This weekend I traveled down to Long Island to Gaglione Strength for a female-only powerlifting seminar with Caitlyn Trout. For those of you who don't know, Caitlyn is an All-Time World Record holder and one of the strongest women in the sport right now. She competed in Raw Unity a few weeks ago, ending with a 391 lb squat, 170 lb bench, and 385 lb deadlift, for a 946 lb world-record total in the 123 lb weight class. So, needless to say, I was pretty damn excited about getting to meet and learn from her!
Let me start out by saying, a year ago I would not have done something like this. I would have been way too intimidated about going to a place I'm not familiar with, meeting a whole bunch of new people, and lifting in front of one of the greatest female lifters. But I'm SO glad I went. I met so many new, strong, women, Caitlyn was so helpful and sweet, and I got to spend time with one of my friends I haven't seen in almost a year! It was so inspiring to be around other female lifters, and I can't wait to implement some of the things I learned. I have about 10 pages of notes, so I'm not going to go into detail here about everything I learned, but it was really nice to get advice from a WOMAN for once. After training and being coached by a man for 2 years, it was definitely good to hear what feedback she had. I think the biggest thing I took away from the seminar was that women truly do need different training and programming than men. Obviously, I already knew this, but for the past 2 years I've been following a program that was written by my coach and wasn't seeing any drastic results. Now I have a better idea of how to program for myself, and how to actually get results out of it.
Caitlyn talked about a lot of things. Like I already mentioned, she talked about the differences between male and female lifters, she talked about her own programming and even outlined it for us, mobility and stretching, her diet, how to prepare for a meet, her methods for cutting weight, what to expect on meet day, coaching, and more. My brain (and notebook) was filled with so much great information! After the seminar part of it, we got to lift. We did each lift with just light weights, getting feedback from Caitlyn and John Gaglione the whole time. It. Was. Awesome. I got a lot of great feedback on my squat, which I think is my worst lift technique-wise. She also had some good feedback on my bench and deadlift, and even said my bench set-up looked good! I was pretty thrilled about that!
So, overall it was an amazing weekend and such a great learning experience for me. It was definitely worth the trip, and I can't wait to get back in the gym this week because I'm so inspired! Below is the link to Caitlyn's training blog, which I really recommend checking out.
http://www.jtstrong.com/articles/Training-Logs/caitlyn-trout/
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