Adam C. Stewart
Choosing trials at a powerlifting meeting is more than just finding your 1WD for the day. Experimental selection is a careful and nuanced process that can distinguish whether you are achieving your goals or not. In this Interview with Eric Helms and Mike Zourdos, Matt Gary, the great powerlifting coach of all time, gives an overview of the experimental selection of his 25 years and more as a coach at the highest level of the sport.
Maximizing powerlifting performance is not just about being strong – it also requires effective performance on the day of the meeting. One of the most important aspects of game-day success is the coach’s and reliever’s tryout selection strategy. With what weight should you open? Are you going broke on the second attempt or are you saving this for your third attempt? How do strategies change with the level of experience and the goal of breaking a personal best rather than winning an international meeting?
Matt Gary, who has trained on various national and international powerlifting teams over the past 25 years, was kind enough to sit down with Eric Helms and Mike Zourdos to provide his first-rate knowledge on the subject. Matt is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the selection of powerlifting trials, and his influence on the subject has been felt around the world for many years. Recently, Matt’s theories and personal statistical analysis of powerlifting meetings have found support in the scientific literature. In this interview, he tells how his experience in the trenches and his own data collection influenced his tactics for game day.
Note: This interview was published in the June 2023 issue of MASS Research Review. If you want more content like this, subscribe to MASS.
We’ll hear more from Matt in a moment, but it’s just a pleasure to have him here. The reason Matt is here today is because we are going to focus this cover story on experimental selection in powerlifting. Also in this issue, Dr. Helms reviewed an article entitled ‘Analysis of competitive performance that led to success at the World Championships of the International Powerlifting Federation between 2013 and 2019. Well, this article, as the title suggests, analyzes the data that examine which factors in terms of trial selection are related to the victory of competitions at the IPF Raw World Championships, perhaps for not ranking as well. Well, Matt Gary is here because he’s someone I really admire. He taught me pretty much everything I know about powerlifting and he is, in my opinion, the world’s leading expert in powerlifting essay selection.
Much of what he said has been examined in this scientific publication. Matt has been saying this since I met him about 15 years ago, and I’m sure, long before. So it was a pleasure to see him come out. As soon as Eric and I saw this newspaper, we were like, “We need to get Matt to the fair.”Then thinking, Hey, we need to cover it up. People shouldn’t miss this. Now that this article is out and Matt can talk not only about some of the dates, but also about his experience, what he does in the trenches and what he has learned over the years.
For those who are not familiar, can you give us an overview of yourself, your experience in powerlifting and strength and conditioning training, the facilities in which you have worked and owned and the number of weightlifters you have coached over the years?
Thank you both again for having me. It is a great honor to be presented and to collaborate with you on this topic that I am passionate about. So I really appreciate it. I will try to keep the introduction specific to powerlifting so as not to talk too much. I was introduced to powerlifting sports for the first time in 1982. I was only 10 years old at the time and our new football coach came from the ADFPA, which stands for American Medicine-Free Powerlifting Association, which was USA Powerlifting before USA Powerlifting became a thing.
My football coach said, Listen, I have something that can help you get bigger and stronger, and it will affect your performance on the football field. At the age of 10, I was like, “Hey, man, you had me bigger and stronger.”I wanted to be a better footballer, but I thought, Hey, if I could get bigger and stronger, it would be a victory. So on the first day I squatted with him for the very first time, the next morning I woke up and literally couldn’t get up. And this is not an exaggeration.
I had never felt such muscle pain in my legs in my whole life, and he did not warn me about it. So I was horrified. I had literally thought that I had done something wrong and I was really afraid to stop and say: “you know what? I will never do that again. I don’t want to do that again.”For some reason, he didn’t tell me that muscle pain goes hand in hand with the territory, so to speak, especially when you first apply such a company.
