15 Mar Zane Geeting, 2017 Arnold Classic recap with videos
I recently competed at the XPC 21 deadlift salute at the 2017 Arnold Classic. This was my first meet in a year, and unfortunately it did not go as planned. It was a good learning experience that will help me grow as a lifter.
Before anything else I just want to take a moment to say how much I appreciate being a part of this awesome team that Brian Carroll has put together. Many of you know that this is not the first team I have been on, but it is hands down the best. The greatest part of Arnold weekend was hanging out with my teammates and seeing the way we all work together with no issues or drama of any kind. It was great to see old friends from all over the world regardless of team or affiliation, this sport has given me many friendships that I am very proud to have, first and foremost my team, which I am grateful to be a part of. Despite how my meet went, as you’ll see/read below, I had a tremendous weekend, and can’t wait to do it again ASAP.
I’m not going to get into a super lengthy explanation of everything that went down all weekend here, rather I’ll give an idea of how my training cycle wrapped up, and a play by play of the meet.
The last weeks of the training cycle:
Because I was doing deadlift only, and I knew I was going to be helping lifters all day, the day before I lifted, I chose to keep my bodyweight at 219-220 so I wouldn’t have to cut. This wound up being a great choice. If you were following my training going into the meet you know that I tore my right teres major about 8-9 weeks out from the meet. This derailed deadlifts for several weeks. When I came back to pulling I had to ramp things up quickly. I didn’t do a great job of explaining this in my log, but the basics were that about a month out I pulled into the mid 5’s, 3 weeks out I pulled 675 for a raw single, then about 10 days out I pulled 725 for a single in full gear to establish an opener.
This went very well, and despite the lack of deadlift training, the other things I had done had carried me through (lots of raw squatting and core bracing work). I went to Columbus confident that I would still pull the 800 I had promised.
The meet:
I’m going to do my best not to sound bitter here, because the production was great, but I do feel that I didn’t get a fair shake. Now, I got an attempt to pull 800+ and I missed it, which is entirely my fault, but I am going to be brutally honest about what I experienced.
Saturday morning at weigh ins I was 219.6, exactly the weight I had trained at, that was nice. When asked for my opener I enquired as to whether we’d be using kilos or lbs. for the meet. I was informed that it would be in lbs. so I put in my opener at 725 and was on my way to handle and help out lifters at the XPC full power meet.
Sunday I arrived to the venue and immediately noticed that the meet was in fact in kilos, which meant that I had to refigure my warm-ups and also make sure that I wasn’t opening at 1598 lbs. since I put my opener in at 725. After a good bit of looking around I was very surprised to see that there was no complete flight list posted in the warm up area. My handlers were good enough to go and find out where I was in the flight while I refigured my warm up weights and got started.
After a lot of confusion on timing, where the benchers were in their attempts, and when we would be starting I pulled my last warm up and found a spot back stage. This turned out to be my mistake as there were still several benchers left to go and a parade of lifters before we started. I iced myself in a bad way. I figure there was close to a half an hour between my last warm-up and the time I took my opener. Like I said, a lot of miscommunication about when we were starting. When we started the flight, I found that no one was telling us the order of lifters so we were basically finding out when we were up, or about to be up. Again, my handlers came to the rescue and got it figured out.
My opener- As I said, I iced myself here. I was cold, and my body wasn’t cooperating. I got called for soft knees, and rightfully so. I was however very perturbed to find that there was no lighting system on the stage and that the judges couldn’t seem to get on the same page on whether it was a good lift or not. The did wind up making the right call, but it took way too long and there should have been a lighting system at a meet of this level. I didn’t know if the lift was good or bad til I was already back stage. Hence the picture above. Here it is (727, not the 725 they announced since it was in kilos)
2nd attempt
After pulling the opener I was feeling warmed up again, and like I was good to go. Dan Dalenberg, Brian Carroll, and I discussed whether I should go to 777 for a small PR, or just go right to 804 so I would have 2 shots at it if I needed it. I wound up letting them make the choice since they’re both very experienced lifters and coaches. The put in the attempt and I waited to pull it. We figured by the weights, since no one was telling us when we were up still, that we would be about 6-7 lifters out at this time. So we were very surprised when they called me as being up next. I hurried, got to the bar, and smoked the lift. Brian informed me that it was 804 and I pulled it like nothing. But then we heard the next lifter called at 777, at this point we assumed that there must have been confusion at the table and they took the 777 we were discussing instead of the 804, so my handlers went over to confirm. The attempt had indeed been put in at 804, but the bar was loaded to my opener again, so it was only 727. A 77 lb. misload, and already the third of the day that I knew of. Unacceptable, and a waste of an attempt.
3rd attempt- At this point I was out of my mind. We put in 804 as my third and confirmed it to make sure the problem would not be repeated. You can hear that they were calling the order of lifters by this point, which was a welcome change. But they again, changed the order when I was supposed to be 5-6 lifters out, and moved me up. It didn’t matter at that point, I was already spun out. I went and took a shot at 804. I didn’t get tight enough on the bar, let my hips come up first, and missed it. No one to blame but myself on that one. So the meet was a flop for me, I pulled a weight that I pulled in a meet 7+ years ago, in full gear, that I can pull raw. Whatever, stuff happens, just means I have to do a meet in the near future to redeem myself.
So, that’s that, I failed to adjust to the chaos and didn’t perform. This is the lesson that I took away from the meet. Sometimes shit is going to get crazy, and you have to be able to adapt to it if you’re going to reach your goals. Some people did really well in the meet because they were better than me at this, which makes them a better lifter. Like we always say, Train For Chaos.
Zane Geeting
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