Sweat drips down his forehead as he heaves out a heavy breath. Senior Brandon Ford lifts the weight while squatting. His teammates cheer him on as his coaches relay constructive criticism for future lifts.
The powerlifters competed in two meets. The meets contained a weighed-in lifter and a completed squat, a bench press and a deadlift. The goal is to end up with the most amount of total weight by adding the three lifts together. Each one of these exercises wers given three attempts.
“I like to move a lot of weight and enjoy working out,” Ford said. “I like to work out a lot, and that just came being small. I just worked out a lot and that helped me get to where I am now.”
Coach Braylon Tatum, works with strength and conditioning techniques to train the powerlifting team.
“I really enjoy getting to see these guys out perform themselves every week,” Tatum said. “Even sometimes we have bad meets, but we know the best meet we are going to do even better.”
Sports focus on facing the opponent or simply being above the opponent. However, there’s also a mental side of sports. Being pushed by one another and going past the former limits ultimately creates better athletes.
“As a lifter, you have to exceed your goals every week because if you aren’t, [you aren’t] getting better than your competition,” Tatum said. “Athletes need to realize the only way to beat other athletes is to beat yourself first.”
Casey Griffin and Zachary McKinley advanced to the regional meet on March 5. Griffin competed in the 242-weight class. McKinley weighed in at 275.2 pounds and competed in the 308-weight class. He ranked sixth in the meet with a 520 squat, 310 bench and 535 deadlifts for a total of 1365 pounds.
“The regional meet brought out a competitive atmosphere making me want to get better,” McKinley said.” I wish I could’ve redone my bench because I felt like I could’ve done more, but I was satisfied because I hit my goal for the year, and I plan to get better.”
Mallett • Oct 5, 2022 at 8:37 pm
Contact Coach Hulme at [email protected]
Nick Vasquez • Sep 15, 2022 at 10:11 pm
Hello, my son is a freshman at Legacy high school and he’s interested in trying out for the powerlifting team. We haven’t been able to find any information from anyone at the school or online at the school website. This is literally the only thing find anywhere about Legacy powerlifting. Can someone give any info? Who is the powerlifting coach? How does he tryout for the team. Thanks in advance!