At the time of writing this article, I’ve been coaching powerlifting for over a decade (11 years to be exact) and I’ve noticed a trend with powerlifting competitions: many self-coached lifters total a lot less at their first powerlifting competition, compared to their gym lifts and that leaves them feeling frustrated and wondering why they were so much weaker on competition day, compared to a lifter of equal (gym) strength. The answer is quite simple: competition day strategy.

That’s why I built the 10% PR Booster – a tool that I developed for the lifters I work with remotely who need to know the exact numbers they should be taking for their warmups as well as their first, second and third attempts in order to maximize their odds of hitting the highest weights possible on competition day.

The PR Booster Tool

I’ll save you the scrolling. Here’s The PR Booster Tool. It will automatically calculate your attempts and warmups in less than 60 seconds for you at your first powerlifting meet. It’s free.

Powerlifting Competition Structure

Before getting into the strategies employed in the PR Booster Tool, a quick outline of powerlifting competition structure below:

You are granted 3 “attempts” on each lift. In the context of a Full Power meet, this means 3 squats, 3 bench presses and 3 deadlifts for the day.
The sequence for day will be as follows: all lifters will do their first attempts on squat (sometimes they are divided into flights if there are a large number of lifters in a given session), then the bar weight resets to the lowest number for second attempts and rises to the highest second attempt, then the same for the 3rd attempts. If there is a second flight, Flight B will repeat this process after Flight A has finished their 1st attempts.
There is typically a short 5-10 minute break between the heaviest squat for the day and the first bench press. The process of flight A starting with first attempts and doing 3 rounds of a “rising bar” weight repeats, then another 5-10 minute intermission and the same process is performed on deadlifts.

If you’re in flight B, you can actually leverage the timing of Flight A to time your warmups. More on this later.

Why not just load up something heavy?

There is a balancing act to be performed between lifting as heavy as possible and managing your fatigue for the day. If you’ve ever done heavy squats and then heavy deadlifts in the same training session, you’ve seen and felt exactly the performance decline I’m talking about here. Add a few heavy benches to the mix and you’re at risk of burning out by the end of the day.

Compared with lifters who just slap their max on the bar and try to hit a PR on the next attempt, I’ve seen totals increase up to 10%, purely as a result of strategically approaching attempts in a powerlifting meet to conserve energy and get as close to one truly “hard” lift for each section (squat, bench, deadlift) in the day.

The flip side to this is one I’ve personally experienced too with taking jumps that were too large. When the jumps get so big (>~8% of your 1RM increases lift over lift), we can start to see issues with misgrooving and it becomes REALLY hard to be accurate with finding your limit for the day without just gambling on how something will feel. Taking jumps that were too big actually cost me my first shot at a 1000lb total back in 2013 at CPF Nationals where I took some huge swings on deadlift and missed my 3rd from poor planning.

On the other hand, my two milestone meets that I’ve done involved specific attempt strategy (my first 1100lb/500kg total that won me AAU Worlds in 2014 and my first 1320lb/600kg total at 2018 BCPA Provincials).

How to build the biggest total possible at your first powerlifting meet

The more attempts you are successful with (out of 9) in the day, the higher your odds are of reaching your highest potential total. As such, your opportunity cost of missing an attempt isn’t just a missed attempt, but tonnage off of your total for the day.

Below are my ranges that I use as a starting point for each lift along with a couple insights on how to adjust.

Squat

Attempt 1: 90-92% (88% if you cut depth when you get nervous)
Attempt 2: 95-97%
Attempt 3: 98-101% (can do 102-103% as a top end if you’re having a great day, but it’s best to leave 2.5-5kg of room in the tank on squats so as not to cook yourself for deadlifts)

Bench

Attempt 1: 90-92% (88% if you cut depth when you get nervous)
Attempt 2: 95-97%
Attempt 3: 98-102%

Deadlift

Attempt 1: 88-90% (I prefer a slightly lower starting point in order to reduce overall fatigue as these are at the end of a long day of lifting and after some heavier squats earlier).
Attempt 2: 94-96%
Attempt 3: 98-102%

The PR Booster Tool (linked below) will automatically calculate this for you.

When to warm up at your first powerlifting meet

There are 2 types of lifters you will see who mess up their warmups and neither have a good plan in place.

The lifter who rushes to warmup and finishes too early, resulting in a 20 minute gap between their last warmup and their opener. They get cold and aren’t warmed up anymore when they walk on the platform which leads to misgrooves.
The lifter who leaves their warmups too late and takes their last warmup right before going onto the platform and their opener is too hard from the fatigue of the rep they did one minute ago.

Neither are desirable and your goal for timing should be as follows:

Last warmup 8-12 minutes before your opener
Second last warmup ~5-7 minutes before your last warmup
remaining warmups spaced out 2-5 minutes apart.

The goal here is different from a training session where you are balancing neural and physical fatigue. We want to allow for as close to a full recovery of all systems before going for the next set or attempt.

There are two methods of timing the warmups:

Based on flight time.
- If your flight starts @ 9 am and you’re the 4th lifter up, you know that you will want to be taking your last warmup around 8:52-8:56 am.
- The PR Booster Tool (linked below) will automatically calculate this for you.
Based on previous flight position.
- If you’re in Flight B, the exact start time of your flight is dependent on the final attempt of flight A. As such, relying on an exact start time can be a logistical challenge. Instead, counting backwards using lifters is a simplified way of tracking this. If you’re 4th lifter in the flight and Flight A has 10 lifters, you would want to take your last warmup around the time that Flight A is in the middle of 3rd attempts, second last warmup about the end of 2nds, and so on. See the video linked at the top for more detail on using this strategy.

As a simple rule of thumb, each attempt will take 60 seconds +/- 15 seconds, so if you are counting lifters, approximating each lifter before you to “1 minute” is a simple way to time out a flight. This varies a lot depending on the meet, so timing the first few lifters ahead of you on squats can give you some base information to work from in your day or even in future meets within the same federation.

Practical Takeaways

Your first and second attempts on competition day should serve to build you to your target 3rd
Aim to have as many successful attempts as possible to maximise your “total potential”
For warmups, if nothing else, time your last warmup to be ~10 minutes before you go up for your opener.

The PR Booster Tool for Free

The PR Booster Tool will automatically calculate your attempts and warmups in less than 60 seconds for you at your first powerlifting meet. You can get a copy of it for free

Bonus: How strong do you need to be to compete in powerlifting?

I created a free guide just for first-time competitors. I analyzed tons of local meet results to show you:

What kind of numbers are competitive at your bodyweight
How strong you need to be to podium at your first meet
Where to find powerlifting meets near you

If you DM me “firstmeet” on Instagram (@strongeryoupt), I’ll personally send you the file.

— Matt

PS – here’s another way I can help you prepare for your first powerlifting meet:

Apply to join my “Platform-Ready Blueprint” and become a case study. We’ll work with you 1-on-1 to show you how to add up to 200 lbs to your total and compete in a powerlifting meet with less than 5 hours per week in the gym.

It takes less than 60 seconds to apply HERE in order to find out more information and see if you’d be a good fit.

The 10% PR Booster: A Tool for Your First Powerlifting Meet