Powerbuilding?? OPBA Recap

Powerbuilding is a term often thrown around on social media. You like lifting heavy, you’re looking pretty good, you’re a powerbuilder right? You might want to think again. This past weekend I competed in the second ever Ohio Power Bodybuilding Association (OPBA) competition. The first day of competition was bodybuilding, the second day was powerlifting. True powerbuilding.

Prep-

Unlike most preps for a show, mine was short, just 6 weeks. I had competed in a powerlifting meet March 31st, where I had put up solid numbers, taking home overall best lifter. I had the momentum, I was full-steam ahead, ready for this prep. I knew I could make just a few tweaks from my normal training and get “stage-ready” for this competition. I put my in trust training heavy, i was not interested in typical bodybuilding style training. I will dive deeper into this in another article.

Day 1- Bodybuilding

One of the last places I expected to see myself was on a stage competing in bodybuilding, yet there I was. It did not seem real until I was actually lined up ready to walk on stage with the stacked 148-165 division. Coming in, I knew my posing was my weak point, despite this, I felt no pressure out on stage, the crowd wasn’t even in my mind. In pre-judging I was quickly moved from the outside to center stage, same was the case for the second pre-judging round. Making the finals seemed very realistic at that point. Next up was the individual routine. I had chosen my song two days before the competition and practiced my routine at most three times. I ended up falling short of the top three. Overall, I was very happy with my physique, but I dropped the ball on preparing for the posing portion, All in all, bodybuilding was fun, which caught me by surprise.

Day 2- Powerlifting

Day two, where the real fun begins. As mentioned earlier, I was coming off a great meet, I had hit all my lifts, and hit PRs on bench and deadlift. By the time Sunday rolled around I was feeling refueled and ready to go. The thing about powerlifting is that it is extremely difficult to bring all your lifts to the platform, and I left them all at home. I went 5/9 on the day, missing a PR attempt on both squat and bench, and only managing to pull 500 after pulling 540 just over a month ago in a meet. I underestimated the difficulty of lifting after the bodybuilding competition the previous day. I totaled 1210, which is not a terrible total, but nowhere near what i was shooting for. Hats off to my man Mikey Sklar, I’ll get ya next time.

Recap-

I want to give a big thanks to Zach Matheny and Tyler Tredway for putting on the event, This was one of the hardest competitions that I have been a part of. I gained a lot of respect for all my fellow competitors, true powerbuilders.

-Eian Birtcher