Your first
meet

I coach powerlifting and I also judge it. Those are two separate qualifications and they teach you different things. Coaching teaches you what a lifter is capable of. Judging teaches you how often a lifter gives away a lift they had already made.

Almost nothing that goes wrong at a first meet is about strength. It is about not knowing the order of the day, and not knowing what the commands are for.

Before the day

Entering

You enter through your federation, usually online, weeks in advance. Meets fill. Check whether the one you want requires membership first, because most do and it is not always instant.

Kit

Every federation publishes an approved list, and at a tested meet it is checked. Singlet, a t-shirt under it for squat and bench, long socks for deadlift. Belt, sleeves, wrist wraps and shoes all have rules. Read your own federation's list rather than trusting a forum post, because they differ and they change.

The numbers you send in

You will be asked for opening attempts before the day, and for rack heights. Both matter more than people expect, and both are covered below.

The day, in order

1. Weigh-in. Usually two hours before your session lifts, in a private room, with an official of the same sex. You give your openers and rack heights here if you have not already.
2. Set up your rack heights. Do this properly, before you warm up, on the actual competition rack. It takes two minutes and it prevents the single most avoidable disaster of the day.
3. Warm up for squats. Timed backwards from when your flight starts.
4. Squats, three attempts. Then bench, then deadlift, in that order, always.
5. Between lifts there is a break while the platform is reset and the next flight warms up. It is longer than you think and you will get cold if you let yourself.

Flights and why the timing works

If there are a lot of lifters they are split into flights of about ten to fourteen. Your flight does all of its first attempts, then all of its seconds, then all of its thirds. So between your first squat and your second squat, everyone else in your flight lifts once.

That gap is roughly ten to twenty minutes and it is the thing nobody warns you about. It is too long to stay switched on and too short to switch off. Have a plan for it: something to sit on, something warm, and a rough idea of when to start moving again.

The commands

This is where lifts get lost. Every lift has commands from the head referee, and a lift performed perfectly but out of sequence is a no lift. The referees are not being awkward. They are making sure every lifter is judged against the same thing.

Squat

Two things to know. You do not start until the squat command, no matter how ready you feel. And you do not move toward the rack until the rack command, even if the bar is back on your shoulders and you are finished. Walking it in early is a no lift, and it is a common one.

Bench

Three commands, so three chances to move too early. The pause is the one that catches people: motionless means motionless, and a bar still sinking is not motionless. If your press command feels slow, that is usually why.

Deadlift

There is no command to start. You approach the bar and pull when you are ready. The only rule at the end is that you control the bar back down. Dropping it is a no lift, and after a maximal third that is a very easy mistake to make.

What actually gets a lift turned down

From the other side of the platform, the same handful of things come up again and again.

Depth on the squat

The hip crease has to pass below the top of the knee. Not level, below. This is judged from the side, and what feels deep with a heavy bar on your back is often two inches higher than what you do in training. If you have never had someone judge your depth, assume you are high.

Moving before or after the command

Covered above and worth repeating, because it is the single most common way a first-timer loses a lift they had already completed.

Downward movement

On the bench and the deadlift, the bar going down at any point on the way up is a no lift. A stall is legal. A stall that sinks half an inch is not.

Feet and bum on the bench

Feet flat and in contact with the floor, bum in contact with the bench, throughout. Heels lifting as you drive is easy to do and easy to spot.

Ramping or hitching the deadlift

Supporting the bar on your thighs and working it up in stages is a no lift. So is stepping the feet once you have started. Grinding slowly is fine, moving in visible stages is not.

Rack heights, and why they deserve a paragraph

You set them once, on the day, and then you trust them under a maximal load with a crowd watching. Get the squat height wrong and you either fight the bar out of the rack or have to press it up onto the hooks afterwards. Get the bench height wrong and the handout is awkward on every attempt.

Write your numbers down. Put them in your phone. Tell your handler. The rack is not the one from your gym and the numbering will not match.

Attempts, briefly

Three attempts per lift, and each one has a different job.

• The opener is not a warm-up. It is the weight you could hit on the worst day of your life. If there is any doubt, it is too heavy.
• The second builds the total. A small, confident step. Most totals are made here.
• The third is the only one allowed to be greedy, because by then the total is already banked.

Attempts must go up, and once submitted they can only be changed within the rules of your federation, usually within a short window and sometimes only once. There is a free calculator here that will give you a sensible frame for all three, with the plate maths and a warm-up ramp.

Two things worth doing before you enter anything. The qualifying total calculator tells you whether the meet you are looking at has a standard you need to make, and the plate calculator is worth a minute if you have never had to call a number and watch somebody load it.

Practical things nobody mentions

• Bring more food than you think. A meet is six to ten hours and you will not want anything heavy.
• Bring layers. You spend most of the day cooling down between attempts.
• Bring a handler, or borrow one. Someone to load your warm-ups, watch the flight and tell you when to move. Doing this alone is possible and it is much harder.
• Know your session start, not just the meet start. They are rarely the same.
• Chalk, and whatever you actually use. Do not plan to borrow the important things.

The one thing to take from this

Your first meet is not a test of how strong you are. It is a test of whether you can perform what you already have, in a stricter format, on a schedule you do not control.

Nine out of ten lifts I have seen turned down at a first meet were lifts the athlete could absolutely do. They lost them to a command, a depth call, or a rack height set in a hurry. All three are fixable in advance, and all three are cheaper to fix than another twelve weeks of training.