Whoops! I Appear To Have Broken Something...

Though it's not official, as the meet promoter's computer didn't work yesterday, so he couldn't confirm the numbers.  I happened to be passing through Georgia yesterday and decided to pop into the APF Georgia State Championships for a bit, to see what was what.  According to the APF Website:

If that's correct, which I find difficult to believe because my openers broke all of those, they'll now read:

S: 257.5 Lewis, Jamie

B: 157.5 Lewis, Jamie

D: 280 Lewis, Jamie

T: 695.5 Lewis, Jamie 

This means that I totaled Elite as a Raw lifter (no wraps, no suit, no briefs, and no belt [just as a bit of icing on the cake, however unnecessary]), as the cutoff seems to be 1396, and I hit 1531 for the 181 weight class.  So much for the internet shit talkers who predicated the entirety of their criticism on the "fact" that I hadn't competed- that's right, I did this meet almost entirely out of spite.

Tonight, the lone wolf rides alone.

It was actually a pretty good learning experience.  I decided to do this meet about a month ago, so I started cutting calories and carbs back further, and knocked my cheat meals down to 1 per week.  Due to the fact that I've only got one meet on which to base my experience, I'm not entirely convinced of the veracity of the following reflections, but here are my initial thoughts:

• I might have cut a bit slowly.  I leaned out nicely, but as of last week, I was still 195.  I hung onto my strength by cutting very conservatively, but it made the last day a literal hell, and I'm not certain how much that took out of me on meet day.  My diet for the last month generally consisted of 4 or 5 days of low carb and low fat, drinking around 5 shakes a day, supplemented with either a couple of lbs of 93% lean ground beef or a lb of that an something more calorically dense, like wings or beef ribs.  I never tested my bodyfat, but I was accused on many occasions of being a bodybuilder at the meet.
• Shrugging and squat lockouts help the deadlift immensely.  I do not think, however, that squat lockouts have much of a direct carryover into the full squat.  My hips are retardedly tight and I have a hell of a time getting into the bottom position of a squat, but 1-2" above parallel, I am a fucking beast.  This is not conducive to making people shit out their spleens watching you squat in a meet.  Additionally, if you have to pay a hobo to do so, find anyone to call your depth while squatting- it'll save you the heartache of missing lifts because you're too deep or too shallow.
• Deadlifting with straps in no way hurts your deadlift.  I didn't deadlift without straps once in training, due to the fact that my gym's bars are bereft of knurling and bent all to hell (by me).  Stiffness and boredom were my downfall in my final attempt of the deadlift (the reason for the stiffness will be addressed later, as it's awesome).

You might be asking, "how'd you lose 14 lbs in a week?"  I really ended up losing 10 lbs in a day.  I cut out my last cheat meal, opting instead for two medium carb days the weekend before the meet, and weighed about 191 a day out.  As I knew I would weigh in on Friday night, I started drinking 2-3 gallons of water a day on Tuesday, and from Monday through Thursday ate as close to 0 carbs as I could, and kept my fat under 50 g.  That basically meant 6 protein shakes and 2 meals of 1 lb of 93% lean ground beef, topped with Sriracha hot sauce, for Monday through Thursday- making sure to keep my sodium as close to 0 as possible, and my potassium as high as possible.  Incidentally, topping your food with Ms. Dash gives you the same amount of potassium as any potassium pill you'll likely to find in a health food store.  At 10PM Thursday, I stopped drinking liquids and eating.  Friday fucking sucked.  I spent the day popping ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin in an effort to stay awake, and chewed so much gum that by the end of the day my jaw was horribly cramped.  I did, however, learn that massaging the jaw muscles from the inside of one's mouth is far more efficacious than the outside- you stick your index finger inside your mouth and push outwards on the muscle.  In any event, I weighed 185 at lunchtime, so I hit the sauna for a half hour, wore a sweatshirt at work for the remainder of the day, and then started the roadtrip from hell.  Birmingham is about 2 hours from Atlanta, so I alternated full blast heat and mild heat for the first hour, and then left the heat on high, wearing a sweatshirt the entire time, for the last hour of the drive.  I arrived alive, though I'm pretty sure I followed my spirit animal on a fucking vision quest during that drive, and weighed in at a paltry 179.  That's how you fucking make weight.

Refeeding was surprisingly difficult.  By the time I made weight, I was running an awesome fever and had heat rash all over my body- it was ultra hot.  I looked like a fucking tomato.  I slammed two liters of water, at half a box of Captain Crunch, and checked into my hotel.  Thereafter, I struggled to finish a burger, fries, and rolls at Texas Roadhouse, due to the fact that my stomach is now the size of a preteen girl's, and I had so much water and cereal in me.  I knew I needed the salt and calories though, so I pushed through, nearly crashed my car from exhaustion on the way back to the hotel, made two protein shakes and left out the Captain Crunch, along with a gallon of the mineral infused water for infant you can find at any store, and crashed.  Every time I awoke, I had some protein and as much Captain Crunch as I could fit down my gullet, and polished off the water by 4AM.  

The day of the meet was a lot more Captain Crunch, Supreme Protein Bars, Baked Lays and the like.  I tried to get as much salt into my system as I could due to the cramping I was getting, and the carbs and protein for obvious reasons.

The result?  I learned:

• Cutting weight is much harder without wrestling practice to aid it.
• I should not ever drive in that state.
• Severe water and food depletion can make you oddly euphoric, in a wildly angry way, but you're too tired to happily smash anything.

As to my lifts, in anyone's interested.  I opened at 534 on the squat, as my legs were cramping badly and I had no one to call my depth.  As an aside, as much fun as it is to be the lone wolf who rides alone due to his acerbic wit and the fact that I'm surrounded by nothing but humorless, angry, judgmental evangelical Christians, having any moderately friendly person along with you to call your depth would help.  I sat way into my opener and 567, and then dropped way in the hole on 598 and crapped out halfway to the top.  Had I turned it around at parallel, my numbers would look far better.  On the bench, I opened at 331, then smoked 347, whereupon I discovered that I could reverse grip in the APF.  I had unracked the weight myself on the first two attempts and didn't want to risk dropping the weight in my mouth doing so with a reverse grip, so I stalled out halfway through my lift with a conventional grip and 363 lbs.  Next time, I'll reverse grip like a motherfucker, and hopefully have someone who doesn't want me dead doing the liftoff- the search begins.  On deadlift, I was a fucking beast on my opener at 574 and my 2nd at 617.  At the beginning of the 3rd attempts, some awesome chick named Erica projectile vomited in the midst of her pull like she was auditioning for the Exorcist and sprayed down everyone in the first row with half-digested Muscle Milk.  As such, there was a massive delay cleaning shit up, whereupon I lost my momentum and missed my 3rd attempt at 639, as did everyone else who lifted after the delay.  I wasn't pissed though, as the chick was fucking fun, tatted, and happily turned the meet (which was perhaps the most boring thing I've endured, though it gave me the time to finish a Vince Flynn novel and get halfway through Chuck Hogan's The Strain) into a fucking GWAR concert.  I've no idea what her last name is, but that chick's metal as hell, as she got three whites while puking her intestines onto the platform.

Final analysis?  APF meets are a pretty good time, all things considered; I kind of want to try to total Elite for equipped lifters while still competing raw and sans belt; powerlifting now boasts hot chicks; and finally, Alabama sucks ass- do not ever come here, as Georgia looks like fucking Vegas by comparison.  Apologies for the lack of pics, but all my cell pics were shaky, and I had no one to take pics for me.  Example of a shaky pic- me the morning of the meet:

Blurry and generally shitty.