Written by Team Juggernaut
Check Out Courtney’s Training Log Here
I was informed Friday afternoon that my Coach wasn’t going to be able to make it the meet. I let him know that was fine, it was a long drive, and I would be just fine on my own.
After sitting in the sauna for 3 hours, I was down to 128.2 (had to hit 127.6), I had consistently been losing 1-1.5 lbs per night so I went to bed hoping for the best.
I finally fell asleep around 10pm and was awoke at 1:30am with Ms. Aunt-Bitchface-Flow. My period had started. Really? You couldn’t hold off for one more freaking day? Of course not! That would be too silly! Well I got back in bed and laid there reading (reading usually puts me to sleep quick) trying to fall back to sleep. It didn’t happen at all. Finally, I decided to say screw it and climbed out of bed around 3am.
Hit the scale at as soon as I got out of bed, 129.8. Hahahahaha…. really funny. Now show me 127#’s. Nope, not freaking happening. It was 3 am and I texted my coach saying that I think I’m going to have to go up in weight class. Whatever, I decided not to let this discourage me, I’ll still go and lift.
I got my bag all packed, sandwiches made and had a little bit of water. My coach finally called me back and told me to have a sandwich, watered down pedialyte and I threw some BCAA’s in there (side note: Water, orange pedialyte and grape BCAA’s is effing DELICIOUS!). I ate a sandwich and lots of water on the way down.
The long drive down… was long and like the female that I am, I most obviously got lost… with mapquest directions and gps on my phone. Impressive huh?
Onto the good stuff:
Weigh in’s – weighed in at 60.2kgs (132.71)
Rules run down – In weightlifting the next ascending weight follows, regardless of weight class and gender. This also means that if your next attempt is the next ascending weight, you will follow yourself and instead of a 2 minute break, we had a 1 minute break. So as soon as your name was called, you had to minute to get the weight off the floor.
ADDENDUM: Another thing that I forgot to mention is that we did not use a women’s oly bar (diameter is smaller). I don’t use a women’s bar, but I do use straps for my snatching. I was informed that straps were not allowed, and had to lift without them….awesome!
Snatch
I was opening at 40kg on snatch. My coach had told me to pull at 3/4’s rate as the weight is so light for me that he was afraid I would surprise myself with out easy it came up and throw it over my head.
Guess what. That’s EXACTLY what I did.
First lift – Miss. I didn’t have time to get advice for my next weight from Tony so I just said that I would do 40kgs again.
(Followed myself)
2nd attempt: 40kgs – Good lift. Knew the feeling, knew the pull would be easy and light and just had to stay tight at the top.
(One person went next and then I was up again with 45kgs.)
3rd attempt: 45kg Snatch – Good, I have no doubts this pull was ugly as hell. I really need to get consistent.
This was a HUGE disappointment and I started thinking to myself that maybe weightlifting isn’t for me. The lifts were probably very ugly and I just felt like I had SOO much more to give and show… then I realized that the only way to give and show that I had more was to keep going, keep improving myself.
Clean and Jerk
1st Attempt: 50kgs – Came up light and easy, locked out my squat jerk and stood it up with ease.
Okay… now I’m feeling more confident in my lifts
2nd Attempt: 60kgs – Once again came up light and easy and a tight stand up. Gave my next attempt of 70kgs.
At that point I heard the announcer say that the girl in my weight class was up for 1st place if she made her 3rd attempt of 65kgs. She went up and had a good lift, but got 2 red lights due to dropping the bar to the ground from overhead (have to have hands on the bar until waist level for it to be a good lift).
So this meant that I got first place. And I haven’t lifted yet… well I’m not going to balk at my last attempt just because it was a default win. I knew I had to go in there strong, fast, and committed.
3rd Attempt: 70kgs – Pulled up the clean, I split a little too far on my clean and could feel my knees dive in while I was standing up the clean. I reset my feet to close to get ready for my jerk. Jerked that bad boy up and had to pause at the bottom of my squat for about a second to stabilize and stood it up. 3 white lights. PR
Conclusion: I ended up with 1st place the 63kg weight class with a 115kg total. Not a total I am pleased with at all and just pushes me to keeping competing and doing better. I want more… A LOT more! Overall it was a fun day, and just kind of went by in a blur. It was awesome watching some of the higher caliber athletes and met a lot of great people. One girl trains up here in PDX, so I’m planning on hitting a couple few training sessions with her.
Overall – this was QUITE a learning experience, a few things I’ve taken away from this experience:
- I’m going to compete in as much as possible to keep getting platform time and getting more comfortable in front of an audience.
- If I want to compete at a lower weight class, I will need to be keeping my body weight lower so the cut is easier. I think 131-132 would be good. Just need to make sure my strength keeps increasing.
- I definitely need someone there to help me call my next attempts.
- I need to start training my snatch without straps
- From the minute they call your name, use that ENTIRE minute to your advantage to recover and focus.
- I need SO much work on my technique, this will have to be a patient game of hard work, dedication, and 100% commitment.
- Calm yourself down and don’t be in a hurry, have fun, enjoy the competition.
I would just like to thank my coach Tony, for helping bring me to where I’m at and helping me improve, my sponsors: Heavy Athletics Nutrition (www.heavyathleticsnutrition.com) & Juggernaut Training Systems (JTSStrength.com), Shoot for the Moon advice, the Jugg love from Brandon for the advice to keep my head level, beauty tricks from Kalle, Edub for the tampon advice and all the Taylor Swift songs that got me through my drive.
