not cut weight prior to the day, you will need some sustenance and there may not be any place convenient to buy food there.

 On the day

The first thing you need to do is register, as part of registration you will have your gear checked, you will be weighed and you will need to provide the officials with the rack heights. For Bench Press it will be 2 setting, 1 for the rack height itself and the second is the height of the safety bars. For Squat it is just the rack height that is needed. Make sure you check your heights and not just assume they are the same as your training equipment.

Warm-up

Don’t leave your warm-up to the last minute, There will be a lot of lifters with limited warm-up racks so expect your warm-up to take anywhere up to an hour but usually lifters will be called to warm up 40 minutes prior to lifting, Depending on how you are feeling you may need to alter your planned opening attempt for your first lift and your final warm-up set should be at 90% of your first attempt.

powerlifting competition planning Sheet

Make your first lift

Be ready for when you are called to the stage, there is a time limit, so if you are not ready and are slow getting to the powerlifting platform you will fail the lift without touching the bar so be prompt. After your lift whether it is successful or not you must provide the designated official with how much your next attempt will be within 1 minute of completing your lift. If you don’t then your next lift will either be the same weight if you failed or increased by 2.5 kg if you were successful.

Between Lift Attempts

Between lift attempts you may have between 10 minutes to 30 minute waiting time depending on how many lifters are in your group (flight), try to relax and stay aware ready for your next lift.

At The End Of The Day

At the end of the day, your first competition is a learning experience, Join in, learn and most importantly, Enjoy the sport of Powerlifting.