Chris Bartl USPA So-Cal Championship

06 Oct Chris Bartl USPA So-Cal Championship

Posted at 21:40h in Team Training Logs by admin 0 Comments

0 Likes

Well, shit. That didn’t go as planned but then again, how many times in your competition life will a meet ever go as planned? Not many.

Metro Flex hosted the meet, home of CT Fletcher and some other very large humans and must say, was a pretty cool gym. Definitely a cool spot to train if you are down in the LA area. Everything went well. My good friend Will Kuenzel of Low Country Strength flew out from South Carolina to handle me at the meet and we picked him up on Friday, grabbed some dinner and hit the sack. Of course I forgot my scale so I had no idea where my weight was. I knew Friday am I was 246 so I could make the easy cut. Saturday was a total cluster fuck. Not only were they running two platforms but they were also doing weigh in’s for Sunday. It took 45 minutes and was a nightmare. Needless to say, I made weight at 239.6 and spent the rest of the day eating and watching football.

It was also hot as hell this weekend. It was 97 on Saturday and about the same Sunday but inside the gym, the temperatures must have been close to 120 with no AC. It sucked.

They didn’t really do a good job of letting us know the flight times and order since they were running two platforms again and since I was one of only two multi-ply lifters, I got to lift in another portion of the gym away from the platform.

Warm up’s went great and the bar felt nice and light. I was feeling like I was going to have a great day. Going to take my first attempt, the mono wasn’t quite at the right height so my unrack sucked. How I got three white lights is beyond me as you will see in the video I dipped but hey, they fucked up and gave me three whites. We lowered the rack on my second and my unrack was better but I made the same mistake as I made at the Arnold and instead of sitting back I pitched forward on to my toes, which forced me way forward and I had to good morning the lift up a little. Problem was the spotters shit themselves when I went forward and touched the bar. Even though I pulled the lift out, I got three reds. I also ended up pulling my left calf on the lift when I got on my toes. It is the same calf I injured deadlifting about three years ago and it hurt like a mofo. This could have really bothered me but Will told me to sack up and forget it, that we could still get a total for the Arnold.

Bench warm ups went great with no problem with my calf at all. When taking my first attempt, we had the shirt a little too low and I was tucking so hard I lost the groove and dumped the bar. For my second we pulled the shirt up a bit and I hit my second. For the third we pulled it down a little bit and I felt confident that I would get 600. Problem was I was set up a little too close to the uprights and when I pressed I hit the uprights about half way up. No lift.

After sucking ass on the bench I knew I had to pull big to qualify for the Arnold. The mentality of PR’s went out the window and hitting a qualifying total was all I wanted. Took and easy opener for three whites and on my second I hit the total to qualify. Once that was over Will and I decided to go for a small PR on the dead at 705. As I was pulling, right off the ground my grip on my left side started to go out. I kept thinking just hold it long enough to get to the lock out but it wasn’t in the cards and I lost it just before locking out.

Overall, I am very disappointed with my results. I trained way too hard to have such a shitty day. The only silver lining of the meet was qualifying for the Arnold. Needless to say I have a lot of work to do go get better. I’m sure Will and Brian will talk but I know for sure I will be making some trips to Florida to train with Brian and work on what I need to to get better because I am a better lifter than what I showed this weekend.

To say I am pissed off and extremely motivated would be an understatement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX6qigSV81I [share title=”Share this Article” facebook=”true” twitter=”true” google_plus=”true” linkedin=”true” pinterest=”true” reddit=”true” email=”true”][author title=”About the Author”]