Marilia’s Powerlifting Blog

DISCLAIMER: If you are a beginner and are reading this article, keep in mind that in spite of the funny content, this refers to something very serious. Safety in the gym is no laughing matter, powerlifting is a sport that involves risk and what is being described here is an UNACCEPTABLE mistake/risk that should never have been done by an experienced lifter. Never-ever do anything like this. 

Last week, Monday, I went totally wild at Nautilus because I failed a very light bench press (198lbs). I had a bunch of personal issues making it impossible to focus, but never took this into account when I failed the lift. To me, it was the end of the world. No strength, no sense, no nothing. I lost it, threw my stuff on the bag and took off – blind with confusion and rage. I had traveled to another town to miss a light lift and leave the platform in ten minutes. That made no sense at all. The one and a half hours I drove back home were a sequence of short horror movies. 

Somehow I managed to sleep and decided that Thursday I would attempt the same weights again. I had to understand what was going on. But I decided to do it in another environment. What if the environment mattered? After all, I’m a stray dog. So I asked some friends who own a regular, small gym close to where I live, if they could help me. They had never spotted an equipped lifter before, one of them had never seen a bench shirt before, there is no powerlifting equipment there, no competition bench or support… So I improvised everything. I found one bench – probably used for ab work because it had this foot support – that felt like the right height. I took it to the squat rack, whose lower support was too high for me to even touch, so whoever passed the bar to me would have to do a special effort to hand it down. There are no Olympic bars at this gym – only the regular thin chromed bars, no knurling (or a kind of ornamental one, no hold). I hoped the chalk I brought would really help with the grip, because this time I really needed it. Altogether, the arrangement was pretty uncomfortable for the spotters. 

They did a very fine job adjusting the shirt on me. Better than many experienced lifters I know. And we started adding weight to the bar. 

When 198kg felt like nothing, I was very happy. When 209kg were easy, I was even happier. And so we put 220lb – the magic hundred (kilograms) I have never done in meets before. Would I break the mental barrier? I was sure I would: the weights felt too light and I was focused. My plan was to go up to 220lb on the Titan F6 and then move up on my new Hades (three ply). 

The spotter passed me the bar, I held it firm, lowered it to my chest and lifted. I locked both elbows and finished the movement. At that moment, something happened. My arm, or both arms, bent back (it happens sometimes with certain shirts), the friend who was spotting wasn’t prepared for that and didn’t hold the bar. The 220lbs went straight down my face. The bar hit me between the upper lip and the nose. 

What happened after that, I have little explanation to provide. The fact is that I am alive, just a small nose bone smashed, no broken teeth, and a cut on the upper lip. 

The bar was supposed to have smashed my skull – it did not. The friends actually went for the bar after it had fallen. My own only possible contribution would be a ridiculously heavy “triceps extension” on a tight shirt (not that the shirt would matter with that weight). 

I got up and noticed everybody was freaking out. I looked at the mirror and thought “o-oh”. Messy. Very messy. Blood all over the place. 

“Hey guys! Eveeythin is ohay! Reaayy!!! Ouyy lle dose is bery bery bascularized – jusss attt!!! Thhhhsss ouuuyyeee a bbiiii meesss!!!!” 

They still looked at me in horror as I laughed and congratulated myself for the 220lbs bench press, as if nothing had happened. 

I left as fast as I could and went to the hospital. Sure it was serious: I didn’t even fill any forms. As I opened my car door I was immediately taken to the emergency, a bunch of nurses and doctors crowded me and asked: 

“WHAT, this time??” 

They know me well… I always end up there and there is always something going on right before a meet. When I broke my leg, I was taken there, and arrived fully equipped on a Titan squat suit. When I had a viral infection right before the State champs and was cra**ing myself inside out I ended up there too. 

“Bar fell ow by dose”, I said. 

I spent about 8 hours there, doing lots of tests. Including a tomography, since I know they had to rule out the possibility of bone splinters way inside. It was a great impact. 

That happened Thursday, the 22^nd of November, the day I became a “born again lifter”. 

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation with my former coach-friend-project partner. There is something about almost dying that makes you review certain things. I wanted to let him know that I don’t give a fu** for the federations wars, and that I had the time of my life while I was lifting at the slum. He was my best friend. And you know what? He was pis** off at me for not having gone to him instead of putting myself in danger and risking other people’s integrity (emotional, at least). 

Fernando (Canteli), Nautilus’ coach, special friend and also partner, was even madder at me. I felt embarrassed. 

I have been a nomad all my life – lived in different countries, experienced different cultures and actually don’t feel totally belonging anywhere. But powerlifting requires internal roots, responsibility and some settling down. 

Funny thing is… I have this recollection of the chromed bar coming in slow-mo towards my mouth. It seems I thought so much during those long hours that actually took just milliseconds in real life. 

I think I am quite done with the stray dog life. 

So, the new gym was real cool, lot’s of heavy benchers. But they had never done any board training, no finalization work and… where is the cage? No cage! Basically, heavy BP training meant only shirt work with few reps. Far from good for my goals. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, that I lost my maxes. It took me time to understand that I hadn’t been doing that type of work for more than a month – actually two months. My brain had unlearned how to handle the heavier weights. 

I have no idea if anything will do the trick NOW, so close to the meets, but I started trying last Monday: first, got two guys to help me with sustaining work. Did it arduously. Everything felt heavy. Then I created a post-modern sculpture on the floor consisting of an old rack, in the middle of which I inserted a bar, two chairs (because we didn’t trust the rack would hold too much weight and might break and possibly smash my head) and, to adjust the right angle for the elbow in the finalization work, a couple of big old disks and a small mattress over them. Bad part is that this way there is some extra abdominal work you do (because you are flat on the floor) and I farted on the circle of people that came to watch what I was trying to do. I couldn’t care less. I am not a corked bottle and I eat 3g/protein for kg of bodyweight, so I fart, ok? Don’t like it? Don’t stay around. Lesson to learn: there is always some way to improvise, even if there is no cage around. 

Again: they can take anything from you, they can take your hopes, your blood, your love, your happiness (for a while), your faith in humankind, your food, your money, but they CANNOT TAKE POWERLIFTING FROM YOU unless they take along your life. 

Marilia 

Some time ago I left the gym where I saw my first Olympic bar, and where I learned the basics of powerlifting. I have always been somewhat of a lone wolf, pretty self-sufficient, and it took some time for me to adopt the collective routine. But, at one moment, I did so: it felt better, although I disagreed on its foundations. It happened in the end of may stay there. Those were good times, where federations mattered little, where my friend/coach and I were experimenting with technique and methods and when we were also constructing maybe the most beautiful thing I have been engaged in: the sports center project for vulnerable youth at the slum. 

It all ended when I collided with the fed bosses of the IPF. And then, after being threatened and backing off from the national PL championship, I left the gym, the social project died, I lost contact with the kids… Fortunately, I broke my leg just then, and all the sadness and confusion that this involved got sort of buried under the task of recovering. The broken leg period was funny. Very “zen”: I trained alone, at a gym near my house. Taxi or my brother took me there, I had a personal trainer client and I trained all alone, with no powerlifting equipment. The stiff leg was a small problem, which I refused to let me down. I didn’t have anyone to put my bench shirt on me, so I trained raw and did lock-outs on the improvised setting I made with the squat rack support. 

In the end, I did a pretty good mark, broke a national and South-american record. But training alone, I respected some kind of periodization. Not really accurate, but it was close to that. Then I started training with another team, far from where I live. They had their own routine, and I followed them. I forgot my own periodization and in a few weeks I ended up with CNS overtraining: I had been doing maxes for more than 10 weeks and simply forgot to COUNT them. So I stopped for two weeks and recovered. 

On my next post I will comment on lock-out training, sustaining work and stuff like that on the perspective of a stray dog. Bottom line is: one way or the other, you manage to compensate for what you lose. And bottom line-bottom line really is: they can take anything from you, they can take your hopes, your blood, your love, your happiness (for a while), your faith in humankind, your food, your money, but they CANNOT TAKE POWERLIFTING FROM YOU unless they take along your life. 

Marilia  

C’mon, google “sports fiction” just to compare views: it is all for KIDS, about HEROES and very few other sites dedicated to real athletes, our complex world of performance, challenges, social interation and politics!
The world know s** about us and literature is the main public opinion shaper!
I am not tripping here: we need more serious sports fiction, we need sports fiction about strength athletes and we need support for this!
 

This year, I taking part on the NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/ ). This is a curious literary marathon where you have to write a 50.000 word novel in one month (starting November 1^st and closing November the 31^st). This is not about writing good work, which is basically impossible. It is about accomplishing something and teaching yourself you can do it. In this case, creative writing.
Having never written big time fiction, this was a real challenge for me. My background is academic, I wrote two thesis and a bunch of articles. My experience in fiction is a very small number of short stories. So the natural road was to make my plot somewhat auto-biographical. That resulted in something interesting. I just noticed there is very little fiction where the main characters are athletes. If they are, they are stereotyped, not real life people like us.
I have no idea what is going to become of my writing. But I did a search on writing contests around and there is about everything: prizes for writing on women, on minorities, on mixed racial communities, on gays, you name it. But there is no initiative stimulating fictional/creative writing on sports or athletes.
That is a good one for Bodybuilding.com to grasp – MHO.