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Picture this: You’re standing in front of a barbell loaded with weight, but instead of the familiar knurled grip you’re used to, your hands are wrapped around handles so thick they feel like tree branches. Your grip is screaming, your forearms are on fire, and yet you’re nowhere near your normal deadlift numbers. Welcome to the world of armlifting—a sport that’s about to take me to the World Championships in just one month.
If you’ve been following my journey as a health coach, you know I’m passionate about helping people find sustainable approaches to fitness that fit into their real lives. But what you might not know is that for the past several years, I’ve been competing in one of the most unique strength sports out there: armlifting. And this October, I’ll be representing my country at the 2025 Armlifting World Championships.
Over the next month, I want to take you behind the scenes of what it’s really like to prepare for a world-level competition while juggling the same responsibilities we all have—work, family, travel, and everything else life throws at us. This isn’t about becoming a full-time athlete or making massive sacrifices. It’s about showing you how the same principles I teach my clients about consistency, planning, and realistic goal-setting apply even when the stakes are at their highest.
What Exactly Is Armlifting?
Before we dive into my preparation journey, let me paint you a picture of what armlifting actually is, because chances are you’ve never heard of it. Imagine taking all the grip-intensive challenges you’ve ever faced—trying to carry too many grocery bags at once, hanging from a pull-up bar until your hands give out, or struggling to open that impossibly tight jar—and turning them into a competitive sport.
Armlifting is fundamentally a test of grip strength, but it’s so much more nuanced than that simple description suggests. While powerlifting focuses on the squat, bench press, and deadlift, and Olympic lifting showcases the snatch and clean & jerk, armlifting competitions feature a rotating cast of implements and challenges that would look foreign to most gym-goers. We’re talking about thick-handled barbells, rotating handles, awkwardly shaped implements, and weights that challenge your ability to simply hold on rather than move massive loads.
What makes this sport particularly fascinating from a training perspective is the inherent safety factor. When I step up to attempt a maximum effort squat or deadlift, I’m asking every muscle in my body to work at its absolute limit. The potential for injury is significant because the load is distributed across multiple muscle groups and joints, all working at their breaking point simultaneously. But in armlifting, your grip strength becomes the limiting factor long before your larger muscle groups reach their danger zone.
Let me give you a concrete example from a competition I participated in this past June. One of the events was the Fat Gripz deadlift—essentially a regular deadlift, but with thick rubber attachments that increase the bar diameter from the standard 28mm to about 57mm. That might not sound like much, but the difference is dramatic. Here’s a video of my maximum attempt from that competition:
My best lift that day was 252 pounds. Now, consider that my regular deadlift max is around 400 pounds. The thick handles didn’t make the weight any heavier, but they made it impossible for me to hold onto loads that my posterior chain could easily handle. This is the beauty of armlifting—you’re working hard, you’re lifting challenging weights, but you’re not pushing your body’s structural limits to the breaking point.
There’s another reason I’ve gravitated toward this sport, and it’s something that might resonate with many of you who don’t fit the typical “powerlifter” mold. Most men who get into grip-focused strength sports come from strongman backgrounds, and most strongmen are, well, pretty big guys. I, on the other hand, come from obstacle course racing, where grip strength is crucial but carrying extra bodyweight makes every running step more challenging.
Armlifting competitions are divided into weight classes, and I compete in the 154-pound division. There simply aren’t that many men my size who are serious about grip strength training. While I might never deadlift 600 pounds or bench press 400, I can maintain my racing weight of around 150 pounds without tremendous effort, and that gives me a competitive advantage in a sport where strength-to-weight ratio matters.
This brings me to an important point that I often discuss with my coaching clients: finding your competitive advantage doesn’t always mean doing what everyone else is doing. Sometimes it means finding the arena where your unique combination of strengths, limitations, and circumstances gives you the best opportunity to excel.
The Road to Worlds: How I Got Here
Qualifying for the World Championships wasn’t something that happened overnight. Like most meaningful achievements, it was the result of consistent effort over time, strategic planning, and a willingness to step outside my comfort zone repeatedly. The qualification process varies by country and organization, but generally involves placing well at national-level competitions and demonstrating proficiency across multiple grip disciplines.
What excites me most about sharing this journey with you is that the process mirrors exactly what I help my clients achieve in their own fitness goals, just on a different scale. Whether you’re training for your first 5K, working toward your first pull-up, or preparing for a powerlifting meet, the fundamentals remain the same: consistent training, progressive overload, proper recovery, and the mental fortitude to keep showing up even when progress feels slow.
The 2025 World Championships will take place on October 10th—which means as you’re reading this, I have less than a month to fine-tune everything. The competition will feature three distinct events, each presenting its own unique challenges and requiring specific preparation strategies.
Breaking Down the Competition: Three Tests of Grip
Let me walk you through each of the three events I’ll be competing in, because understanding the specific demands of each lift will help you appreciate the training complexity involved.
The 2″ Saxon Deadlift
The Saxon deadlift gets its name from the famous strongman Arthur Saxon, who popularized thick-handled lifting in the early 1900s. This lift involves a standard deadlift movement, but performed with a bar that’s 2 inches in diameter instead of the standard 1.1 inches. You can see me demonstrating the movement here:
The challenge isn’t just the increased diameter—it’s how that change affects every aspect of the lift. Your hand position changes, your grip endurance plummets, and suddenly weights that would feel light on a regular bar become monumentally challenging. It’s a humbling reminder of how small changes in equipment can dramatically alter performance demands.
From a training perspective, the Saxon deadlift requires not just grip strength, but grip endurance and the ability to maintain proper deadlift mechanics even when your hands are screaming to let go. It’s taught me valuable lessons about mental toughness that I often share with clients who are struggling with challenging workouts.
The 2″ One-Hand Country Crush Deadlift
If the Saxon deadlift is challenging, the one-hand Country Crush deadlift is diabolical. This event combines the thick 2-inch handle with a rotating mechanism, meaning the handle can spin freely as you lift. Watch this demonstration to see what I mean:
The rotating handle adds an entirely new dimension to the challenge. Not only do you need the raw grip strength to hold onto the thick bar, but you also need the stability and control to prevent the handle from rotating out of your grasp. It’s performed one hand at a time, which means you get two attempts—one with each hand—and your score is typically the better of the two lifts.
This event has taught me more about patience and technique refinement than perhaps any other lift I’ve trained. You can’t muscle your way through a rotating handle; you have to find the optimal hand position, develop the right amount of tension, and learn to trust your grip even when the implement feels like it wants to escape.
The Staniewicz (SSE) Anvil Medley
The third event is perhaps the most unique: the Staniewicz Anvil medley. Named after its creator, this implement looks like something from a blacksmith’s shop—because that’s essentially what it is. You can see it in action here:
Unlike the other two events, which are performed for maximum single-rep attempts, the anvil is contested as a medley. For my weight class, there will be three weights: 100 pounds, 120 pounds, and 140 pounds. The format works like this: I’ll attempt to lift each weight once. Whichever weight represents my maximum—let’s say I can lift 100 and 120 but not 140—I then perform as many repetitions as possible with that weight.
This format adds a strategic element that doesn’t exist in the other events. Do I go all-out trying to hit the heaviest weight, knowing that might compromise my rep performance? Or do I play it conservative, ensuring I can handle a lighter weight for more repetitions? It’s a risk-reward calculation that makes the competition more dynamic and exciting.
The anvil’s shape presents its own challenges. Unlike a barbell or dumbbell, which have predictable grip surfaces, the anvil tapers and curves. Finding the optimal hand position is crucial, and even small adjustments can make the difference between a successful lift and a missed attempt.
The Weight Cut: Managing 154 Pounds
Competing in the 154-pound weight class means I need to make weight on competition day, which adds another layer of complexity to my preparation. Currently sitting around 150 pounds, I have a small buffer, but that margin can disappear quickly if I’m not mindful of my nutrition choices.
This aspect of competition preparation offers valuable lessons for anyone trying to manage their weight for health or aesthetic goals. The principles are identical whether you’re trying to make weight for a competition or lose 20 pounds for your high school reunion: create a sustainable caloric deficit, prioritize protein intake, maintain training intensity, and avoid extreme measures that compromise performance or health.
The key difference in my situation is the timeline. I have exactly one month to dial in my weight while maintaining the strength and energy needed for high-intensity training sessions. This requires a more precise approach than someone with a longer timeline might need, but the fundamentals remain the same.
Week 1 Update: One Month Out (September 9-14)
With exactly one month remaining until the World Championships, the reality of the timeline is starting to set in. This week marked the official beginning of my final preparation phase, and like most training weeks, it was a mixture of encouraging progress and humbling reminders of the work still ahead.
Training Highlights and Challenges
My Saxon deadlift training felt particularly solid this week. I was able to handle 150 pounds for clean sets of 3 repetitions at what felt like 7 out of 10 effort. This is encouraging because it suggests I have room to grow over the next month, and the weight felt controlled and stable throughout the range of motion. The key with thick-handled lifts is not just moving the weight, but moving it with confidence and control—something that only comes with consistent practice.
The Country Crush deadlift, however, served up a healthy dose of humility. I worked up to 125 pounds for 2 repetitions with each hand, and everything felt solid. Then, as often happens in training, the wheels came off completely. I couldn’t budge 125 pounds with either hand on subsequent attempts, forcing me to drop back to 100 pounds for the remainder of my training session.
These kinds of days are frustrating in the moment, but they’re also valuable reminders of why we train consistently rather than relying on peak performances. In my work with clients, I often emphasize that progress isn’t linear, and some days your body simply doesn’t cooperate with your plans. The key is not to panic or dramatically alter your approach based on one subpar session, but to trust the process and return to training with renewed focus.
The anvil lift continues to be my wild card. This is my first time working with this particular implement, and I’m still experimenting with hand positioning and grip technique. The curved shape and varying diameter make it challenging to find the sweet spot where I can generate maximum force while maintaining security. With only three weeks remaining, I’d like to nail down my optimal technique soon so I can focus on building strength and endurance rather than still learning the movement.
Nutrition and Weight Management
From a nutrition standpoint, this week was about finding the right balance between maintaining energy for training and beginning the gradual process of dialing in my competition weight. I’ve been hovering around 150 pounds consistently, which gives me a comfortable 4-pound buffer below the 154-pound limit.
My approach this month is intentionally conservative. Rather than implementing an aggressive caloric deficit that might compromise my training quality or recovery, I’m making modest adjustments that allow me to maintain performance while gradually trending toward my target weight. This means being slightly more mindful of portion sizes, timing my carbohydrate intake around training sessions, and ensuring I’m hitting my protein targets to support recovery.
This strategy reflects a principle I emphasize with all my clients: sustainable approaches almost always outperform extreme measures, even when timelines are compressed. Yes, I could cut calories dramatically and guarantee I make weight, but if that approach leaves me feeling weak and depleted on competition day, what’s the point?
Balancing Competition Prep with Life
One of the aspects of this journey I’m most excited to share is how competition preparation fits into a normal life with work responsibilities, family commitments, and social obligations. This week presented a perfect example: I’m traveling to Tennessee to spend five days with my father for his birthday.
This trip represents one of the most important times of the year for me personally. It’s the one opportunity I have to spend extended one-on-one time with my dad, and those moments are far more valuable than perfect adherence to any training or nutrition protocol. However, that doesn’t mean I’m throwing caution to the wind entirely.
The travel required some creative scheduling adjustments. I moved one training session up by a day this week and will delay another session by a day next week. It’s not ideal from a pure training perspective, but it’s perfectly manageable, and the slight disruption won’t derail my preparation.
From a nutrition standpoint, I know the next five days won’t be perfect. There will be restaurant meals, birthday celebrations, and the general relaxation of dietary vigilance that comes with vacation. But here’s the thing—I’ve built enough buffer into my timeline and approach that a few days of imperfect eating won’t sabotage my goals.
This is a crucial lesson I try to instill in all my clients: perfection is not required for success. What matters is having a plan, following it most of the time, and making intelligent adjustments when life inevitably interferes. The clients who succeed long-term are not the ones who never deviate from their plans; they’re the ones who know how to get back on track quickly after deviations.
Mental Preparation and Perspective
As I reflect on this first week of final preparation, I’m reminded of lessons learned from previous competitions. The most important thing I can do over the next month is stick to my plan, trust the process, and avoid the temptation to make dramatic changes based on individual training sessions or temporary concerns.
Competition preparation has a way of magnifying every small detail. A missed lift that would be forgotten in normal training suddenly feels like a harbinger of competition disaster. A slight increase in bodyweight becomes a source of anxiety. A minor scheduling conflict feels like a major disruption to preparation.
The antidote to this mental trap is perspective and experience. I’ve been through competition preparations before, and I know that consistency trumps perfection every time. My goal isn’t to have the perfect training month or to feel 100% confident in every lift. My goal is to show up on October 10th having done the work, prepared as well as I reasonably could, and ready to give my best effort regardless of the outcome.
This mindset—focusing on process over outcome, consistency over perfection—is something I emphasize constantly with my coaching clients, whether they’re training for their first 5K or their tenth powerlifting meet. The principles that lead to success in competition are the same ones that lead to success in any fitness endeavor: show up consistently, work hard when you’re there, recover properly, and trust that the results will follow.