posted on September 15, 2022
This past Saturday, Union Fitness hosted the 2022 Texas Power Bar Open which happened to be my first meet that I’ve competed in. I have spectated and volunteered at three other meets that were hosted here at UF, but never actually lifted in one.
I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by several “meet veterans” at UF who were able to help me prepare for everything in the months beforehand. Curtis, Todd, and Zain helped me stay ready and answered all questions that I had both during training and on meet day.
I learned so many new things about myself and powerlifting throughout my training. I was able to test my limits, hit some solid PR’s, and I learned how to successfully train for a meet.
Going into meet day, I knew next to nothing about weigh-ins, lift commands, or how the flights of lifters worked throughout the day. Thankfully, I had the UF team with me for weigh-ins to help me know what I needed to bring and how the flow of it all went. I started training with the lift commands towards the last weeks of training, so I was still a little rusty but ended up not missing any of them on meet day. As far as the flights of lifters went, I had Zain by my side all day to help me to know when I was going to step out onto the platform and also what numbers I would strive to hit on the next attempts.
I ended up going 8/9 on my lifts, which I was very happy with. And I also hit a huge deadlift PR, which I was very excited about! I couldn’t have made it through the whole day without Ava, Diana, and Miranda (who all three also competed and did awesome) helping to motivate me and we hyped each other up all day, Zain who helped me with everything from warmups to figuring out my next attempts to getting me platform ready, Curtis who helped with my training program for months and he shared all of his powerlifting wisdom with me, Todd who gave me some pre squat trap slaps to get me ready to lift and as I’ve said before he’s my everyday hype man, and last but not least my dude Malik who kept my muscles ready to make the gainz and hit my lifts.
Thank you to everyone who helped make my first meet experience a great one. I’m planning to do some more in the future, and I’m looking forward to it!
Toria
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