If you happen to be a gym junkie, then powerlifting can get your heart clung. In fact, you can build a career in powerlifting like Ed Coan, Kristy Hawkins, Sudhir, and Scot Mendelson did. Or else, you can become a powerlifting coach. It demands you to trust yourself and turn over a new leaf.
Powerlifting isn’t a child’s play and primarily comprises 3 activities with maximum plausible weight: Squats, Bench Press and Deadlift. It demands utmost patience, continuous efforts, optimum gears, and a perfectly crisp strategy. You need top-notch equipments, if you want to start powerlifting..
Getting started with powerlifting often leaves people at sixes and sevens. If that is the case with you, then you’re in the right place, as this article will provide you with footprints to get started with powerlifting.
How To Get Started In Powerlifting?
As they say, the first step is always the most difficult to take, but it has to be taken to go miles; the same goes for powerlifting too. Powerlifting is far more intense than a regular bodybuilding workout regime. Nevertheless, nothing can beat a strong determination and a well-planned strategy. So here we are to assist you in getting started with powerlifting:-
- Pick The Right Place, Plan & Coach
For heavyweight powerlifting training, you need to find an optimum gym with all the necessary machines and supporting equipment, such as a GHR machine and deadlift jack, to foster your training sessions.
Also, a well-structured program that will gradually take you from the groundwork to the advanced-level techniques. For this, you need to look beyond regular weight lifting exercises such as leg press, overhead shoulder press, seated cable row, etc. A quintessential powerlifting program includes squat variations, sumo deadlifts, and bench presses with increased width, among a plethora of other exercises.
2. Get Your Gears
You’ve to be highly precise about this because gears are crucial to any training program, let alone for something hefty as powerlifting.
Practicing and performing in a powerlifting meet without gears becomes a biting a bullet kind of task. If you want to get started in powerlifting, you first need quality gear like an Anderson Powerlifting. Whether you need sleeves, belts, socks, apparel, kuffs, or straps, you’ll get suitable lifting gears for both women and men at reasonable prices with quality material in different sizes.
Gears not only ease the powerlifting training but also ensure safety from plausible injuries.
3. Learn Distinctive Lifts
The only tactic that can get you better at powerlifting is learning and practicing peculiar lifts, including push jerk, squat snatch, and power clean. This will take some time but remember not to rush things as a minor injury can make you part your ways with powerlifting.
Your practice will intensify with time, and you’ll learn a plethora of variations of squats, bench presses, and deadlifts.
Usually, people tend to get in hefts to hurriedly go through the entire training process, which actually should be avoided. Pay utmost attention to what your coach tells you and keep the necessary details imprinted in your mind and be vigilant while performing any lift or exercise.
4. Use Block Periodization To Set Realistic Aspirations
Once you get the hang of different lifts, try to amp up the game with continual efforts under the vigilance of your coach.
You’ll gradually increase the weight load and rep count. Setting unrealistic goals will do nothing good and, in fact, will make you stand in deep water gloomily as a single sprain or injury would suffice to take away the powerlifting from you for God knows how long.
Schedule training sessions with block periodization after analyzing your breakthrough points with the assistance of your coach, and don’t overdo it, as it can have adverse consequences. Go bit-by-bit for every move and then practice within intervals of breaks to relax.
It’s better to divide and follow a hierarchy in the process as your body would also take in changes gradually.
You can divide the training goals into weekly schedules, incorporate the recovery time, and re-practice the previous lifts and exercises while allotting a separate week to learn a new lift. This way, your plans will be far more balanced and progressive.
5. Make Necessary Dietary Changes
Dietary changes are imperative even when you go for bodybuilding, let alone for powerlifting. The body needs a plethora of different nutrients, minerals, and vitamins specifically associated with your training level, that too, naturally. So avoid dependence on protein powders and other such substances and rather cut off on unhealthy snacking and habits.
A quintessential diet is more of bidding adieu to elements that hinder the way of your training progress and not to the entire meal.
Dietary changes vary as per an individual’s body composition and medical history. Such changes can only be made better after researching and discussing them with your coach and dietician.
6. Attend Powerlifting Meets
For a realistic preview and experience of what national or international level powerlifting competitions look like, one needs to start at a local powerlifting meet. Your coach’s insights can prove quite valuable for this.
Enlist the local meets in your area and go from being a spectator to a participant after scrutinizing the rules, as different powerlifting federations have their own set criteria regarding everything from approved gears to types of equipment to moves.
7. Monitor Your Progress & Alter Your Plan
Finally, you need to be aware and observant of how far you’ve come and the shortcomings in your moves. Take your coach’s guidance to improve the plans, and try hitting the fish’s eye with sincerity.
Getting started with powerlifting isn’t a tricky process. All you need is guidance in the right direction, gears, and of course, self-belief.
Powerlifting demands regular practicing to be a pro. And it all commences with the first step. The above-listed steps will help you in getting started in powerlifting.
