Meet Recap - Sam Grondin, USAPL Rookie Collegiate Cup 11/9/24

Meet recap for Sam! I’ve been working with Sam since May and this was our first meet together and his first powerlifting competition.

Sam competed at the USAPL New England Rookie Collegiate Cup and it was an incredible first meet experience. As others have written about, the environment was insane, I do not think I’ve been to a louder meet in my life. The energy and hype levels were crazy. For some I think this could be just what you need at your first meet, but for others it adds to the challenge but also the excitement. For Sam it was definitely the latter, and as he put it best after his squat attempts he said to me “I’ve pitched at huge games, in front of hundreds of people, and that does not compare at all to this experience” and I completely agree. Nothing really can prepare you for getting on the platform, the lights, the judges, remembering all the rules, the crowd, your friends and family watching, it’s intense! But Sam is a born competitor and was ready for the challenge. And as the saying goes...

In terms of the day, going in we did a bit of scouting! Like I said, Sam is a competitor and even though it was his first meet he wanted to do well. We knew a podium in the 83kgs was achievable so that was the goal. Obviously we want to have fun, hit lifts and all that as well, but having that competitive drive I think helped a lot for the day. Weigh in was fine, just under and we were off to squat. Warmups were moving just fine, pretty normal all considered but once we hit the platform the first attempt just didn’t quite move with the same force I normally see from Sam. Still got 3 whites on the first but was definitely shaken a bit…however we stuck to the plan, as I’ve seen Sam work for squat before and knew what he was capable of. On our second jump he got stuck about halfway up and couldn’t fight through. We regrouped and decided to retake for the third attempt to give us a fighting chance and Sam came out and despite hitting the same sticking point, he fought through it and secured the last squat. Couldn’t be more proud of him to regain composure and get that final squat. It wasn’t the number we wanted on the day but had to lock in and take whatever was in store for the rest of the day.

I would definitely say that the bench is Sam’s specialty. Out of all 44 men, he had the 6th biggest bench regardless of weight class. We love to see it. For attempts on bench there wasn’t much fuss here, we took 5kg jumps from 125-130-135 and went 3/3. I would say he probably could have grinded out 137.5kg to break the 300lb club milestone but we’ll certainly be back for more at the next meet and our focus was to go 6/6 to close the day so mission accomplished so far, onto deadlift.

Lastly for deadlift, we wanted to end the day with a bit of fun and do our best to secure 2nd or 3rd for the day. Deadlift went really well for Sam, as he’s struggled in the past to get past the 185kg mark several times so in training we implemented a lot of deficit work to build better off the floor speed and it definitely paid off. We went 195kg for his third to secure 3rd place and that was a wrap.

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Couldn’t be happier and more proud of Sam’s performance for his first meet. This is just the start to a bright competitive future for Sam. Thanks for reading and be sure to congratulate Sam on a stellar performance!