After competing in March at the Arnold Sports Festival, I wanted to find a meet I could compete raw in and qualify for this year’s USAPL Raw Nationals. Due to being the meet director for the USAPL Missouri State competition, I looked for meets in Iowa to compete in.
Getting back to training raw was a nice change and I continued to work with Reactive Training Systems for my programming. Going into this meet was a little different outlook; instead of caring about actually winning I was more focused on two goals:
- Hitting a 500 lb. bench press
- Getting a 2,000 lb. total
These are kind of milestone numbers I’ve been wanting since lifting raw this past year.
The meet itself was great. 22nd Street Barbell was the host and they put on top notch, quality local meets. I was also able to compete with my brother Jason and teammate Bryan Dermody, and powerlifting legend Beau Moore. To say this was an exciting meet is an understatement.
The plan going in was to hit at least 730/500/770 (squat/bench/deadlift) in order to get the 2k total. This dictated my numbers, as I knew what had to be done. Squats went as planned making all three lifts and ending with a 733 lb. squat. The plan for the bench was to get 500 lbs. on the second attempt to ensure myself two attempts if anything happened on the first. I was able to hit my first goal of the 500 lb. bench (501 lbs.) on my second attempt, failing my third attempt at 512. Going into the deadlift my plan was similar to the bench where I planned my numbers around taking my second attempt at whatever I needed for the 2k total. I was able again to hit my goal of the 2k total on my second attempt, leaving me to go big on my third attempt. I loaded 804 lbs. on the bar but had to finish the day with only the 2k total after barely missing it.
This meet gave me a lot of confidence moving forward to this year’s USAPL Raw Nationals. I think over the next ten weeks I’ll be able to improve on all my numbers from this meet. The goal for October is to place in the top three in the super heavy weight division, improve my Wilkes score, and destroy a 2K lb. raw total.
Make sure to look out for future training videos and blogs, until then, continue to lift hard and smart which means adding not only HMB to your supplement list, but BetaTOR and PEAK ATP. You’ll be glad you did.
– Nick Weite, 3x IPF Worlds & 2x World Games Athlete