In the fitness world or the competitive sports field, there will always be coaches, trainers nutritionists, and/or specialists to help you along the way and to improve your skills as an athlete.

Whether you are a competitive powerlifter strongman, a CrossFit athlete, a bodybuilder, a team sport member or just a general fitness enthusiast, at some point some individuals just want to “up their game”.

Most people will search the internet for programs and try to find the best fit for themselves and continue to make progress. Others will look for someone to help them along the way.

As a quick background, I have been powerlifting since 2014 and have been involved, both as an athlete as well as a judge, with the Canadian Powerlifting Federation, World Powerlifting Congress Canada, the Canadian Powerlifting League and most recently the World Raw Powerlifting Federation.

I’ve competed for many times over the years and have held (or still hold) several National records in my age and weight categories… Yes, I’m getting up there in age and competing in the Master’s III division these days. But I’d like to think I’m fairly strong and hopefully have many more years of competitive powerlifting left in me yet.

This blog will be a “progress report” following my journey as I return to the competitive powerlifting platform.

I’ve judged meets many times in the past 3 years, but my last competition as a competitor was Nationals in 2019 (yes, pre-covid), and up until that point I’ve pretty much always been self-coached (I’ve gotten programs from people a few times, but never really enlisted any long term coaches to help me along the way) I’ve continued training during covid with the intention of competing but never committed to a meet. Well, after judging a recent meeting, I decided to finally step up and do something.

I HIRED A COACH!!!

Well, in my case I hired a team… 2 coaches…lol. I’ve been around the sport for a while and was familiar with many athletes as well as their coaches. So when I decided to let someone else take the reins for me and design my programming for me, I already had a pretty good idea of who they were going to be.

My advice to anyone looking for a coach, trainer, etc. Is to do your homework. There are many people out there in interweb land that advertise as professionals, or knowledgeable, but in reality, are nowhere nearly qualified to be the person you need.

In short… trust no one, do your homework, check references, and make sure this person has your best interests at heart.

Don’t get me wrong, these people make their living doing what they do and it’s in their best interest to obtain more clients in order to be successful as well. Just make sure they are good at what they do and that they see your success as their success. It’s a win-win for both when things just click.

So back to this long-winded blog…

Step 1: For me, the road back to the platform started with finding a coach(s) who was a good fit for me.

Step 2 (next blog): Determining my goals for the platform and how to work towards achieving them in 16 weeks.

WRITTEN BY ANDREW