Know The Rules And Win

Failure and losing is the greatest teacher, if you’re willing to learn from it. If you can learn from your losses, you’ll learn how to win in the end.

In 2024 I took my longest standing athlete, Leah Warner, to High School Powerlifting Nationals. We’d finished third the year before as a sophomore, and with only two girls returning for the event in our weight class, we knew we had a shot at a gold medal. We knew our strong points, and our weaknesses, and had made the right weights to leave us sitting in first in the deadlift by 2.5kg (roughly 5lbs). It came down to the last deadlift. I loaded the bar with a weight which was doable but just slightly out of what we’d been able to lift before, and the girl sitting had to lift an additional 2.5kg above us to beat us. If we missed the lift, and she did as well, we would come out on top. If she made the weight, she would win.

We took the attempt, and missed the final deadlift. In a flurry, her coach tried to change the weight to the same weight we had lifted to try to give a better shot at winning. This is where I learned about lot numbers and order in Powerlifting. Our opponent had a lower Lot Number (a number assigned at random at weigh-ins), and if two lifters are attempting the same weight, the lifter with the lower Lot Number has to attempt the lift first. Because we had already lifted, she had to take the heavier weight she originally stated she’d lift. She had to make it to win.

As fate would have it, she made the lift and took home the Gold Medal, and we sat in second after losing by 2.5kg. In hindsight, if I had put in a much higher weight, she would have also had to put in a much higher weight to make sure she had the 2.5kg margin to win. Because we were already ahead, I could have forced her to lift a weight that was impossible for either of us to lift. And she would have to select a weight that was too heavy for her as well, and not making the lift would mean she would have gone home in second. This was all in hind sight, until…

Last weekend, Leah and I made our third trip to High School Nationals. Having finished in third in 2023, and second in 2024, we were aiming for our third straight podium finish. We knew there were some newcomers who were going to give us a run for our money, so we had to play the weight selection game strategically to get a shot at finishing in the top three for the third year in a row. As fate would have it, we found ourselves in the same position as the year before.

We were sitting in second place going into the last deadlifts, battling it out with two newcomers with exceptional talent. We were far from being able to take first, but we had a 10kg advantage over the girl sitting in third. The final deadlift entries got put in, and I looked at our opponent’s stated last lift: a 12.5kg jump which would put her ahead of us if she missed. But, she also had the lower Lot Number. I used one of my three available weight changes for third attempt deadlifts, and put in the same weight as her so she’d have to go first. Her coaches immediately went in and put on an additional 2.5kg to make us go first again. Having watched the previous deadlift I knew she may have that lift in there with a big fight, and I knew we didn’t have much more in the tank. But we had the Lot Number advantage.

Backstage prepping for heavy lifts. We try to make the back room as relaxed as possible.

So I left it up to Leah. “Do you want to guarantee second place, or do you want to make your last deadlift?”

“I want second,” she told me.

At the last minute, I made one more final attempt change and added an additional 7.5kg. Our opponent put in the same weight, but didn’t realize she had the lower Lot Number. She went first, and as predicted, couldn’t lift the weight. Knowing we wouldn’t either, I told Leah to go out and give it her best shot. She missed it, but it didn’t matter. We put a weight on the bar which neither of the lifters could lift, and so the 10kg spread between first and second remained.

This is how we win meets, tournaments, and games. We have to know how to work the rules. When we know the rules, we can create better opportunities for us to win by giving ourselves a competitive advantage. If we don’t know the rules, and how they impact the various things which dictate how the game can be played, then we fail to truly play the game well. Good games are ones in which we know the rules well enough to know what they prevent and what they promote. We knew there was Lot Number rule dictating the order of lifters. And we knew how to play it well enough to keep our status as the second strongest high school Powerlifter in the country.