Another powerlifting competition accomplished

A few months ago, at the end of September, I competed in my third powerlifting competition which was at Alpha Athletes in Ashfield. My previous two competitions had been a year apart, but this one was about 18 months after my previous one. To be honest, I never really plan these competitions, but since the very first one I competed in, I have really enjoyed the process. It is both a mental and physical challenge, and I love the idea of bettering myself in a way that I had previously not thought possible (growing up, I did not like exercise). Even though it is initially nerve wracking, I also like the feeling of being on the platform and performing athletically in front of people. It helps to have the support of my friends and family, too.

Competing once a year seems like a fair enough goal for someone who isn’t planning on being an elite athlete. 😆 (No shade.) I was keen on competing earlier than September 2025, but as I alluded to in a previous post, also signified by the break I took from blogging, it just was not the right time or there were no competition dates that allowed for enough preparation.

Curious about my previous two competitions? I’ve written about my first competition and my second competition! 🧡

All of that said, my coach Peter had me working up to a powerlifting specific program, but we lost track of time and realised we didn’t have as much time to prepare as we thought. So I needed to really push hard in the eight weeks before the competition. I also decided about 10–12 weeks out that I wanted to lose some weight to be in the under 52kg weight category. Oh, I love a challenge sometimes… I weighed about 53.2kg and I decided it couldn’t possibly be that hard to get below 52, but I truly shocked myself with how much weight I actually lost.

Getting bodyweight down to compete in u52kg

I actually felt like things were going really well when I was training at the gym, and I was getting very close to my personal bests of 87.5kg squat, 50kg bench press, and 110kg deadlift (192.9lb, 110.23lb, 242.51lb). In the gym, I got up to an 82.5kg squat, 47.5kg bench press, and 102.5kg deadlift, so things were looking good. I tracked my calories for a couple of weeks before tweaking my macros further because I wasn’t seeing progress, and then the weight honestly started to rapidly drop off. I was very surprised because this was the first time I’d done any kind of calorie counting or tracking (previous poor relationship with food and disordered eating habits had me concerned), and I didn’t mind the process too much. On competition day I ended up at a wild 50.7kg, and I looked at how lean I was and was impressed. I know; I try not to focus on superficial stuff when it comes to fitness, but I can’t deny that I was pleased with the progress. (I didn’t continue to track for much longer after competition day, but my heart and mind are open to doing more of this in the future.) In my previous competition I had weighed in at 56.05kg, so the fact that I was 5kg lighter than 18 months prior kind of blew my mind.

Mysterious abdominal and back pain

Setbacks will always happen with these kinds of experiences, though. This time, I was actually feeling rather unwell when I was about four weeks out. I thought I had sprained something. I remember really feeling it in my lower abs on one side after maxing out on the deadlift, and I had a similar pain last year when performing a similar movement. Despite resting and taking it easy for a week—which was peak week anyway—the pain didn’t subside. It started to “spread” to my lower back, so my whole midsection kind of ached, but it remained a mystery because the pain actually felt better with movement and exercise, but felt incredibly painful upon waking up each morning. It also felt worst when I sat at my desk for a long period of time, or rested and lay down for a while. I tried a bunch of different natural remedies

I wondered if something serious must be going on, but the pain kept coming and going, and wasn’t always in the same spot. I saw my chiropractor, massage therapist, and then Peter referred me to his (very good) physiotherapist, while I also saw a GP at my preferred medical centre. Long story short, a bunch of medical tests and scans revealed nothing acute or concerning. My doctor referred to the physical exam she’d initially done, and queried me about my diet and lifestyle changes, deducing that I was stopped up and my digestive system was causing discomfort around my abdomen. It was in no particular spot, but just generally everywhere. She had me take laxatives for a whole month. 💩 I did not find out about this issue until after my competition, because frankly, I was petrified that the doctor’s advice would be to not compete in the competition that I worked so hard for. 😬 I believe powerlifters can be stubborn, and I am no exception. I was having this abdominal pain for over a month, and walking or carrying even a small backpack hurt, but because other symptoms didn’t occur, and I wasn’t getting worse (but also wasn’t getting better), and to put it bluntly, I wasn’t “dying”. Peter did say to consider making the call to pull out of the competition, and this was wise advice, but I decided I could push through. I’ll come back to the recovery of this after sharing how the competition went.

Competition day and results

The Alpha Athletes gym was a welcoming and relaxed environment. I say relaxed with all things considered, that we’re talking about a full day competition, but things ran pretty smoothly. Warming up and working up to your attempts on the platform was kind of done around the audience and around the whole gym, whereas back at Generation Fitness where I’d done my previous two competitions, the warmup area was behind the platform and had more privacy. I wasn’t too fussed either way, but I hope that foam rolling the fuck out of my hip flexor (before knowing what was causing my bodily pains) and getting in the way of passersby was at least mildly amusing.

I usually train fasted—apart from having some black coffee—and that is how I’ve trained 99.9% of the time. There has been the odd occasion where I’ve been itching to work out but haven’t had a chance all day, and end up going some time in the evening, but I don’t know if I notice enough of a difference in performance, mood, and energy to shift up the routine I have loved for years. I often have trouble eating anything too close to having finished a workout, much less during a whole competition. But I fuel with some handfuls of sugary snacks, nuts, or jerky, usually after I’ve done all my squat attempts.

On the day I got 7/9 attempts, failing my second and third bench press attempts, but I matched my personal bests for the squat and deadlift—87.5kg and 110kg. 🥹 Failing my bench attempts was disappointing but I tried my best and I just had to move on. I wanted so badly to hit my 50kg PB once more, but after getting 45kg in my opener and it feeling easy, my body just felt weak as shit… It was basically like, no arguing there. I did not have it in me, wasn’t even close. The videos show that during the lift, my butt came off the bench in my second and third attempts, and it looked difficult. I guess I just didn’t imagine how much the drop in bodyweight would impact my upper body strength.

I am used to being first on the platform for my first squat attempt, because I am a small person and therefore more likely to have the lightest weight on the bar. This time, there were a couple of lifters who had a lighter opening weight, so it was nice to have a little less pressure to do the first lift of the day. It’s true that you forget how nervous you are after you’ve made your first attempt. I would say that for the deadlift, I probably could have had another couple of kilograms on the bar, but my second attempt felt tough, so I didn’t want to try and hit a record number.

My final numbers were 87.5kg squat, 45kg bench press, 110kg deadlift. (Seriously, writing that out, I feel bummed I didn’t even get to do a hectic 47.5kg.) I still want to bench press my own bodyweight one day. One fucking day, I promise. I swear. 😝 I came first place by default in the u52 category, because I was the only female in that category. 🥲 Whilst it would have been nice to have some competition, you never know who will show up on the day. And still, the real person I was competing with here was myself. If I could see myself as another person: what an incredible feat to have gone through so much personal shit throughout the past year and still dedicate myself to a physically taxing activity, and on top of that, come out technically stronger since I was so much lighter and lifted pretty much/almost the same weight.

I spent some time making a little video with a voiceover that I posted as a reel on my Instagram. I dislike editing videos but I really wanted to try and summarise things with all the footage that Chris took, because he filmed some of my warmup sets and foam rolling. It sure is helpful when you have a friend helping you film “content”. 😆 My parents were able to make it this time to spectate, but my brother was out of town at the time. I had a few friends come along who hadn’t seen me compete before. I found that pretty exciting—and of course, no shade to my other friends, haha.

Recovering from sickness and next steps and goals

So, with that advice from the doctor and all of that literal shit in my system, I went on the laxatives for, yeah, quite literally, a month. I’ll spare the details (if you’ve been reading my blog for over ten years then you might recall that time I got diagnosed with a full colon about fourteen years ago), but after a colourful and uncomfortable repertoire of bowel movements I eventually became well. It also shocked me how long it took to recover, though, because it kind of got worse before it got better, and it really did take almost the whole month for my guts to feel like they were operating normally. 🙄 My physiotherapist mentioned that the tightness in my back seemed ordinary for someone training with the intensity with which I was training, but that the abdominal issues aggravated it further. It was so nice to feel like a human again, and to be able to wake up in the morning and not feel like I screwed up my back. It’s kind of wild how discomfort in the digestive system can literally make it painful to just walk.

The competition was fun. I feel like this competition prep was soooo tough, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. But I’m certain there will be another one in the future. I recovered pretty well from the competition, and I didn’t have too much muscular pain, nor did I injure myself.

At the moment I’m working on just building muscle, focused on glutes and strong legs, and a strong upper body. Unfortunately, I have stopped tracking my food and am eating more than I was before, but keeping a large percentage of it as nutritious as possible and still trying to get enough protein. I do intend to start tracking again so I can hold myself accountable to good eating habits. Peter currently has me on a very fun and interesting program with majority two sets per exercise (one of 4–6 reps and one of 8–10), with a bunch of unilateral movements, and some wide-grip pull-ups. Which, once again, I surprised myself by actually doing, because I didn’t realise I could do them. Holy shit.

I’m trying to do more stretching so I can do the splits again, but that’s a patience game. I still don’t know when I’ll get back on my skateboard, but I’ll have to start at zero again. My answer is, “when I feel like it”. Just going to honour my body and do what it needs and feels like doing. Hell yeah.