As the fall season winds down, winter sports like basketball, bowling, swimming, diving, and wrestling take center stage. But there’s another sport that often gets overlooked during the winter months—powerlifting. Competitive powerlifting is an exciting and demanding sport that runs through the winter, and its athletes train year-round for the chance to showcase their strength.
Head Coach Nate Wesson explains how the team prepares for the regular season. “We are currently in our preseason by getting our bodies ready for the regular season, and getting a lot of volume into the lifts, and as we get closer to the meets we start adding more weight, lowering reps, and working up more towards that one rep max. The week leading up to the meet, we take it really light, and we will record what we call openers, which is their first lift they will do at the meet, and they do that Monday or Tuesday, and then we will get the rest of the week off to get primed and ready to go on that Saturday.”
For junior powerlifter Beth Heisler, powerlifting isn’t just about lifting heavy weights—it’s about pushing herself to improve.
“Coach [Kurt] Pohlmann and Wesson do a really good job of making sure everybody is confident, because I know freshman year I was scared to do anything above a PR, but now I know you aren’t going to lose anything by going for a PR and not getting it, because there is no point if you’re not trying to better yourself, so it has made me mentally stronger when I know that the coaches have such high confidence in me, and it makes me more self-assured.”
Wesson walks us through the typical structure of a powerlifting competition. “In powerlifting you have three main lifts, and the meet starts with everybody squatting, so everyone at the meet will work through their squat in different flights. They will usually pair up weight classes, or genders, so you don’t have to switch a lot of weight. Everyone will go through the lift. You have three attempts to try a squat, everyone does their first, second, third.” Wesson said. “Once everybody on that rack has done their squat, they will move the squat rack, and bring the bench in, then you will work on your bench part of the meet. Same as before: You get three attempts. Each flight goes through, then we move to deadlift, and that is the final in our progression. They just have the bar on the platform to perform their three deadlifts.”
The most exciting part of the meet, according to Wesson, is the deadlift. “At that point it is a make or break: Are you winning your weight class? Or going for a record? Or helping your team win the title by securing a weight? There is always a lot of energy on the deadlifts.”
Senior Landen Clark explained that for him, preparation was as much mental as physical. “We got our two days of practice just lifting outside of school. You can mentally prepare yourself, get ready, and picture yourself lifting heavy weights. That is what I do to prepare for meets.”
Heisler’s journey into powerlifting began with softball. “I started doing softball summer lifting in seventh grade. The middle schoolers get to come lift with the high schoolers. I came at 6 a.m. workouts and we would lift and then run after, and I love running, but that’s not the kind of running … but I loved learning to lift, and it’s cool to see yourself get stronger. I wanted to keep doing that, and make it my same sport.”
Wesson encouraged anyone interested in powerlifting to give it a try. “Keep lifting. Come see me or Coach Pohlmann. We are already into the season. ‘Eat big, lift big, sleep big’ are the biggest things we tell our kids. You need to have that proper nutrition to build the body. Overall just keep lifting hard, eating hard, and you will grow. If you want to compete to try something new, it’s a different sport because it’s unique. People look at it when they are not sure, and once they try it, they fall in love with it. Give it a shot.”
For Heisler, powerlifting was also inspired by her brother. “When I was a freshman, my brother told me I should do it because his friend Brette-Elise Paul did it, and she was great. She won state three times, and it motivated me to do powerlifting because she was lightweight like me, but she lifted a million pounds.”
Wesson described a typical training session for the team. “We will focus on the lower or upper body at practice. We will start practice with a little meeting about our focus points, announcements, upcoming information. Then we will lead them through our PR warmup, and then another active warmup after that to get the bodies firing and then they have light auxiliary, or banded lifts at the beginning of the workout. We will have one to two main core lifts where we are working heavy, working up to five or three or two rep maxes, with boards, or with chains. After the main core lifts we have our auxiliaries that build the muscles around that help support it, like bench press, but other sports aren’t used to that.”
What makes powerlifting especially unique, Wesson said, is the camaraderie among competitors. “You can ask any of our kids, when you go to our meets, you will have Omaha Central kids rooting for Titans, and the Titans are cheering for Lexington. Everyone realizes that you can’t affect the competitor, so everyone is doing their thing. I would say you won’t see many other sports where head-to-head rivals, where competitors, are in between their sets, dabbing it up or talking about school, or all around just having a great time. That is my favorite part about it.”
The Titans will host their first powerlifting meet here at Papillion La Vista South on Saturday, December 14 in the Titan Arena.
