Putting yourself out there on the powerlifting platform is extraordinarily vulnerable. It is exceptionally brave to put yourself in view of the public and say “I have worked really hard on this thing, it is important to me, I’ve never done it before like this, but I’m going to try". It’s only natural to have fears and reservations.

Personally though, I don’t think fear is a very good reason not to do something. So I’m going to do my best to put some of your fears to rest so that you can let yourself experience how very cool it is to compete in a strength sport.

Here are the 15 most common reasons that I’ve heard in my career working with beginner lifters for why someone is absolutely not ready to enter their first meet, and why I think they’re wrong.

Many of my best training sessions were the best because of the people I had around and either side of me at the time. A good session becomes a great session and a good training block becomes a great training block when the people you’re surrounded by know how to support you.

And so when I’m training hard and I’m pursuing ✨ excellence ✨ in my training and in my sport, I want damn good people in the room with me. And similarly, I want the people that train alongside me to feel that I help get the very best out of them. I want people at TSF to walk in the gym on the day of a heavy session and be like “ooft, I am so glad Billie is here.”

So what makes a good training partner? How can you become someone that people want around when they’re pushing limits?

In powerlifting circles, cardio is often viewed as a dirty word. How many times have we heard “cardio is hardio” or “six reps is cardio bro”. Nah man, six reps shouldn’t be cardio. Improving your cardiovascular fitness can be of huge benefit not only to your health, but also to your powerlifting training. Excess specificity or specialising for powerlifting too much can come at a cost for your health and overtime, ironically for your performance too. Cardio training can help that.