What is power lifting?
It is a series of lifts that test your ultimate strength, when in competition, you need to set a weight and then lift that weight, if you are successful you get to progress and nominate a larger weight to lift. The Pretty and Powerful competition held at PTC on the 14th of December was targeting beginners to competing, not beginners to lifting.
The competition is structured so that the lightest lifts are first and they move onto the heaviest lifts at the end, it was broken into three waves, and there were two categories, under 65kg and over 65kg, but its rude to ask a woman what she weighs, so I am unsure who did that.
Crossfit Coorparoo was represented at this comp by Katherine Wright her trainer Timmy Menzies was by her side to help her through the comp, this was her 2nd power lifting competition and she was aiming to come home with a trophy!
The three lifts were, a back squat, a bench press and a deadlift.
Katherine’s first back squat of 140kg was quite impressive, but it did not impress 2 of the three judges, so it did not count, they didn’t realise this and then set the next lift to 150kg, this was close to her Personal Best (PB for short) on her 2nd lift at 150kg she failed and that meant she couldn’t go back down and had to lift 150kg on her third attempt or she would be out of the competition. Her third lift was perfect 150kg which meant she was in the competition and in 2nd place!
The bench press, it is one of those lifts that everybody brags about. What I like about this comp is it tests you across a few different muscle groups, so being strong in your squat does not mean you will be strong in your bench press. Katherine’s first bench press was 75kg, thats what I weigh! and her 2nd lift of 80kg was just as impressive! Her third lift of 85kg was not successful. So far she has lifted 230kg!
The winner of the comp is the one who lifts the most across all three lifts. Katherine was still in 2nd place, Rebecca Buckley had lifted 247.5kg, all Katherine had to do was deadlift 18kg more than Rebecca and she would win.
The last lift is the deadlift, after warming up behind the scenes, Katherine’s first lift was a huge 150kg Rebecca only lifted 145kg, there was only 12.5kg between them, the tension was lifting, could Katherine lift those extra 12.5kg? Her next attempt was 160kg, two of the judges disqualified the lift, so she had one last attempt, and a big decision, does she try 160kg again or go higher? She decided to attempt 160kg and she succeeded her final lift of the day was 160kg! That brought her total up to 390kg! Rebecca Buckley managed to lift 157.5 in her 2nd deadlift but failed her third at 160kg.
So adding up all those numbers meant that Katherine had come 2nd and had missed first place by just 15kg over 390kg! What an amazing feat.
I would like to thank Timmy for being there on the day and for the other Crossfit Coorparoo members for turning up to support Katherine!
If you would like to see the results for the remainder of the girls they are here.
Here are some images of Katherine in her various lifts.
I also took images of the rest of the lifts, if you would like to see images of you, please send me an email.
Here are some of the other competitors.