Meet Recap - Jack Welch, Powerlifting America High School Nationals 4/21/24

Eric Andrews
May 10, 2024
8 min read

Weigh-In, Goals and Performance

Tenacious: adjective. To be persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired. This is the word that stands out to me when thinking about this prep and especially the meet. Prepping for this meet, Jack and I had just come off a pretty successful meet in February, our first meet together. He set a few PRs and had a solid day to secure the total needed to qualify for Nationals and set the stage for a big push in training. We had just 9 weeks between meets to adjust training and peak just in time for Nationals but Jack never skipped a beat. We had one down week of training just to take a little breather, but since we didn’t go all out at the February meet, we had plenty of momentum going into the next block of training. With that said, Jack always takes training seriously, puts his heart into every rep and is deliberate with controlling his externals and it paid off. During training we hit several PRs on the squat and bench, and worked on adding conventional into deadlift training to supplement overall volume and we saw it make a lot of carry over to squats. We were confident going into the meet that PRs across the board with a PR total was going to happen, just needed to put it all together on meet day.

Getting into the day itself, the competition was Powerlifting America High School Nationals held in New Orleans, Louisiana. Jack got down a couple days early to settle in and I think it definitely helped shake the nerves a bit! Hanging out at the hotel, meeting other competitors, doing a bit of sightseeing, all part of the experience that is what makes powerlifting so fun and unique. Jack did a great job of sticking to foods he knew so we knew weight would not really be a concern. However, we did end up weighing in a little lighter than expected at 89.9kg, competing in the 93kg weight class putting us about 6lbs underneath the class. Overall though I don’t think this really affected the outcome of the day all that much. Our goal for the day was to hit lifts, go for PRs where they looked achievable, have a big deadlift to finish, and go 9/9 giving us our best shot to get on the podium. With 9 people in the weight class and all very close competitive totals, we knew it would have to be a perfect day to get top 3 but we thought top 5 would be within reach if we played smart. Let’s see how the day played out.

Squat

Jumping right in - you know how everyone says “oh once you get the first squat out of the way you’ll feel great and excited for the rest of the day” or “make your first squat easy and set yourself up” well…we ran into some issues on squat to say the least. Warmups were looking great, and things overall were looking promising. We knew Jack was about middle/end of the flight for squats, so timing of the last warmup to give him enough rest time but stay warm for the first attempt was crucial. Took our last warmup of 190kg with no issues just about when the flight was about to start. We opened up with 200kg which was his current PR from the prior meet. All is looking good, all the commands are great - no issues with the squat to my eyes and it moved phenomenally fast. However it was given 2-1 red lights from the side judges on depth. At this point I had a decision to make, do we retake the opener and just go deeper or go up to our planned second and make sure depth was better. Based on how fast the opener looked, and to give us the best chance of making top 5 on the day we elected to go up to 207.5kg. We regroup, and get ready for the second attempt. This is a weight Jack has hit pretty comfortably in training but only a couple of times but I was certain we had this one no problem, just needed to go a little deeper! Jack goes out and hits the second attempt, goes a little deeper, but same story as first attempt 2-1 red lights. I did go up to the side judge at this point to confirm that depth was the issue and not something else I didn’t realize and they confirmed it was depth. Now, facing potentially bombing out of our first national meet together we made the relatively easy decision to retake this weight and really sink it this time. I think I told Jack no less than 10 times that he is strong enough to hit this and needs to sell it to get the call. Remember that word from earlier, tenacious? Well it’s time to show what that really means. Jack was not about to put the last 9 weeks of training go to waste. Going out for his last attempt, I cannot tell you how loud the crowd was screaming…it was insane. I also have never seen Jack so locked in ever, he was completely dialed and ready to give it everything he had to stay in the competition. Going out for the last attempt, gets the squat command, absolutely buries it, deeper than any squat I’ve seen him do, fights through it, grinds it out and locks it out. Gets the rack command and there must have been 10 seconds before we saw the lights…2-1 white lights and he is in the meet! The best part about this squat (aside from staying in the competition) was the fact that out of the third attempts, only 3 people from the 9 person flight made them and Jack was one. A huge moment for us and gave us the momentum we needed to fight the rest of the day. Even though we missed the mark, Jack still came out with a 7.5kg PR.

Bench

We are still reeling a bit from the crazy squat session but we are just glad to be in the meet. We also noticed that the number one forecasted lifter had bombed out on squats - which really opened the door despite only going 1/3 for squats. Our primary goal now is to finish 6/6 and if needed, do what we can on deadlift to make up the ground. So going into the bench, made sure to stay hydrated, fuel back up a bit and get ready. Bench warm ups are pretty straightforward, simple jumps of 5-10 kg and really nothing fancy! Just getting used to benching on the stiff Eleiko rack and getting a good pause in but other than that, just warmups as usual. Again, I am looking at where Jack was in the flight and trying to time his last warmup appropriately. He’s opening the flight which is totally fine. However…the Liftingcast timer doesn’t show up on my phone and I needed to walk back and forth from the screens in the warmup room to our rack. I don’t know how this happened but last time I checked we had 4 minutes left and I told Jack to take his last warmup at 92.5kg. This moved fine, no concerns there. What happened next was a blur because the next thing I remember is Jack looking at the screens and going “WE GOTTA GO! I HAVE 20 SECONDS!!!!” and we TOOK OFF to the platform. Jack is literally SPRINTING and trying to put his wrist wraps on in time. He gets up to the platform and tries to get on the bench and to our surprise they say “Whoa whoa slow down you have plenty of time no worries!” and let him have enough time to wrap his wrists, and get settled. The 20 second timer was actually just the break timer and not the “bar is loaded” timer. A little funny to look back on now, but definitely something I need to pay closer attention to in the future.

Anyways - bench attempts. 97.5kg opener moves great, even after being a little winded from the 40m dash. We jumped to 102.5kg which he missed at the last meet and would be a 5kg PR. Jack has hit this in training and just needed to make sure the pause was good on the platform. He makes the lift with 3 white lights but it was a little slow. We know that with his bench that we need to make small jumps - I made the mistake of jumping 5kg at our first meet together and it did not go well. So we went with the 2.5kg jump to 105kg on his third attempt and man was it the right call. I believe in total it was something like a 12 second grind from getting the press command to locking out. Let me say it again, tenacity. I don’t think many other lifters would stick with this on bench press for 2.5 kilos but Jack needed this. Incredibly pumped about this one and it gave us some wind in our sails to finish out the day.

Deadlift

Rounding out the day with Jack’s favorite lift. Now I will say we didn’t have the smoothest deadlift training going into the meet. We took a big swing at 500lbs in training 4 weeks out and missed it. We were looking at some technical things to fix and realistically didn’t have a ton of time. The last 4 weeks of training were spent just building into the meet and trusting that a taper would help close the gap. For his comp deadlift training singles we went 450 week 1, 460 week 2, 475 week 3 and 485 week 4 to cap off training to tie his meet PR and it moved about the same as the last meet. This did help us build momentum leading into the meet, as squat was absolutely taking off.

So going into deads we were a little behind 5th place but it seemed like we could be in the running based on how people’s attempts moved, even 4th place if we had a crazy finale. Warmups are moving fine, overall no concerns. We knew we had to just go out there and finish the job. Opening up at 207.5kg and hit this with no issues at all. Jumping 7.5kg to 215kg would set us up to make a couple of different jumps based on his competitors and what we could realistically hit for the day. The primary goal was to still finish strong and go 3/3 for the day. 215kg on his second moved great and put the pressure on the other guy currently in 5th. He actually missed his second attempt by bobbling and nearly falling over at the top. We saw an opening! I put in 222.5kg for his third as a placeholder to see if the other guy would retake his second or go up. He ended up going up to 230kg on his third. So this meant that if he hit it, we would be 10kg back from 5th. However if he missed again we would actually be ahead by 5kg and take the 5th place spot. Given this info, we elected to stay at 222.5kg and not go any higher to risk it. Jack would have needed to go up to 232.5kg to come if his opponent made the 230kg and we both agreed that was definitely out of our means for the day. So all that was left to do was to go out there and hit the third deadlift and wait and see. This ended up being a good call - Jack hits this for a 2.5kg PR with maybe a little bit left in the tank, but I am glad we didn’t leave this up to chance. Currently we are in 5th and waiting to see how the 230kg would go for our competitor. In the end, he ended up locking it out with no issue and he secured 5th place for himself and pushing us to 6th overall.

Closing Thoughts & The Future

Well what can I say - I am incredibly proud of the way Jack handled himself throughout the stress and highs and lows for the day. Jack held his composure and is the definition of tenacious. Overall securing a 17.5kg total PR and improving his DOTS by 12.71 points, I would call that a successful first national meet and will certainly not be the last. I know it’s not the day either of us had in mind, but I know as we move forward and build the foundation, great things are coming for Jack. He takes off to college at Tampa in the Fall and I couldn’t be more excited and proud of him to represent the High Tide Strength Club in Florida. The future is bright and I am already looking forward to bringing Jack and High Tide to collegiate nationals. #TheRisingTide