Well my friend and training buddy at Faction started a blog recently about his weightlifting training and his quest to go to Nationals and I guess it kind of sparked my interest to return to blogging. You can check out his blog here.
So I guess I should update my progress since my last post which was in November of 2011. This is gonna be a long post.
My First Meet!
Back in February I competed in my first weightlifting meet ever. My coach Mike Bledsoe, my teammates Andrew (85kg) and Mike Lexner (85kg 15 y), and I drove 8 hours to Johnson City, TN to participate in the 2012 Handle Barbell Open at ETSU. I was pretty nervous going into the competition as I was worried I wasn't going to make weight. I was competing in the 77kg (169 lb) class and had to drop all the way from about 182 lbs. After strict dieting (starving myself) and dehydrating for a a few hours I made weight and was able to compete. My first snatch at 85kg got turned down for reasons I didn't understand at the time. Later I realized that I didn't remain stationary and controlled at the end of the lift (rookie mistake). I didn't let it phase me and ended up hitting it again for the 2nd attempt and nailing 89kg on the 3rd attempt. I only needed a total of 195 so I decided to open at 106 on the clean and jerk and nailed it with an easy power clean and jerk. Bledsoe decided that I should go for a PR of 111 but I failed with my two remaining attempts. Either way I qualified and I managed to get a 1st place finish (out of 2 ppl LOL). Competing was a blast. I forgot what the adrenaline rush and thrill of comepetition felt like. I was definitely looking forward to more at that point.
My Lifts at the Handle Barbell Open
INJURY!
After the Handle Barbell Open, I got injured. Again. This time it was my left wrist. There was some pretty rank and painful inflammation that would not go away. It was so bad that I really could not snatch or lift anything overhead at all. Needless to say this was bad timing because I had 2 months till University Nationals . I stuck to mostly power cleans, pulling and squatting. I started snatching again after got some last minute anti-inflammatory meds from my doctor a week before Nationals.
Nationals!
I really wasn't feeling very confident going into Nationals. Just coming off injury I wasn't sure if I was going to lift well enough to even total. Bledsoe tried to reassure me that I would do well but in the back of my mind I just wanted to get a total. Weigh-ins were also stressful. The official scale was weighing people heavy but I managed to sneak in there 30 grams under the cuttoff at 76.97 kg. I regained my confidence during my warm-ups as my wrist was not bothering me at all. Adrenaline is amazing. I was lifting in the B session and there were quite a number of lifters but I was nearer to the end due to my higher openers. I completed all my snatch attempts of 87, 89, and 93 for 4 kg PR. The clean and jerks went similarly with good attempts at 105, 109 and 113 (4 kg PR). I ended up placing 13th out of 18 overall but I went 6/6 with PR's on my snatch, clean and total. Can't really ask much more than that. Mostly I was just happy that I set a goal, followed through and got to compete on a national level. It was an amazing experience.
So with my first competitions under my belt I can finally call myself a weightlifter. That's why I decided to change the name of this blog :)
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