September 1st we had two of our ladies hit the platform for the second time. We had both ladies hitting a longer lead into this prep after building from their efforts from the start of the year. A second comp can often feel quite different to the first. The first comp is so unknown. You don’t really know what to expect, what the prep will feel like and how you will handle the day. You really want to get the first one under your belt and see what it is like!

Second comps can feel like there is a little bit more riding on it. You want to push yourself harder, you want to PB but the experience is still very new.

Courtney and Zea had different preps and experiences leading into the day.

Zea had so much fun during her prep, hitting massive volume PB’s with much more left in the tank.

Courtney had some challenging sessions over the 4 months. She was programmed to hit some tough numbers amongst a few bouts of winter sickness here in Melbourne.

The last 2 weeks of prep had both Zea and Courtney really hitting their stride with some prospects of what may translate to on the day.

Lifting in two different groups we had Zea hit the platform first.

We knew we were going to give 100kg a good crack on her squats and that we did. Narrowly missing the triple digit goal, technically this lift looked great and she almost got it!

Heading into her bench, Zea felt like her shoulder wasn’t cooperating and had to grind to hit this lift despite having hit it for 2 sets of 2 reps [during training]. Amongst the grind, Zea’s glutes came off the bench resulting in red lights. She was upset and frustrated but knew that in order to get on the board she had to come back and hit a successful bench. Second attempt felt much the same.

What spectators didn’t see was the coughing fit that came.

The inhouse physio was helping with her shoulder and a wave of chalk had her coughing her lungs out. This naturally had Zea flustered. Zea did an incredible job to come back and hit a conservative third attempt at 55kg (equal PB) that absolutely flew.

Opening on a PB deadlift, Zea was gassed at this point. 108kg came up, securing her a total. From here we took a jump to 113kg that was cemented to the ground. She gave it a red hot crack again on her third and giving every ounce that she had left.

Zea’s lifts
Squats	93 ✔️	97 ✔️	100 ❌
Bench press	54 ❌	54 ❌	55 ✔️
Deadlift	108 ✔️	113 ❌	113 ❌

Despite having a tough day, Zea hit PB’s on both her squat and deadlift and took out silver medal in a group of 6! Massive effort on a tough day.

And we will also add a dust mask to our comp prep bag!

Courtney was very calm as she headed into weigh in. As she began to warm up she had one major goal she wanted. That squat! Courtney was here to squat 130kg and she was hungry.

As she headed strong and fast into squats, her first and second attempts had her get a red light on both for depth. As we headed into her third, we cut some shapes, had a giggle and she sank it!

Nerves were gone and she eased into bench. All attempts were executed beautifully and we popped in a 70kg attempt. This moved like an opener and Courtney was surprised at how well it moved.

Courtney’s least favourite lift is the deadlift. Coming into deadlifts, Courtney was eager to push her current PB further. As a sumo lifter, we know that even the smallest error in the set up can make or break this lift. Her first deadlift at 118kg moved really well so we moved to 125kg for her second. Looking even better than her opener we pushed the third attempt to 130kg. Seeing her right knee start to cave in had the bar stuck down hard.

Hitting her second deadlift meant that Courtney took out gold winning her weight category by a sneaky 2kg!

Competing is so different to training. The energy, the atmosphere and the experience is very person dependent.
With heightened emotions that run throughout the day, every time we step onto the platform we learn something new about ourselves.
How we respond if we miss a lift.
How much primal energy we release when we hit that long awaited PB.
How we feed off other competitors.
From comp to comp we reflect and take the gold nuggets from each. Positive or negative.

Competitions are not the final destinations. They are simply little stops along the way that provide us feedback that we can take to continue to move forward.

We are so damn proud of both of our ladies. Two medals, many laughs and new lessons x