How I Prepare for Powerlifting Competitions

As one of the strongest vegans in the world and a member of VeganStrong PlantBuilt-one of the largest vegan athletic teams in the world-if anyone asked me what has been the most significant experience that has changed my life, hands down it’s competing in strength sports.

During my entire life, I thought “If I had a body like Jane Fonda, I’d be happy!” Then I competed in bodybuilding, the sport where
competitors are required to put on bedazzled suits, heels, fake tan and makeup-and are judged in real-time on which one looks the most attractive. It’s a muscular beauty pageant of sorts. After having won 7 awards in bodybuilding, I’d never felt more insecure about my body.

I had it all-a sculpted figure, muscle definition, long brown hair, but I wasn’t happy. When bodybuilders diet down for stage they get
weaker, and so did I. In order to win a competitive show, most women get so lean they don’t menstruate anymore. Neither did I.

Bodybuilding is not a sustainable sport for most people. So, I started working with Alexei Bakhirev, who is my coach to this day, and went back to lifting heavy. Since college, being in the gym brought me joy due to the performance aspect of the sport. I knew I was getting
stronger-it’s easy to tell when the weight on the barbell goes up. Unlike bodybuilding, powerlifting is an objective sport. I found it upsetting when women would say they wanted to look like the photos from my bodybuilding days. When I explained that’s not a
sustainable goal, most did not want to hear that until they tried to get that lean themselves.

Luckily, powerlifting is inching its way out of the niche sports into the mainstream. Women are taking space in the weight room. Women are starting to care about their STRENGTH. And this is only the beginning.

My training regimen preparing for powerlifting competition

I lift year-round (with the exception of a 1-2 week vacation once a year), so it’s pretty easy for me to pick a competition date 8-12 weeks out and step on the platform.

The key for me is working on weak spots during my off-season, which is usually winter, adding more volume for accessory lifts and eating a lot of calories and protein to make sure the vegan gains continue. Since I’ve been lifting for years now, unfortunately my
progress is excruciatingly slow. If I can gain 1-2 lb of muscle a year, it’s a success. Last year I added 22.5 kg /50 lb to my total which is awesome, but still half from the previous year’s 100 lb. Every year gains diminish to about half of the previous year till the lifter reaches their genetic potential.

Coach Alexei and I typically select a couple of competitions in the spring for me to sign up for and plan backward from that date. Recently PlantBuilt Vegan Strong team competition at Mr. America got added, so I’ll describe my prep for that meet in reverse order.

Powerlifting is an intense sport where you win by lifting the most weight in one of the three attempts for barbell back squat, bench press and deadlift (the big three). I typically train 3 days a week: bench 3 times, squat 1-2 times and deadlift once. Sometimes I deadlift even less than that. Each exercise is programmed separately and overlaid onto the calendar in a fashion that allows me to rest each body part and muscle group before I use it again to let my CNS recover well.

On the next page is my exact training schedule for 4 weeks out of the Mr. America competition. Before copying another athlete’s training regimen just know that success comes from a routine that considers your unique physiology, training experience, lifestyle and other factors. If you have never trained with the barbell, it’d be wise to hire a coach to learn how to be productive with the variables you have at the moment. My best advice: find a few coaches you think you can trust and vibe with, then send them your videos of the squat bench and deadlift and ask for feedback. Filtering out the ones you trust should be easy based on their responses.

This table (above) does not include warm-up lifts, which usually start with the bar, and have 20 kg added each set for squat and deads, 10 kg for bench. Rest between sets is from 3 to 6 minutes. Weight is listed in kilograms. Powerlifters use kg, not lbs. You can easily convert these numbers into % 1 Rep Max based on my last competition performance (172.5 kg / 380 lb squat, 92.5 kg / 203 lb bench, 182.5kg / 402lb deadlift).

The reason you see bench presses almost every workout in my program is because I’m a relatively well-trained woman. Women are born with smaller upper bodies, so we typically need more of a stimulus for upper body exercises in order to progress and keep the momentum going. Beginner women also need more time to recover from lifts involving big upper body muscle groups, so I’m thrilled that now I can handle benching-and recovering from 3-4 bench press sessions a week.

Squats are taxing on the CNS, so I would not squat more than 1-2 times a week. The deadlift can be as rare as once in 10 days unless I’m doing a variation, such as block pulls, paused deadlift (when the barbell is elevated vs. being on the floor), or conventional deadlift
(since I pull sumo, that’s an accessory lift for me).

Does the lack of variety in my workouts shock you? I could share more of my program, but honestly, it’s not much different. Just the weights vary and the repetitions, but the exercises are always the main few. And it never gets boring! I get stronger, weights keep
going up, what could be more exciting than that?

One week out, lifters normally try to relax their nervous system an extra bit. It’s called a “deload” or “taper” I’ll bench press 55-68% of my 1 RM then, deadlift and squat 50-60% 1RM just to keep blood flowing.

Eight to nine days to platform I normally test bench, 1.5 weeks-squat, 2 weeks-deadlift. Since the test is run after weeks of intensive training, I understand that the results are preliminary. These numbers help the coach and me determine how much to put on the barbell on the platform.

My coach and I have used many programming methodologies in the past. I liked undulating periodization and the conjugate method. In 2023, my program was linearly periodized for squats and deadlifts, a bunch of paused deadlifts and squats as well as cluster sets for bench press. Try those if your bench press has stalled.