Del.icio.us    Facebook

"This is gonna be heavy..."
By: Antigone Oreopolous

About 6 years ago I decided to buy an elliptical machine for my home. This way, I could save time and hate cardio less if I were in front of my TV. So I bought it from a Fitness Depot in Edmonton. The name of the person who sold it to me was Lewis Noppers. Now, spending 2000$ on anything requires a lot of thought and homework, and it was Lewis who answered all my questions and helped me decide on the right elliptical. We got to know each other during that time, and I learned he was an international-level powerlifter. But I had only retired from wrestling shortly before our meeting, and had no interest in starting another sport so soon.

I don’t believe in coincidences. Here’s why. I was moving from a house into a condo in the summer of 2006 and needed help to move the elliptical. I also wanted to upgrade it from a Life Fitness elliptical to a Precor. So four years after I bought the original one I walked back into Fitness Depot on a Sunday afternoon. And guess who was working? I was quite happy to see Lewis again. I asked him how powerlifting training was going and he told me he was getting ready for Worlds in November. He helped me pick out the new elliptical and had it delivered to my new place.

About a week later, I called him at work and asked him if I could try powerlifting. He said sure, and we set up a time to meet at the gym. We went to the Club Fit in Edmonton where he was training at the time. We only bench pressed that day. He showed me the proper form…hand placement, foot placement, arched back, shoulders retracted and told me to be explosive off my chest. I had benched before, but quickly realized that it’s a lot harder when you use proper technique. I felt humbled. I mostly did sets of 5 and he kept the weight very low. But after that first day, I could feel I was hooked. I met with him a few days later at the gym for a squat workout. I had mentioned before that after I quit wrestling, I did “random stuff” in the gym. That meant 5 or 6 days of cardio, and one or two days of weights. (I was never taught how to properly train – everything I ever learned was from what I saw other people do). I was an UBO girl. Upper Body Only. I never trained legs. I’m not sure why, besides the fact that I hated it. I rationalized that my legs got enough training from the cardio I did. So here I was, trying squatting for the very first time. I remember he told me to squat in sock feet, because running shoes can be very tough to squat in due to the raised heal. I had (and still have) a hard time sitting back on my heals. And then there was the pain of the bar on your shoulders to get used to. Ugh. I did lots of sets of 5 again that day with little weight. But I distinctly remember wobbling out of the gym as my quads were shaking so much. I knew what was coming the next day. I hadn’t felt muscle soreness like that since my wrestling days. Anyway, last thing to try was deadlifting. Of course I had never done that before either. Lewis started me off with sumo style. (There are two styles in powerlifting for the deadlift – conventional, with your hands on either side of your legs, and sumo, done with a wide stance and your ands between your legs). I think he knew my body type (short and stalky) was more suited to sumo. Deadlifting felt just plain awkward. I actually got some very serious hip pain the first few times, to the point I couldn’t train and had to ice my hips with bags of frozen peas. The pain was just due to tight hip flexors (probably from wrestling) but it caused me a lot of grief in the beginning. Stretching had to become a regular part of my training regimen after that.

So there it began. I hired Lewis’ coach, Dennis Dickau, who is a great person and terrific powerlifting coach. He sent me my workouts by email. I trained 4 days per week: bench 4 days, squat and dead 2 days each. I had my first lifting competition about 4 weeks after I started. I was so nervous. I didn’t know anyone there, but Lewis and Dennis showed up to help me. When you compete in powerlifting, you have to where a singlet. I am no stranger to singlets from wrestling of course, but I hated them back then too. They are the most unflattering things on women. I never thought I’d find myself in a sport with singlets again, as well as weight classes. I was in the 67.5kg weight class. I weighed a bit less than that, but didn’t want to worry about weight classes for my first competition. The competition order goes squat, then bench, then deadlift, and you get some warm-up time in between each. Dennis explained to me I had to wait for the ref’s commands to start and finish the lift. And at least two of the three judges have to pass the lift, otherwise it doesn’t count. There are a lot of rules to do with proper technique in lifting such as the pause on the chest for bench press, the depth to parallel for the squat, and the locking out of the knees during the deadlift. The pass/fail signals come from white or red lights after the completed lift. Dennis also helped me choose the weights for each attempt. You can increase the attempt weight, but cannot decrease it, so it is important that you choose something for the first attempt that is certainly doable, and then go up from there depending on how the first lift felt. Everyone there had equipment but me – belts, wraps, squat suits, squat shoes. It was all very intimidating.

I got my first squat but missed my second attempt because I stepped forward when I came up. My last squat passed at 67.5kg. I ended up making all three attempts for the bench and maxed with 52.5kg. My deadlift went very well – passed all three attempts and I lifted a whopping 90kg on my last attempt. That was sarcasm – but hey, it was a good start for me. I felt pretty good after my first meet. I was hungry to lift heavier.

When school started up again in September, I trained with the U of A club. A group of about 10 rather eccentric guys, and two girls. We scheduled lifting sessions with at least one other person so that we would have a spotter and another pair of eyes to help watch form. I had a really great group of people to train with. Although we could not all train at the same time during the week, we all came in at noon on Saturdays. Of course that would really slow down the workout with all the additional traffic in the squat racks and benches, but it was a blast training with everyone once a week. After the workout, we would all go out to a restaurant for a late lunch. And it would always be the same funny argument of trying to decide where to go – picture 10-12 hungry powerlifters trying to come to consensus on the restaurant.

My lifting improved steadily over the next 6 months, especially my bench and deadlift. Bench came really slowly, but I was told that this is always the slowest to improve for women. But then it seemed like I had a rapid increase in my bench press after a long plateau. My best raw bench was 75kg weighing about 68kg. Being able to bench press your own body weight is an exciting benchmark to reach. I also tried on a bench shirt about 4 months after staring powerlifting. A bench shirt is made of very stiff material to help you lift more in competition. It is extremely uncomfortable to wear, and requires another person to help you put it on. The shirt is very tight and takes a fair bit of practice to learn how to control the bar while wearing it. But I seemed to have a knack with the bench shirt and was able to press 100kg with it on.

My deadlift seemed to improve consistently from week to week. I think I was built for deadlifting. I ended up being able to lift 303lbs. I remember that day – although Dennis didn’t tell me to lift that much in the email, I just really wanted to try it. The guys who loaded the bar for me actually put on 312 lbs but didn’t tell me. I tried it but couldn’t get it past my shins. Powerlifting, like all sports, has a huge psychological component to it, and when you notice how much weight is on the bar, you may begin to tell yourself “this is gonna be heavy” or “this is probably too much weight for me to try”, so what they did me was probably smart. I tried 303lbs after that and was successful. It felt great. I walked around bragging I was part of the 300 Club after that. I mentioned to Dennis that I tried my max for deadlifting, and he explained “I know its fun to try that sort of thing, but you can actually digress by lifting too close to your max. It will not help you”. So I did not do max attempts outside of competition after that.

My squat always seemed to lag behind the other lifts in terms of progress. Then again, it is also the most technically difficult lift, therefore usually takes the longest to master. I eventually got a bright blue lifting belt, squat shoes and wraps. The gear makes a surprisingly big difference to how much you can add to your squat. I never managed to lift in a squat suit. I tried one on once, and it took about three hours to get into. Seriously. Those things are tight. I tried a squat in the suit but didn’t come anywhere close to parallel. The squat suit experience taught me that it is possible to get into the gear too early. It was actually very discouraging putting that suit on (not to mention the pain I was in from the tightness) and I believe it set my squatting back. Yes you do have to learn how to train in the gear, but it is also important to have a good foundation before putting it on.

I had a good year powerlifting. I learned how to properly squat, bench and deadlift, and lifting heavy weight is just plain exhilarating. But after a while, I just felt like I wasn’t happy in the gym. While it was fun to lift heavy and put on more muscle, I just didn’t enjoy the training anymore. Something was missing for me. I felt I had completely lost my athleticism. And so I decided to take a hiatus. But the hiatus became permanent and I returned to my “random stuff” in the gym. It finally occurred to me that I will not achieve the physical results I wanted by relying on myself to know what to do. I needed a coach. So one day after coming home from the gym, I looked up “Edmonton” and “bodybuilding” in Google. Here I found my present coach and mentor, Shara Vigeant.

Author: Antigone Oreopolous

Date Posted: August 24th, 2007 

Comment on Article

View Comments [0]

Read Previous Articles By Antigone Oreopolous: