May Open
-2024
Sinead Hardy
Sinéad's First Medal
Spoilers I guess.
Sinéad went all out for this competition. This is the first time she had done a real "comp peak" before, and the difference was night and day. In terms of her preparation for this competition, she left absolutely no stones unturned. Every session completed, every calorie accounted for, this is a coaches dream and seeing it pay off for her was satisfying on a whole new level. Let's talk about the actual day.
The day itself was a really nice, stress free one from the outset. We didn't need to worry about weigh ins, as we entered into the 84+ category. So once we had that formality out of the way - we sat down and came up with our game plan for the day. Essentially, we were going to hit our pbs on the second attempt - then aim for a new weight based on how that felt. We colloquially referred to the third attempt as our "yolo lift."
The first squat was a nice, tidy 120kg rep. Once the nerves of that were over - we hit 125, below our 130pb but it was a little messy despite moving okay. This led us to think, if 125 moved well but was ugly - 132.5 was definitely there (we were playing a slight mind game too with another competitor.)
Here's the 132.5 rep. It had a big stick in the middle so our next few programs are focusing around fixing that up as well as her bar connection on her back - which I think caused a little instability. That being said? 3/3 on squats with a good number on the board. We were doing well.
We were on a little bit of a high after that pb. +12.5kg since her last competition, so we did as any good, self respecting serious athletes would do - go sunbathing outside for a bit.
Now it was time for bench. We knew we had a good few of the other lifters on the fence with this one, as Sinead is an excellent bencher in general. We hit 65 easy, then 70 easy. Now we were faced with a choice - I had noticed that we were very closely tied total wise to another competitor, and if we took a risk - going for 75 - we would be in with a chance at first place. Only problem we had? We had technically hit 75 in training, but it was shakey at best. So we decided against the risk and went for 72.5
72.5 went up nicely, to be honest, the risk might have been worth it. We got our little 2.5kg pb on this lift, nice work Sinead. Back to sunbathing for a little bit. All we could do was hope that we would blow them out of the water on deadlifts and we would be in with a chance of first.
Annoyingly, deadlift was the one we had the most issues with in the run up to this comp. At one point prior to this - we had actually semi-decided we were going to go beltless, as Sinead felt she wasn't utilising it well enough and it was getting in the way of her positioning.
Good thing we didn't, as deadlifts shockingly went really well. She started with 130, then 142.5 which moved like nothing. By this stage we had secured second place already. Unless someone was playing a huge game, we were going to get Sinead her first medal no matter how this final lift went. But, we stuck on a number which Sinead hadn't hit well in the gym recently as our final "yolo lift."
147.5 once again, moved like an absolute dream. "smokeshow" I think they called it.
This was a great finale to a great comp. I honestly couldn't have asked for better from Sinead. It was also time to break the news as to how well she did.
First medal in the bag - second place. The highest Sinead has placed in a comp. We've firmly got our sights set on first place now. From a girl who said she "did powerlifting because she wasn't good at sport," to placing second in a full NIPF / IPF lifter pool? I think we can say she's good at sport now. I'm a really proud coach, one of my happiest moments in my career.