Backing up a few notches, let me tell you about my wife, Kellie. Kellie is such an inspiration to my lifting .. she has always been super athletic.. even playing women's rugby in High School and College! Every time I turned my head, she was taking a class at the gym, lifting weights, biking, or occasionally running. Kellie hates running. Unlike me. Imagine that..  it is so inspirational for me to see her, a full-time mom of 3 juggling all sorts of tasks and jobs.. and still finding time to grind out some kind of work out.. whether it was yoga on the living room floor while being kissed to death by our dogs.. or TRX classes or Body Pump classes.. or whatever! She is now studying to receive her "Certified Fitness Trainer" accreditation too! Going back to my workouts.. I had begun to squat and deadlift.. making pretty good progress on both.. but in retrospect looking back, my squat form was horrible. I really didn't know any better.. as I had no formal training.. but I was nowhere near parallel.. trying to squat too much weight.. but somehow I worked my way up to a 405 squat and a 455 deadlift.. form somewhat lacking!   Back in June of 2011, I made a commitment to myself to participate in the upcoming Powerlifting meet I mentioned earlier.. and surprise-surprise.. my ultra-competitive wife was *considering* doing the meet as well! Now it was ON like DONKEY-KONG. The focus for me in the summer of '11 was to fix my form.. I began watching you-tube videos day and night.. I need to get my squat depth right, and stabilize with the 405. My goal for the meet was a 405 Squat, 455 Deadlift, and 315 bench press. And not to totally freak out and my first meet! As summer turned to fall.. the meet came quicker than I could imagine. The squats were getting damn close to legal competition squats.. I was training the "Required Pause" at the bottom of the bench press.. I was ready as I would ever be.. One week before the meet, I hit 405 to competition depth without a problem.. and even squatted 455 within an inch of parallel! My sights were now raised. Kellie my wife was training feverishly as well.. she really only committed to doing the meet about 8 weeks before the meet when she saw that I had signed her up on my debit card! Before then, she wasn't completely on board with my crazy plan for her! Although Kellie has super strong legs, she had never trained bench press much.. now the 8 week "Bench Press Training Plan" was on!!.. Tune in to next post for how our Big Meet Day turned out!!