North American & New Jersey State Championships

This past weekend, Lee competed in the North American & New Jersey State Championships in Newark, New Jersey.  He competed in this meet last year, but the format changed a bit.  This year, Saturday was split into a morning and afternoon session, with his weight class competing in the afternoon session.  When we arrived in New Jersey on Friday afternoon, we thought that the Saturday afternoon session would begin around 1pm; on Saturday morning, they announced that it would begin at 3pm; and in reality, lifting for the afternoon session began around 5:30.  Lee himself did not take his first squat attempt until almost 7pm, and when he took his last dead lift attempt, it was after 10:30 pm.  As you might imagine, the timing of things did not play out well for him.  Although he hit a new personal best in squat of 565 lbs., he fell short of his goal in both bench press and dead lift.  Nevertheless, he beat out everyone else in his weight class and took home first place.  I am extremely proud of him for getting through what turned out to be a very difficult day and I am very grateful to the guys from The Refuge that made the trip to New Jersey with us.  Now, if we can just recover from getting home at 2am on Sunday morning....

In order to successfully complete a squat, you have to follow a strict set of rules, including breaking parallel - one of Lee's teammates (as well as the judges) are usually down near the floor, waiting for that  precise moment so that he can stand back up.  Lee went down so far on this lift (and for so long) that the judge actually tapped his teammate to let him know that he had broken parallel.  565 lbs. is an amazing squat for 197.2 bodyweight.  It's good enough to have him ranked 15th in the country.

380 lbs. bench press.

Talking strategy.

560 lbs. dead lift went up easy, but he had nothing left in the tank for the others.

Pete, Morgan, Lee and Nick.