My first powerlifting meet

I promised in my 2025 Wrapped post that I would write about my first powerlifting meet, so here we are.

What is powerlifting?

For context, powerlifting is a sport that tests the maximal amount of weight you can lift across three exercises: the squat, bench press, and deadlift.

More precisely, for each of these three exercises, you have three attempts. For each attempt, you perform one rep, which is judged by three referees. The referees’ verdicts are given as white and red lights, with a minimum of two out of three white lights for a lift to be counted as successful. You can then go for a higher weight on the next attempt, or re-attempt the same weight if you failed, but you cannot go down in weight.

This creates an element of strategy where you have to read your body and pick attempts that maximize your total without tiring yourself out too early. You don’t want to leave weight on the table, but if pick a weight that’s too much and fail, that is also leaving weight on the table compared to picking a lighter weight that you can complete.

Why compete?

I believe everyone should do some form of resistance training, whether that be powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, strongman, bodybuilding, calisthenics, as long as it’s not CrossFit (JK) because it’s one of the best things you can do for yourself. You certainly don’t have to compete to do these activities, but if you’re dedicated to getting stronger, then a meet can be a tangible goal you can work towards.

All of my other hobbies are stereotypically geeky activities, but there’s something very satisfying about getting stronger. It’s a little like being an anime protagonist in real life, but instead of watching someone else get stronger, you’re the one increasing your power level, and there’s something very rewarding about that feeling.

If this post inspires you to sign up for a meet, here are three tips I have:

1. Get to know all the requirements. You may already have a belt and chalk if you’ve been training, but for a meet, you will need a singlet and knee-length socks. Bring plenty of energy-boosting snacks too since it might take the whole day without time to eat. Others will have written more comprehensive meet guides.

2. Go really easy on the openers. You can’t go down in weight if you fail, and if you fail all three attempts of a lift, you bomb out of the competition and you become ineligible to get an official total. This is something that happens in real life, whether that’s due to overestimating your strength, not preparing or warming up properly, judging technicalities, nerves, or other factors.

3. Consider hiring a handler. A handler is an experienced coach that plans out the exact optimal time to do your warm ups before your real attempts come along, chooses your attempts, and supports you in general throughout the day. It can be stressful trying to keep in your head when and what you’re supposed to be doing during your first meet, and a handler will let you focus on lifting.

   If you are inspired to do a meet, I can handle you for free, but an ideal handler will be an experienced competitor themselves and be familiar with your training history. I found that having my coach handle me and choose my attempts was a big confidence boost since he served as a second opinion that I would be able to hit the attempts he chose. I’m very indecisive, so letting someone else choose my attempts took the stress out of the decision.

Some form technicalities 🤓

If you have done any strength training program, you will likely be familiar with these fundamental “big three” lifts. However, there are some nuances that make it a little different from an informal gym PR attempt:

• To hit depth on a squat, the hip crease must “break parallel” by going below the top of the knee. Only going to parallel (or heaven forbid, doing a half-rep) will get you red-lighted.
• On the bench press, the bar must come to a complete stop on the chest and pause for a second before going back up.
• Deadlifts are the most straightforward. The main thing to know is that “hitching” the bar by resting it on the thighs on the way up is not allowed, nor is letting go of the bar before it has returned to the floor.

In addition, you must wait for certain commands at certain points of each lift:

• Squat: “bar is loaded” to unrack, “squat” to begin the lift; “rack” to rerack
• Bench: “bar is loaded” to unrack, “start” to begin the descent; “press” to begin the ascent; “rack” to rerack
• Deadlift: “bar is loaded” to begin the lift; “down” to return the bar to the floor

The bench “press” command is the trickiest as it is not given until the bar is completely motionless on the chest.

Finally, the bar most rise in a continuous motion with no downward movement at any point during the ascent. This precludes “heaving” in the bench by letting the bar sink into the chest after receiving the press command to get some rebound.

As for equipment, there are equipped categories that allow the use of specialized suits that increase the weight you can move, but the majority of people compete in the raw category, which typically allows a belt, knee sleeves, wrist wraps, and chalk, but not wrist straps.

These rules add up so that a competition lift is a bit stricter than a gym PR. This is in contrast to strongman, where there is more freedom to do things like hitch and use straps for the deadlift.

My training

Since my post eons ago about my first three months lifting, I tried two different programs: nSuns and 5/3/1 Boring But Big.

nSuns

This was the first program I tried after hopping off GZCLP for beginners. I did nSuns for the rest of my two years in college. It went like this:

• Monday: Bench + overhead press
• Tuesday: Squat + sumo deadlift
• Wednesday: Overhead press + incline bench
• Thursday: Deadlift + front squat
• Friday: Bench + close grip bench

Each day, you build up to a heavy AMRAP (as many reps as possible) set for the primary movement, followed by a bunch of drop sets. The second movement is done at a lighter weight to supplement the main lifts. You’re also supposed to do some accessory/isolation work. I chose dips, curls, pull-ups, lateral raises, and leg raises, but I would often skip them since doing the two compounds was very taxing.

nSuns took me to an estimated 255/215/355 lb S/B/D. I left GZCLP at around 255/155/315, so this was decent deadlift progress and amazing bench progress. My squat was just sad because I had some sort of knee pain, and possibly because I was training for Longhorn Run too. I don’t think it’s the fault of the program; I think my central nervous system just got better at the movement pattern of the squat over time, since I can squat pain-free now.

5/3/1 Boring But Big

I don’t remember exactly why I switched to BBB. Maybe I just wanted to try something new. I ran it from summer 2024 to UT Commencement 2025 (the unfortunate significance of this date will be revealed later). It went like this:

• Monday: Overhead press
• Tuesday: Deadlift
• Thursday: Bench
• Friday: Squat

Like nSuns, each day has one AMRAP set. After the AMRAP, you do 5 sets of 10, which is supposed to drive size gains, hence the name. Unlike nSuns, you increase the weights on a monthly basis instead of weekly. I had some decent momentum going in the squat and deadlift, but I wasn’t able to make any bench gains, ending up at around 305/220/420 SBD.

The nice thing about BBB is that it took much less time than nSuns. You could get in and out in 45 minutes if you’re quick, while nSuns can take well over an hour. Since you’re increasing the weight more slowly, it also feels much more sustainable. However, I found that benching only once a week was not enough, though that may be because I didn’t do enough accessories.

The accident

May 10, 2025. It was a busy night, and the air was festive, for the university-wide commencement ceremony had concluded. I was walking southbound in West Campus, a bit too fast in retrospect, to return a water bottle I had borrowed for my senior trip. I got to the intersection of Rio Grande and 24th, a familiar spot that I had crossed who knows how many times. I stepped into the crosswalk, but as I tried to move forward, my foot caught the edge of a traffic barricade, an omniprescent entity throughout the neverending construction of West Campus. As I instinctively reached out to break my fall onto the road, I knew I messed up.

I fell onto my shoulder and my chin, and pain shot through those areas. I was mad at myself at tripping in such a stupid way, but this was nothing new to me. I had gotten my fair share of injuries, including a five square inch gash from falling off a bike that slipped in the rain that ended up getting infected. I knew I would see stars for a minute and then be on my way.

Or that was what I thought. Some people crowded around me and asked if I was OK. The chin pain was going away, and I said yes, but I realized I couldn’t get up. Something happened to my left shoulder that prevented me from moving it. Some friends got in a car to take me to the emergency room, but as I stood up, I felt a click, and discovered I could move my shoulder with minor pain again. I was frustrated because I knew I would have to take a week or two off of training, but relieved that my shoulder was able to un-dislocate itself.

I returned to the gym two weeks later, cautiously optimistic about getting back into lifting heavy. I benched the empty bar as a warm-up without issue, so I slapped a pair of plates on. That’s when I realized it would take a lot longer than two weeks to recover. I was able to get 135 up, but it felt incredibly uncomfortable and unstable. Even worse, when I tried to squat, I found out my left shoulder had lost range of motion significantly, to the point where I couldn’t even hold the bar on my back to get into position. The only saving grace was that I could still deadlift normally.

A sense of hopelessness hit me. Getting stronger at the squat, bench, and deadlift was 50% of my personality, and being unable to do that left me with a big hole in my purpose. I felt like King Solomon in the opening of the book of Ecclesiastes: “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Nevertheless, I searched for a physical therapist that would help me rehab as quickly as possible, and maybe even design a routine that would help me get stronger with a bad shoulder. I was actually able to find a PT with a background in strength sports, which leads us into our final pre-meet program:

Rehab and pre-meet peaking program

OK, I didn’t give this program a name, because it was a custom program written by my PT/coach. Unlike all my previous programs, it was based on a 1 to 10 Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale instead of exact weights. For example, a set might call for 5 reps at RPE 9. That means you do a set of 5 at a weight that you could do for 6, leaving one in the tank. It is up to you to choose this weight. The nice thing about this is that it allows flexibility to smash PRs on days that you are feeling great and take it easier on days you feel down under.

This custom program was four days a week and four weeks per block. Each block started at RPE 6 or 7 on the first week and would increase to RPE 9 on the last week. Each block would decrease the number of reps, thereby increasing weight and intensity. This is the general pattern of a meet prep program: you gradually decrease reps and sets and increase weight as you draw closer to meet day. This gets you and your central nervous system practice in handling loads near your one-rep max while the reduction in volume sheds accumulated fatigue. One or two weeks before the meet, you take a deload so that the body can fully recover and be at peak performance on meet day.

I can’t give a comprehensive summary since every block was different, but as for the main lifts, Monday was heavy squats, Tuesday was easy bench, Thursday was easy squats, and Friday was heavy bench and deadlift. The first block was more light dumbbells and rehab exercises. As my shoulder healed, I transitioned back to barbells and less rehab work.

I started rehab in June, and committed to the Longhorn Open, taking place on November 8. In these five months, I was able to make amazing squat progress and a little bench progress. My deadlift was stuck in a rut for some reason; I feel like I lost the movement pattern. This was a little disappointing but I didn’t beat myself up over it. As I’ve gotten stronger, I’ve noticed that it’s not actually that often where I can increase all three lifts simultaneously. I’ve accepted that as moving out of the noob phase into intermediate territory. Even though the program felt somewhat “unbalanced” in that Tuesday and Thursday felt almost uselessly easy compared to Monday and especially brutal Friday, I think the easy squat day did wonders for squat gains.

Meet day

6 AM: I drag myself out of bed and go through my morning routine like every other day.

7 AM: I start the drive down to UT.

7:30 AM: I step foot on campus for the first time since graduation. The nostalgia…

8 AM: Staff open up the Rec Center and we get our equipment checked.

9 AM: I get weighed in at 80.25 kg or 177 lb, submit my opening attempts and rack heights, and start warming up.

10 AM: Lifting starts. This meet had two platforms with three flights each. (A flight is a group of lifters that perform their three attempts together. So everybody in flight 1 would take turns doing their first attempt, then second, then third. Then flight 1 rests while flight 2 does their attempts, and so on.) Since the flights were ordered by opening weights, I was the second person to go on my platform.

• [Squat 1] 137.5 kg (303 lb): I was a little worried since I had a minor leg injury two weeks ago, but the opener weight up smoothly as expected.

• [Squat 2] 145 kg (320 lb): This one felt heavy, but looking back at the video, the bar speed was actually fairly decent. I had a moment of fear when I stepped forward to rerack before receiving the rack command, but luckily, I was not red-lighted.

• [Squat 3] 152.5 kg (336 lb): I was genuinely nervous for this attempt since it was the first one I was not sure if I could do. The most I had done in training was an extremely grindy 325, but I trusted my coach to pick my attempts. I walked up to the bar, unracked, and took a deep breath. There is something uniquely intimidating about the weight of a heavy squat on your back, and this was the most weight I had ever unracked in my life.

  I descended and bounced out of the hole. Then came the sticking point, the hardest part of the lift that determines if you make it up or not. It was slow but to my surprise, I was able to continue ascending. With an involuntary grunt, I powered through and reracked with a huge smile and sense of accomplishment. I had hit all three squat attempts, with a 10 lb PR, and could take a break now.

11:30 AM: I had some time to rest as the second and third flights went through their squats. As the third flight was finishing, I start warming up for bench.

• [Bench 1] 95 kg (209 lb): As I was setting up, a spotter asked if I wanted a lift-off. This caught me off guard because I was not aware lift-offs were allowed. I decided to decline since I had never trained with a spotter and read that “you should never do anything new on meet day.” Unracking was awkward since I had submitted too low of a rack height, but the weight went up fine.

• [Bench 2] 100 kg (220 lb): I was able to match my gym PR on my second attempt, and it went up even better than my first attempt after fixing the rack height. This was a good sign for attempt three.

• [Bench 3] 105 kg (231 lb): My coach had planned on 102.5 kg since my goal for this meet was to bench the big 225, but after seeing how attempt two went up, we decided to go for broke.

  Bench is like squat where you can kind of predict how a set is gonna go depending on how heavy the weight feels when you unrack it. I knew this would be hard, but I was fairly confident I could do it. The last attempt was slow but steady, and I walked off the platform with another 10 lb PR.

1 PM: Deadlifts begin.

• [Deadlift 1] 150 kg (331 lb): A very conservative opener.
• [Deadlift 2] 162.5 kg (358 lb): A relatively bigger jump in weight.
• [Deadlift 3] 170 kg (375 lb): I was not too worried about this lift, since I had pulled 385 in training. In hindsight, I could have pushed myself more here, but I let my coach pick all of my attempts, and I told him I wanted to go for 9/9 successful lifts at my first meet.

2:30 PM: Closing ceremony and awards begin. Despite being the only person in my age and weight class, I didn’t get any awards, which is not surprising since I actually came in almost last place overall. I did manage to beat the heck out of a literal twelve year-old, so there’s that.

Reflections

Overall, I was very satisfied with my performance. My proudest PR was my squat, as I beat my goal of 315 by over 20 pounds. But the biggest milestone was benching two plates for the first time. A 225 pound bench (45 lb bar with two 45 lb plates on each side) is perhaps the most famous strength benchmark and rite of passage in gym culture, which I had been chasing ever since I started lifting four years ago. Unfortunately, I did not achieve my goal of a 405 deadlift.

Here is a video of my bench PR. If you would like to see the rest of my attempts, let me know and I might post them.

An enormous skill gap

I also just want to say I find the difference between normal gym-goer strength and powerlifter strength incredible. There is a formula called Dynamic Objective Team Scoring or DOTS for short that normalizes totals by bodyweight to produce a number that can quantify strength between lighter and heavier lifters. A DOTS below 300–400 is considered beginner level by powerlifting standards.

Over the past 1.5 years, I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I have seen someone at my apartment or office gym lift more than me. (I remember the one time I went to a serious strength gym and saw someone doing my max for a warm up.) Yet with all my experience, I achieved a DOTS of 294, which puts me at the bottom 10–20% of competitors according to Stronger by Science. Even the venerated 1000 pound club at my bodyweight is around 25th percentile.

“But you could say that for any hobby!” That is true. Finishing a marathon probably makes you fitter than 95% of the population, even though the chasm between an average 4.5 hour and an elite 2.5 hour finish time is inhumanly wide. The difference seems to be that in powerlifting, there are simply less beginners signing up for meets. It took me years to get to where I am today, yet I’m almost at the bottom of the ranking.

Not that I’m unhappy about that—I went into the meet to challenge myself personally, fully aware that my numbers were nothing impressive. But compare that to a typical marathon, where a beginner might have only have a couple months of experience. So where are all the beginners in powerlifting?

My theory is that finishing a marathon feels like a bigger accomplishment since you’re pushing yourself to your limits for a longer time. But the bigger reason is probably that running, playing a sport, entering a chess tournament, or pretty much any other hobby is more interesting than lifting a heavy barbell nine times, unless you happen to be really good at lifting heavy barbells. Let me know your thoughts.

What now?

The meet may be over, but I’m excited to keep on pushing. I have some big goals this year, and have hopped back on nSuns. We’ll see what 2026 brings. I intend to either return to the Longhorn Open or do another local meet at the end of this year or go to A&M for their meet in early 2027. As for the past year, my training has taught me to appreciate whatever progress that comes, and my injury and recovery forced me to practice not basing my self-worth and meaning on worldly achievements.

Thanks for reading through another wall of text, and I hope this post inspired you to do something hard, or at least taught you some interesting things from a niche hobby. Keep grinding and until next time, we’re all gonna make it!