I won Texas Strongest Man in the Lightweight division! Torched the competition, winning every event.
I came in to the week weighing in the mid 190’s. Cut water weight down to 181 for the show.
First event was axle press. Prior to a couple months ago, I couldn’t continental clean. At all. I consistently missed numbers as low as like 215 on the clean. But I learned the lift, and Saturday I hit 265, nearly strict pressing it. 20 lbs PR. Just a week before I missed 245 once before hitting it. Everything just finally came together for me. Another guy tied for the win on that event. Also a PR for him.
Second event was the deadlift medley. 2 reps on a bar, 2 reps on a trap bar, max on a frame. I ended up with 26 total reps. They gave up AND down commands on the frame, so the pace was set at what the judge’s speed. I was as fast as I could have possibly been, my first rep and last rep looked the same. Won by like 7 or 8 reps. The guy who came in 3rd had posted on IG earlier in the week that ‘I’m calling it now, deadlift is MINE’. I more than doubled his score.
3rd event was a grenade hold. Basically, you hold a metal ball with a weight hanging from it for time. I got to go last, which was a huge advantage. I only had to go over 32 seconds. Went for 40, had more in me if I had needed it.
Hussafel stone… So, going into this event, my goal was to just take 2nd. I knew another guy in my class was very fast, and if he didn’t make any mistakes I couldn’t beat him. But again, I was going last, so I got to see what the mark was. Turns out, nobody in my class finished the run. So all I had to do was finish to take 1st. Which I did with 20 seconds to spare. So again, smoked the competition. This was my first time EVER winning a moving event, and it felt good to do it in such a fashion.
The last event was one I felt good about, max stone. Everyone in my class tapped out at 265, nobody else got 280. 280 is a really easy stone for me. So I took that one, then did 300 with zero issue. I was the best stone lifter pound for pound at the show, and probably top 3 or 4, period. I was going to attempt 340 just for fun after this, but right after I did the 300 stone, there was a terrible injury that halted the show for about an hour. Don’t want to go into details, grossest thing I’ve seen in my life in person. Fortunately he will be ok, he’s already out of the hospital. Anyway, after I saw that, I did not have the heart to continue lifting just for the sake of ego. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t already wrapped up first place.
So many things went right for me. This was really my first mistake-free show.