The River Falls powerlifting team had two representatives at the state competition in Appleton last weekend with one athlete finishing third in the state and qualifying for national competition next month in Baton Rouge.

River Falls freshman Asher Larimore and junior Colton Christensen both competed for a state title in the 198-pound weight class, with Christensen taking third and qualifying for nationals for the third straight year.

For anyone who’s not familiar with this sport, powerlifting consists of three main lifts: bench press, back squat and deadlift. If you’ve ever been in a weight room before, you’ve at least seen people doing these things, but there’s a big difference between competitive powerlifting and traditional body building.

First, athletes are divided into weight classes, much like wrestling, and then they compete to see who is the best in their bracket.

Head Coach Ulice Payne III says it’s not just about who’s strongest, it’s about who’s more disciplined.

“It’s about who's worked the hardest and who can keep calm under pressure. It gets very intense, especially when you get up to more competitive levels,” Payne III said. “When you get a group of kids who are all right around the same strength levels, it's going to come down to who put in the most work to make sure that their technique is right and that they don't make mistakes, because these lifts are judged. It's not just picking it up or putting it down, there are very specific rules lifters have to follow, and if you don't, the lift doesn't count. That's why it's even more than just like who's the strongest, it's like who's the most well trained overall.”

The scoring is done by three judges who flank the powerlifter and give real-time grades to individual lifts. Each judge is armed with a white light and a red light. Two or more whites is a pass, two or more reds is a fail.

Coach Payne III says the main difference between lifting in a weight room and powerlifting is that each lifter is being judged based on a stringent set of rules that might seem pedantic to those unacquainted with the intricacies of powerlifting, but they form the basis of the sport.

“Each lift has very specific rules. Like, for the back squat, there's a certain degree you have to squat for them for it to actually count. You can just sit your butt down and stand up. It won’t count if your hips are too high, for example,” Payne III said. “Then there’s smaller rules like your feet can't move, your hands have to be a certain way, and just a lot of small logistical things. For the bench press, you have the rest of weight on your chest for a certain amount of time, and the judge will give you a command to actually press the bar off your chest, which is very different to what most people are accustomed to in the gym."

Each athlete gets three attempts at each of the three lifts for a total of nine graded performances. A cumulative weight for the highest successful lift in each area is then compiled for every individual athlete, and whoever lifts the most gets the victory.

The three allowed attempts provide some strategy to the competitions as well. Payne III hand curates all of his athletes’ lifts, favoring a lighter weight around 90% of their capacity for their initial lift to get a successful, competitive score on the board right away, and then increasing weight from there for the second and third lifts.

From time to time, ties do happen. In such an occurrence, the win goes to the athlete who weighs the least, and this is measured down to the thousandth of a kilo.

You might assume that this is a smaller, more obscure sport, but River Falls averages 60-80 kids on their team each season, and regional high school meets can feature more than 600 competitors.

“When I started powerlifting at 18 in Milwaukee, we’d have 100-200 kids at the most. Coming over to the River Falls-Hudson area, it is one of the top sports that kids come out for,” Payne III said. “I’d say we're above the average in program size. This year, we had about 22 high schoolers and 40 middle schoolers, and we had a freshman and a junior go to state.”

Being a freshman, it was Larimore’s first time being able to qualify for the state competition, and even though he didn’t place, Coach Payne III says it’s a really good, high caliber experience for him.

“The fact that he made it was a huge success in the season. I told him what might be the outcome but that he’s going against kids who've been in the sport two to three years longer than he has, and he was just very happy to make it and show that he's getting close to that level,” Payne III said. “Our junior placed, and it was in one of the more competitive classes at 198 pounds; he had his best meet of the season and took third place.”

While kids start coming out for powerlifting in sixth grade, they go through years of training before they are competing with any sort of serious weight.

Payne III says the first thing he does is separate them by age and experience, and then they start with various, basic resistance training. For younger kids whose bodies are still developing, they focus on just bodyweight exercises, mobility and calisthenics to get used to moving and learn technique. By the time they’re in eighth grade, they’re up to using the barbell.

“We have the standard 45-pound bars, but for younger kids, we have 15 pound bars and even PVC pipes, just to get used to the technique,” Payne III said. “We make it a point to kids and parents, the middle school years are just to get us through developing the skills of the lifts because each lift does require a certain amount of skill. Then, in terms of how much they’re actually lifting, that's not a component until they’re in high school.”

That’s not to say that middle school kids do not compete, they just compete less and don’t do the same things as the varsity lifters. Junior high lifters get one to two competitions during the conference season, which lasts from November until February. High school power lifters compete in three conference meets, regionals, state and potentially at the national level if they perform well enough.

“At the beginning, I treat every kid as if they’ve never touched a weight before, so basically getting a lot of reps and a lot of volume to get them used to the movements that helped them build that overall base and conditioning that they'll need for the long term,” Payne III said. “Then as the weeks progress, we ramp up for the competition, so when it's time to compete, they're out there, their bodies are well rested and recovered, and their nervous systems are ready to go for as heavy of lifts as possible.”

In a typical season, lifters have four weeks in between meets. So, after a competition, Payne III usually gives them a couple extra days off, an easy recovery week and then they ramp it back up again for the next meet.

Payne III says there’s a certain amount of cross training they get with other sports, as you might imagine. For River Falls, a lot of the track and field guys come out for powerlifting for the benefits it gives them as athletes beyond just this sport, but Payne III says he personally credits powerlifting for propelling him towards a healthy, competitive and successful college football career.

Three-time national qualifier Christensen was originally a basketball player. In seventh grade, he went out for powerlifting because he was interested in weights and getting stronger, but after one meet, he was hooked. Now lifting is his only focus, and he competes year-round.

Christensen has finished higher each year of the national competition taking 22^nd in the nation as a freshman and 18^th as a sophomore, but says he’s made a couple changes since last year’s competition in the hopes of climbing even higher up the leader boards.

“I have doubled down on my diet and training,” Christensen said. “I am on a fluent diet, so I fluctuate between all the macros to keep my body running efficiently. Heavy training days I will carb load, and rest days I try to stay hydrated.”

Although he looks forward to the rigors of all that performing in the national competition entails, he says it’s not without its cost.

“Competing at state and nationals is a night and day difference. You are judged differently, you’re in a different environment, and you are lifting different weights. There's a reason you have to qualify to be there,” Christensen said. “You have to be in a certain mental state, and sadly, you have to be ready to hurt yourself too. It hurts lifting this heavy, but to win, I have to. This means you have to keep your mind and body in balance all through preparation.”

The USA Powerlifting High School Nationals takes place from April 4-7 next month at the Crowne Plaza Executive Center in Baton Rouge where Christensen will compete against the top lifters from across the nation for a chance to be the best in his sport of choice.