NAPF was my seventh-ever powerlifting meet. That sounds ridiculous to say out loud, but when three of the previous six were USAPL national championships and the 2016 Nationals was only my third-ever meet, it fits with my overall pattern. It's exceedingly unlikely that I'll ever compete at the IPF world championship or qualify to lift at the Arnold Sports Festival, so NAPF is about the ceiling for my participation in high-profile events. (I’m not about to complain!)

Between that fact and the reality of traveling thousands of miles to a foreign country (albeit one I'd visited previously and where I felt comfortable) to be part of a team of strangers, I expected to be overwhelmed. My warm-up lifts the day before we departed felt sluggish, and although the accumulated fatigue from six weeks of training might explain that, I was ready to reduce my opening weights. All told, my expectations for how I would perform were modest, and that was OK – there were only two other men in my division, and the degree of my success was essentially meaningless. I’d already won just with the opportunity to represent my country at an international competition.

It felt odd to arrive at a suburban Holiday Inn bordered by a highway and a shopping plaza reminiscent of the notorious strip-mall hell that lurks 20 minutes from where I went to high school. Apart from the accented English spoken by the front desk staff and the rice and beans served at breakfast, we could almost have been in the U.S. They were even playing Christmas music (forgettable, regrettable, annoying, cheap Christmas music, in a tropical nation, in August), as if trying to make us Americans feel at home.

And unfortunately, the competition was overwhelmingly American. There are 17 countries within the NAPF, but for some reason most of them weren’t represented at the meet. Outside of the open divisions, USAPL lifters dominated, by numbers as well as by performance. My flight, made up of 10 masters 83kg and 93kg men who were originally slated to lift in the afternoon session but got bumped into the morning to allow each session to have only three flights, had no trouble sharing the warm-up room, in part because the U.S. team occupied only one weight rack and had more than enough coaches to keep us on schedule. The representatives from Canada, Costa Rica, and Mexico had the rest of the room to work with.

Sharing equipment like that was an interesting reminder of how tall I am for 93kg. There's a powerlifting cliché that weight classes are camouflaged height classes, because the best lifters in each class tend to be the shortest. My squat rack height was three settings above the next highest among the U.S. lifters, and each setting is something like one inch or two centimeters apart. Remember, I'm only a little over 5'9”, but for powerlifting purposes I'm probably underweight by around 40lbs. (Note, too, that by BMI I’m “moderately obese” at competition weight. Even my lean mass — even accepting a wide measurement error — is “overweight.”)

Once the equipment check and weigh-ins were completed, meet day went perfectly smoothly. Joah and I worried about not being able to support each other, but because she was in the first flight of the morning and I was in the third, I was able to watch all of her attempts. My support got the attention of the announcer, who at one point said Joah would be the next lifter, looked over, and told me, “Let's hear it!” I obliged by cheering even louder than usual.

There wasn't a door between the competition space and the warm-up room, so when my flight was called we had to walk through the kitchen. The staff, busy folding table cloths and washing dishes, barely looked up. I guess they've seen stranger things.

Squat is always the biggest hurdle for me mentally. If I can get past it, I feel like I'll have a good day. If it goes poorly, that failure tends to linger over the other two lifts. Thankfully, a general sense of optimistic indifference stuck with me. My warm-ups had felt pretty good and our little group of Americans was starting to support each other. My opening attempt, 446lbs, was almost 20lbs less than my peak training weight. It moved well and overall was unremarkable.

My second attempt, 474lbs, wasn't nearly as good. At our gym, the floor beneath the squat racks is made of a smooth rubber. At the meet, the squat rack was set up on a short carpet, which as it turns out sticks to my shoes far more. As I walked the bar out, I failed to get my feet as far apart as they should have been, and the carpet prevented me from pushing them wider. Re-racking the bar would have resulted in a failed lift, so my only real option — not that I gave myself a ton of time to think — was to make the attempt and hope for the best. I was successful, but the weight folded me farther forward than usual.

My third attempt was supposed to be at 496lbs. After a brief consultation with the head U.S. coach, I chose to drop that to 490lbs, recognizing that the trouble I faced with my second attempt might repeat itself. However, I got the set-up I wanted, and my final squat moved beautifully – far better than 485lbs moved a few months ago. It was probably smart to reduce the weight, but 496lbs was almost certainly attainable that day.

After watching Joah's extremely successful bench press (the announcer wondered if she'd hit the NAPF record) and getting more bread and Gatorade in my stomach, I headed off to warm up for bench press. Of the warm-up lifts I'd performed on Sunday, bench felt the worst, and it's the lift that has given me the most trouble since I started competing. My progress has been slow, and I'd never been successful on all three attempts. But I stayed loose, went through my routine, and once again hoped for the best.

Usually I all but black out when I step on the platform. My focus is internal – thinking through lifting cues, feeling the bar against my skin and my feet against the floor, hardly using my eyes or ears. But for my first bench attempt, 292lbs, I was strangely alert. I saw all the acoustic tiles overhead and the webcam staring down, and I could hear the crowd in its muted enthusiasm this random American. Nonetheless, the bar moved well. I got one red light, apparently for lifting my head off the bench, but two judges gave me white lights – good lift.

My second bench attempt, 314lbs, felt more normal, which is to say that I scarcely remember it.

For my third attempt, I chose to stick with the plan and attempt 325lbs. That was technically an 11-lb. personal record, but at my last meet I'd come tantalizingly close to 319lbs. Optimistic indifference: I think I can, and if I can't that's OK.

As it happened, I could. Unlike third bench attempts in each of my prior six meets, the bar came off my chest well and kept moving. I was elated.

I was also starting to get tired. Perhaps cheering for Joah was taking more energy than I had to give, perhaps celebrating my unaccustomed success (in my own muted fashion) was draining, perhaps the travel or the unfamiliar bed was taking a toll, perhaps I wasn't fueling myself well. Whatever the reason, I headed into the deadlifts feeling flat, and my warm-ups didn't feel great. And this was after a rough six-week development block in which my deadlift hadn’t seen any progress.

But my opening deadlift attempt, 518lbs, moved the way it was supposed to, and despite my second attempt, 551lbs, feeling heavy and reconfirming that I was fatigued, I chose to attempt 573lbs to get my third PR of the day. It too moved, well enough for the announcer to be impressed and for Joah to insist that I could have added weight.

NAPF was easily my best meet ever. I'd never succeeded on all nine attempts, and I achieved PRs on all three lifts as well as on my total (1388lbs). I no longer just barely qualify for Nationals, and for the first time I earned a Wilks score above 400, which I've always considered the minimum threshold for a “good” powerlifter. Most importantly, I had fun and stayed calm, coming one step closer to proving that my spazzfest at last year's Nationals was an aberration.

By far the most nervous I got all day was while watching Joah lift. She'd had a rough final couple weeks of training, and in my dual capacities as her husband and coach, I really wanted to see her do well. Having waited so long to compete and traveled so far to do it, she needed a good performance. It felt amazing to see her go nine for nine with three PRs and the knowledge that she could have lifted more.

Next up for me is Nationals 2019, to be held in a suburb of Chicago in the middle of October. The competition will be stiff, and I'm hoping to retain optimistic indifference, but I do have goals: A 500-lb. squat seems attainable, as does a 331-lb. bench press (meaningful only because it equates to 150kgs, which is a nice number), and I may be able to PR in deadlift again, if only by five pounds. I may be able to surpass a 1400-lb. total, too.

More importantly, I want to see Joah do well again. I'm not so indifferent about that.