Rob 68

That’s a wrap! Intense, fun couple of days at @australianpowerliftingalliance Mega Nats. @sblight46 with 4th in the M1 57s, including some big PBs on her squat (10kg) and total in her first Nationals. @rob_pl_68 4th in the M2 83s in a tight battle for 3rd, smoking a 145kg bench PB and a 205kg deadlift PB. @mc_mess_queen71 stole the show with another 🥇at Nats in the 84kg+ M2, her 3rd one now 🙂in another close competition. @hannahjoseparachelaltman @arbed74 hit the goal of a regional qualifying total as well as 🥈in the 84kg M2’s. Lovely trip with the oldies ❤️ Thank you immensely APA for another sick Nationals.

🔥Mega Nats Time🔥 Massive preps for CS members @sblight46 , @rob_pl_68 and @mc_mess_queen71 culminating in this week’s Masters Nationals in Sydney! Sam’s first nationals — tomorrow from 8.30am. Big strides in strength in training since last meet 5 months ago, looking forward to a fun battle within the M1 57’s 👊 Rob’s second three lift nationals and his return from shoulder surgery, but he’s stronger than ever now and looking forward to a battle for a medal. Loads of depth in this class this year with 6 total M2 83’s. He’s on from 5pm tomorrow. On Thursday from 8.30am we have CS’s godmother The Mess (coached by @hannahjoseparachelaltman ) who has been the M2 84kg+ Champ 2 years in a row and recently off the back of a silver medal performance at Oceanias. Another close battle in this class this year! Tune in to support 🫡

Rob - APA Masters Nationals @rob_pl_68 with an awesome performance at his first Nationals event. 9/9 with PBs in every lift, a silver medal in the 83kg M2s and not too far off first, National bench and total records for a while, in only his first year of powerlifting was pretty epic for us. Squats: squeezed out every KG with 170kg for a 20kg PB despite only managing about one work set of competition squats per week for the past month due to a shoulder issue; safety squats have been super helpful. Bench: 120.5kg / 125.5kg / 130.5kg on his attempts; went up conservatively after a bit of a tricky opener and warmed into things. Got to sort this out for next time so we can get more kg on the platform. 5.5kg PB. Deads: 200kg on his 3rd attempt to move from 2nd to 1st place temporarily (and defend 2nd position from 3rd position) which was pretty smooth. Lots more to come next time, 15kg PB here! 500.5kg Total for a 40.5kg PB. Vids are of each 3rd attempt via @strongholdlifting . Rob handled the pressure of the scenario very well given it was his first big event combined with the scenarios of tight battles for placings and the National records. Very keen to see how we can keep progressing because there’s a lot more room to move. Thank you to @shazlaffan for co-coaching, to physio king @racing_physio 🙌, and to @australianpowerliftingalliance for an awesome event.

🔥 Rob’s Mock Meet 🔥 Similarly to Esther we used this as a check point between competitions. Particularly because it was Rob’s first year of competition last year and now he’s heading to Masters Nationals, more experience under higher pressure scenarios is always going to be a win and teach us a lot. Squats - 145kg / 152.5kg / 160kg (shown) (+10pb). Bench - 117.5kg / 122.5kg / 127.5kg / 130kg (shown) (+5pb). Deads - 172.5kg / 185kg / 195kg (shown) / 200kg miss (+10pb). 485kg total (+25pb). We’ve had some shoulder issues recently so we swapped to high bars for this week to conserve the shoulder leading into Nationals as the bigger target. It didn’t seem to matter too much as Rob has a lot of training history with high bars, and nailed a 160kg squat which was 10kg more than States. Bench went great too, with +5 on his PB with more to spare. His third was too easy so we did a bonus attempt which still had a bit more to spare. Deads were awesome with the 195kg attempt and then a bit of a yolo attempt at 200. Being the 11th attempt of the day and an exerting 195 attempt prior, I think we can play this whole process slighly better to get the most out of attempt selection, but this mock meet has certainly helped in teaching that. Great lifting Rob! Quite impressive after only a brief 8 or so months in the sport. He’s been growing like a weed so we’ll continue with a similar tact whilst carefully managing the shoulder. 9 Weeks to go. @rob_pl_68 @catalyststrength @australianpowerliftingalliance