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The spring of my freshman year of high school was the first time I stepped foot into the school weight room. Throughout the rest of my high school career I religiously went to the weight room after classes looking to blow off some steam and pump some iron. The development of this habit eventually led to my passion for weightlifting and exercise. Now I am married to the iron and lifting weights is a very large part of my life.

Initially when I began, I had no sense of direction and did the same workout pretty much every single day, five days a week. It was a monotonous workout with the same reps, sets and exercises but I loved every second of it. After doing this for such a long time I had reached plateaus in a lot of lifts, especially the large compound lifts like the bench press and squat. It was because of this stall in progression that I looked for knowledge and ways to improve. After watching countless videos on YouTube and talking to those who were more experienced than I was, I began to progress exponentially and eventually became very well versed in form and cues for specific lifts. The Fitts and Posner Three Stage Model applies to my progression.

Initially as a novice in the weight room, I experienced the cognitive stage in which I had to recite the routine in my head or verbally explain cues to myself regarding form and different stages of exercise. Soon after gaining strength and experience, I was able to move into the associative stage where I didn't have to verbally explain form cues to myself and was able to diagnose why I missed a lift or why things didn't move as well as they should have. At this point in my lifting career I am in the autonomous stage and don't even need to think about form or cues. Now I can just get under the bar and understand what I need to do to execute my workout.

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Fast forward to my junior year of college. At this point I was still working out consistently on my own without external motivation. While lifting with friends, I noticed that my strength in the core compound lifts like squat and bench press was larger than most other kids my age and weight. It was one day when I was working out at the Natatorium that my now good friend Ari approached me. Ari was the president of the UW Powerlifting Club Team at the time and recruited me to the team. It was from this moment that I sparked my interest in powerlifting. The sport consists of performing the squat, bench press and deadlift for a maximal one repetition. The combined total of these lifts adds up to a total. The main objective is to lift the most weight as possible for your designated weight class. This was great for me as I was a lighter weight male but I could put up heavy weights.

The movement that contributes a large majority of my total is the squat. Prior to finding the sport of powerlifitng, I had been squatting at least three times a week at sub-maximal loads. Upon being introduced to the team, I learned about techniques and form changes that made me a stronger and more efficient squatter. This demonstrates the transfer of learning which is the gain in proficiency of a skill as a result of practicing another skill. For me, squatting so frequently before finding powerlifting transferred over very well to a powerlifting specific squat. I understood the mechanics of the movement and motor patterns associated with it. When moving to a low-bar placement squat and using a lifting belt + knee sleeves I was still able to squat proficiently with even larger weight

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Fast forward one year since I began powerlifting and I find myself experienced enough to call myself and intermediate in terms of proficiency in the sport. Throughout the year of powerlifting I learned a lot about the technicalities of the squat, bench press and deadlift. All of these movements move in the same saggital plane and while seemingly simple, there are are a lot of small techniques and cues a novice to powerlifting would not take into consideration.

One variable of each of these movements to consider while lifting is the speed at which you move the weight. Fitts' Law introduces the speed accuracy trade off in which implies an inverse relationship between the difficulty of a movement and the speed at which it can be performed. I remember one specific time this relationship between difficulty humbled me...

It was max out day during the summer of my junior year and the program I was running called for a one rep max test for the bench press. Amped up on caffeine and hype from my teammates, I was all warmed up and ready to max out. I setup on the bench press and quickly unracked the bar to being the press. I was in such a hurry to put up the weight that I had lost focus and forgot about bench press cues like leg drive and core tightness causing me to miss the lift and having my spotter save my life. It was a humbling experience and I realized due to difficulty of a one rep maximum attempt I needed to slow down and dial in to remember form and technique in order to execute.

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Moving into my senior year of undergrad, my passion for powerlifting was at an all time high. There were many instances where I put off academic obligations in order to fit my workout in for the day. It was common for me to set aside 3 hours during each week day to get into the weightroom and practice this semester.

While trying to balance academic, social life, work and powerlifting my weekly schedule became very hectic. Sacrifices had to be made including sleep and social life in order to be successful both academically and in my sport. Prioritization of work and school forced me to allocate my time for lifting to later in the week which resulted in very strenuous workouts back to back. I would go 4 days squatting, benching and deadlifting for 3 hours with minimal time for recovery.

Upon attending Kines361 lecture, I learned that distribution of practice is crucial for optimizing performance of a skill. I was practicing massed practice where the amount of rest time between sessions is very minimal. I accumulated fatigue extremely quickly and by the second training day of the week I was already burnt as I had such a low rest time in between sessions. Since that time earlier in the semester, I've learned to be more efficient with my time allowing me more time to absorb the knowledge that I learned in each session and giving me time to properly recover by spacing my workouts throughout the week.

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After a couple months into my first semester senior year I began to train for my second powerlifting meet. This meet was the the 2019 WI Collegiate State Cup where all the UW schools came to compete.

Throughout prep for this meet I was having a lot of issues with my deadlift. I deadlifted 3 times a week and my body was always aching by the second session. I was dropping easy weights because my thumb skin and callouses kept tearing and bleeding. I was so discouraged because I set out to deadlift 500lbs before the end of the year and at this rate it wasn't going to happen...

When meet day came I had finished my squat and bench press attempts and we were moving into deadlifts. I was anxious and scared that I wouldn't be able to hit my goal of 500lbs. I moved into a corner of the room and used the mental practice of internal imagery. This allowed me to visualize and imagine myself pulling the 500lbs off the ground. I heard all the screams of my teammates and coaches. The loud roar of the spectator crowd cheering me on.

It came my turn to deadlift and I began to shake. I walked up to the bar with all the nerves. I put some chalk on my hands and ripped the 500lbs off the ground and the judges passed it. I never thought I could ever be this strong but I did it and met one of my new years resolutions as well as a personal record in the deadlift. I genuinely believe that my use of internal imagery to imagine myself successfully pulling the weight helped in my performance. Now whenever I am preparing for a big lift I take a couple minutes to imagine myself doing it before.