United States Powerlifting Association<\/a>, and there’s so many different other federations. I’ve waited four years for nationals because of COVID and different types of family emergencies. I was training for that meet for about eight months, and realistically it has been about four years. Every year, I was doing a local meet just to keep qualifying, and then finally got the time to register for nationals and registration went through successfully. July 12th was the day I competed \u2013 there’s about 40 some lifters that were in my weight class. We looked at the rankings beforehand and I was originally sitting around number five or number six. It goes squat, bench and deadlift \u2013 you get three attempts per lift. When it came down to the last deadlift, I had successfully done my lift and then when I turned around, they had told me I secured third place\u2026we walked away placing third at my first national meet. It was definitely something I did not expect at all to hit. I thought the whole entire time I was sitting at fifth place or sixth place, kind of shortchanged myself. I try to keep the mentality that there’s always somebody else that’s stronger, better and working harder than I am \u2013 it just drives me more. I’m really thankful for the results, and I’m excited to do it again next year.<\/p>\nHow important is powerlifting to you personally?<\/h3>\n
Lifting has always been an escape for me. Everybody’s got their own baggage, everybody’s been through their own fair share of stuff. My brother’s been my coach my whole, entire life, since we were kids for football. He’s guided me, he’s been the one to push me harder. You get to meet so many cool people, you get to learn different ways of how to train somebody. There’s some strong men and women across the board. Everybody’s growing up playing a sport, and you see those guys who have grown up playing a sport \u2013 whether it’s at the DIII level all the way to DI \u2013 they carry that emotional and competitive drive, and it drives you more. I think the biggest thing is my brother\u2019s always told me to stay calm, cool and collected, and at the end of the day it’s just like we were kids. We’re just going to keep doing this until our bodies say no.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Class of 2020 Major Health Sciences Current role Head of Recovery Services and Strength & Conditioning Coach at Elite Wellness What got you interested in this field? I’ve been surrounded by sports my whole, entire life. Played football growing up, always been attracted to lifting weights, learned at a young age how to lift weights […]<\/p>\n
Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":1820,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/fullwidthpage.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBen So - Marymount University<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n