Keosawa's Powerlifting Log
- Thread starter Keosawa
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Congratz Keo!
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Fantastic achievement, well done!
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Any sanctioned meet works. And you'd have a great time at the event--it was worth the trip.
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524/319/562 or something like that, I think.
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Third now, because Eric Talmant totaled 1450 at this meet. Still, those guys are both awesome, so it's good company to keep. I will not stop at 1405, either.
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Good to hear from you again! Thanks for stopping back in.
Barring catastrophic injury, you'll see my name in the competition results for the next thirty years. I won't get bored of this.
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My bench felt ridiculous. I guess smolov did the trick. 319 was my self-imposed cap and I still felt like I had 330 in me after that.
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Here’s a recap of my experience at RUM VII. I’ll try to keep it as short as possible, though I suppose there’s a lot to cover.
We flew to Florida on Friday in preparation for a Saturday morning weigh-in. My weight was still pretty high—I started my cut weighing 158, and I had to cut down to 148.75 for the meet—because the water load and sodium drop hadn’t been as effective as it had previously. By the end of the first night in Florida I was 153.5; by the morning, I was 152.5 and still approximately four pounds overweight.
We traveled to a Gold’s Gym just outside of the arena early that morning to cut the final four pounds. I finished the cut in about an hour and a half, and though I started to feel drained by the end of it, I would say that it went better than expected. We then went to the arena to get weighed in and I was EXACTLY on weight: 148.75. I’ve never cut it so close before.
After that, we decided to take the day to relax and recomp. I couldn’t eat anything to start—even though I had eaten very light on Thursday and nothing on Friday, I wasn’t hungry at all and my stomach needed time to readjust to taking in food. I instead focused on fluid intake, and I drank a LOT of pedialyte throughout this day; one recomp change I made was to drink more high-ph water without a lot of sugar (i.e. Gatorade). I also ramped up my potassium intake from last time, eating more bananas and taking more potassium pills than I’d care to admit. By the end of the night, at my heaviest, I was 165.6; I gained roughly 16 lbs. over the course of 12 hours.
From that point on, I maintained a bodyweight at 163-165 up until competition, and I let my stomach settle. My resting heart-rate dropped to the high 60s by mid-morning, and our half of the competition wasn’t until 3pm. It was strange readying for an afternoon meet; we ate a late breakfast and got to the venue a few hours early.
Once there, I met a bunch of people I had previously met online, including some outstanding lifters, and I saw a few friends, but I mostly just tried to stay inwardly focused. My plan for this competition was to focus as little on the rest of the lifting as possible, which means that I didn’t watch any of the big lifts from the morning, including Malan’s 1014.
The venue was very nice, but by the time our session rolled around, many of the spectators left, and it was mostly empty for our lifting. I think most people were panicked over the schedule of events, because second-session lifters started warming up for the squat much too early. Rather than get lost in the shuffle, I joined in, and I tried just to take small steps in my warm-ups. I made squat depth a focus, and the feedback I got from that was pretty positive. My handlers helped me get set up, and I was fortunate to have Paul Nguyen loading plates and handling the monolift for me. In fact, a bunch of guys were there to give me feedback and offer assistance, and I didn’t ask anyone for the help; I really appreciated that, and it made the meet that much easier for me.
OK, as far as the squat warm-ups go: everything felt good once I started focusing on depth. I made sure to take a LOT more reps than in previous meets, as I feel like I need more warm-up work to really feel comfortable squatting at meets. 415 was my last single and that moved very well; I knew 451 would be a piece of cake, so my focus was just on making sure the depth was there.
On my squat, the opener and second attempt moved very well. I focused more on speed on the second attempt once I knew I could hit the depth they were looking for, and that flew up faster than 490 ever has. I had 524 in my mind for a while now, and so I took it as a third. Jason Manenkoff told me that it was going to be a grind, and he was right, but I stuck it out. I knew I had a huge total coming if I hit it, and so that lift took a lot of pressure off of the rest of the meet. My bench was going to be great, and I’d now be able to feel out my deadlift and take strategic attempts.
After squatting, I took a short breather, walked around the building, and warmed up my bench. The warm-ups felt fine—unspectacular, but fine—and I used that time to adjust to their benches. Because they were so low, I could tell it was going to be easy for me to lift my butt off the bench if I tried to initiate a lot of leg drive, so I resolved myself to keep my butt planted. I really didn’t want to get red-lighted on bench at this meet, especially after the debacle last time.
Like on squat, the opener was absurdly easy. And 303 for a second attempt just about jumped out of my hands at the top; I felt like it was mis-loaded. I called for a 319 third, which was best-case scenario, and handled it with little difficulty. After the hand-off, I remember thinking, “this feels really light”; I think I even told Janis how much my theme song sucked on the un-rack with 281. Everything was cake, and it was just the sort of stars-aligned scenario in which a peaking program and an attempt selection both went perfectly.
After that, I had an awesome sub-total heading into deadlifting, but I knew deadlifts would be a struggle, as I had awful training leading into this meet. My SI joint has healed now, but the damage has been done to my pull max. Warm-ups felt easy enough, but my hands were now cramping pretty bad, and I was getting worried about my grip. I had chosen a 529 opener to keep the pressure off myself, and that turned out to be a good decision. My second pull, 562, ended up being by far the best. At only around 2.5 seconds, it was the fastest I’ve ever pulled a weight in this range, and it guaranteed me a 1405-lb. total.
With one attempt left, I called for 584, thinking it would be a difficult-but-not-too-difficult third. 584 surprised me by, indeed, being too difficult. Looking back on it now, I think I was a bit deflated after hitting my goal total on my second, and I think, additionally, that my technique on all my pulls was pretty rotten. I’ve reverted back to bad old habits; I’m not sitting back, pulling with perpendicular shins, and focusing on lockout leveraging. Instead, I’m crowding the bar too much and getting caught way out in front of the bar. That didn’t hurt me on 562, but I paid for it on 584.
So, I still have never had a nine for nine meet. But hey, 1405 lbs. at the biggest meet of the year is not a bad consolation!
A few random things:
- After finally getting this milestone total, I feel totally numb to it. Not excited, not overjoyed, not anything. I’m happy, I guess, but now I feel like I have no purpose. So, I’m going to have to figure out really soon how I’m going to use the next year of my training life before next year’s RUM. I have some big plans, including changing my squat stance (FINALLY). A lot of hard work—and some hard changes—lie ahead, but I am ready.
- I do feel very happy, however, to have participated in such a historic event. It is SO COOL to have my name alongside all the great lifters that have competed at this event. That’s what I’m proudest of.
- Now that I’m not competing for a while, it’s time to figure out what else I can do to help powerlifting. Now’s the time to focus on putting out more powerlifting-related content; I’m going to take a good, long look at the discourse surrounding the sport and decide what I can do to contribute in a positive manner to it.
- A special thanks for Janis and David for helping me out all weekend—both did a fantastic job. I wanted to do well especially for Janis, who has stuck with me and supported me through a string of bad meets. I don’t want to let anyone down, especially not her. I wanted to show that the only thing you can expect of yourself is to try and do your best.
- Cutting weight at the last minute sort of sucks, but it’s probably the best approach. I spent less time dehydrated for this meet than for previous meets, and as a result, I recomped better than ever.
- Thanks as well to everyone who supported me through this whole process: University of Iowa Powerlifting, 22nd Street Barbell (including Wes and Jerry, who were both there that weekend), all the lifters at RUM who helped out, and all the other people I’ve met out there on the internet. There are way, way too many people to name here.
Anyway, that’s all!
We flew to Florida on Friday in preparation for a Saturday morning weigh-in. My weight was still pretty high—I started my cut weighing 158, and I had to cut down to 148.75 for the meet—because the water load and sodium drop hadn’t been as effective as it had previously. By the end of the first night in Florida I was 153.5; by the morning, I was 152.5 and still approximately four pounds overweight.
We traveled to a Gold’s Gym just outside of the arena early that morning to cut the final four pounds. I finished the cut in about an hour and a half, and though I started to feel drained by the end of it, I would say that it went better than expected. We then went to the arena to get weighed in and I was EXACTLY on weight: 148.75. I’ve never cut it so close before.
After that, we decided to take the day to relax and recomp. I couldn’t eat anything to start—even though I had eaten very light on Thursday and nothing on Friday, I wasn’t hungry at all and my stomach needed time to readjust to taking in food. I instead focused on fluid intake, and I drank a LOT of pedialyte throughout this day; one recomp change I made was to drink more high-ph water without a lot of sugar (i.e. Gatorade). I also ramped up my potassium intake from last time, eating more bananas and taking more potassium pills than I’d care to admit. By the end of the night, at my heaviest, I was 165.6; I gained roughly 16 lbs. over the course of 12 hours.
From that point on, I maintained a bodyweight at 163-165 up until competition, and I let my stomach settle. My resting heart-rate dropped to the high 60s by mid-morning, and our half of the competition wasn’t until 3pm. It was strange readying for an afternoon meet; we ate a late breakfast and got to the venue a few hours early.
Once there, I met a bunch of people I had previously met online, including some outstanding lifters, and I saw a few friends, but I mostly just tried to stay inwardly focused. My plan for this competition was to focus as little on the rest of the lifting as possible, which means that I didn’t watch any of the big lifts from the morning, including Malan’s 1014.
The venue was very nice, but by the time our session rolled around, many of the spectators left, and it was mostly empty for our lifting. I think most people were panicked over the schedule of events, because second-session lifters started warming up for the squat much too early. Rather than get lost in the shuffle, I joined in, and I tried just to take small steps in my warm-ups. I made squat depth a focus, and the feedback I got from that was pretty positive. My handlers helped me get set up, and I was fortunate to have Paul Nguyen loading plates and handling the monolift for me. In fact, a bunch of guys were there to give me feedback and offer assistance, and I didn’t ask anyone for the help; I really appreciated that, and it made the meet that much easier for me.
OK, as far as the squat warm-ups go: everything felt good once I started focusing on depth. I made sure to take a LOT more reps than in previous meets, as I feel like I need more warm-up work to really feel comfortable squatting at meets. 415 was my last single and that moved very well; I knew 451 would be a piece of cake, so my focus was just on making sure the depth was there.
On my squat, the opener and second attempt moved very well. I focused more on speed on the second attempt once I knew I could hit the depth they were looking for, and that flew up faster than 490 ever has. I had 524 in my mind for a while now, and so I took it as a third. Jason Manenkoff told me that it was going to be a grind, and he was right, but I stuck it out. I knew I had a huge total coming if I hit it, and so that lift took a lot of pressure off of the rest of the meet. My bench was going to be great, and I’d now be able to feel out my deadlift and take strategic attempts.
After squatting, I took a short breather, walked around the building, and warmed up my bench. The warm-ups felt fine—unspectacular, but fine—and I used that time to adjust to their benches. Because they were so low, I could tell it was going to be easy for me to lift my butt off the bench if I tried to initiate a lot of leg drive, so I resolved myself to keep my butt planted. I really didn’t want to get red-lighted on bench at this meet, especially after the debacle last time.
Like on squat, the opener was absurdly easy. And 303 for a second attempt just about jumped out of my hands at the top; I felt like it was mis-loaded. I called for a 319 third, which was best-case scenario, and handled it with little difficulty. After the hand-off, I remember thinking, “this feels really light”; I think I even told Janis how much my theme song sucked on the un-rack with 281. Everything was cake, and it was just the sort of stars-aligned scenario in which a peaking program and an attempt selection both went perfectly.
After that, I had an awesome sub-total heading into deadlifting, but I knew deadlifts would be a struggle, as I had awful training leading into this meet. My SI joint has healed now, but the damage has been done to my pull max. Warm-ups felt easy enough, but my hands were now cramping pretty bad, and I was getting worried about my grip. I had chosen a 529 opener to keep the pressure off myself, and that turned out to be a good decision. My second pull, 562, ended up being by far the best. At only around 2.5 seconds, it was the fastest I’ve ever pulled a weight in this range, and it guaranteed me a 1405-lb. total.
With one attempt left, I called for 584, thinking it would be a difficult-but-not-too-difficult third. 584 surprised me by, indeed, being too difficult. Looking back on it now, I think I was a bit deflated after hitting my goal total on my second, and I think, additionally, that my technique on all my pulls was pretty rotten. I’ve reverted back to bad old habits; I’m not sitting back, pulling with perpendicular shins, and focusing on lockout leveraging. Instead, I’m crowding the bar too much and getting caught way out in front of the bar. That didn’t hurt me on 562, but I paid for it on 584.
So, I still have never had a nine for nine meet. But hey, 1405 lbs. at the biggest meet of the year is not a bad consolation!
A few random things:
- After finally getting this milestone total, I feel totally numb to it. Not excited, not overjoyed, not anything. I’m happy, I guess, but now I feel like I have no purpose. So, I’m going to have to figure out really soon how I’m going to use the next year of my training life before next year’s RUM. I have some big plans, including changing my squat stance (FINALLY). A lot of hard work—and some hard changes—lie ahead, but I am ready.
- I do feel very happy, however, to have participated in such a historic event. It is SO COOL to have my name alongside all the great lifters that have competed at this event. That’s what I’m proudest of.
- Now that I’m not competing for a while, it’s time to figure out what else I can do to help powerlifting. Now’s the time to focus on putting out more powerlifting-related content; I’m going to take a good, long look at the discourse surrounding the sport and decide what I can do to contribute in a positive manner to it.
- A special thanks for Janis and David for helping me out all weekend—both did a fantastic job. I wanted to do well especially for Janis, who has stuck with me and supported me through a string of bad meets. I don’t want to let anyone down, especially not her. I wanted to show that the only thing you can expect of yourself is to try and do your best.
- Cutting weight at the last minute sort of sucks, but it’s probably the best approach. I spent less time dehydrated for this meet than for previous meets, and as a result, I recomped better than ever.
- Thanks as well to everyone who supported me through this whole process: University of Iowa Powerlifting, 22nd Street Barbell (including Wes and Jerry, who were both there that weekend), all the lifters at RUM who helped out, and all the other people I’ve met out there on the internet. There are way, way too many people to name here.
Anyway, that’s all!
Fighting Sprite
Green Belt
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No, not those changes.
These changes include finally moving to a normal squat stance, and possibly narrowing my bench grip. This is, in general, going to be a period in which I experiment with technique and go back to the drawing board.
But no, I'm probably a long way from those other changes.
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Really enjoyed it Kyle, you've definitely turned a corner and I think the enxt year is gonna be great for you.
Next stop 1450.
Next stop 1450.
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Congrats on the big meet, man. I completely understand what you're saying about your last deadlift. The first time I totaled 300, I still had one clean & jerk left and I missed the clean, which never happens, because I had mailed it in after my goals for the day were met.
Anyway, keep up the good work. We'll have to link up again one of these times I'm down in IC.
Anyway, keep up the good work. We'll have to link up again one of these times I'm down in IC.
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Good shit buddy. Awesome job and congrats on the meet. Extremely impressive work.
