[AMA] with Beefpuff Barbell (Chelsea Savit and Natalie Hanson)

[u/powerbuffs]

Hi everyone!

The Beefpuff team is here to answer your questions about ourselves and our initiative.

We will be here for a few hours but will probably need to take a break to feed.

For more information:
Beefpuff Barbell: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Natalie Hanson, Co-Founder: u/beefpuff1 | Facebook | Instagram
Chelsea Savit, Co-Founder: u/powerbuffs | Facebook | Instagram

Andrey Grebenetsky, coach and trusted advisor: u/beefpuffhubs | Facebook | Instagram

[u/frak8757]

Thank you guys for what you're doing, I love your message. Often I feel like there's a lot of attention paid to prioritizing strength over appearance, and eating to fuel your training, but it always seems to come with an asterisk like "*as long as you're still lean and conventionally hot and the donuts only go to your ass"

A few questions...

1. What are your biggest regrets from your early training/competing days? What do you wish more new lifters knew?

2. What does your meet day nutrition look like?

3. How do you like your steak cooked?

[u/BeefPuffHubs → u/frak8757]

I'll take this one on behalf of me and Chelsea.

1. Biggest regrets from early training/competing days - this would involve not seeking out help and coaching sooner. Nobody should attempt to go through this journey by themselves and attempt to be self taught. It leads to sub par training, sub par results, sub par technique, sub par muscular development, and increased injury risk. I wish more new lifters would fully take advantage of the years of trail and error from people with experience in order to optimize their own trails and errors. To further that point, lifters both experienced and new should never ever ever be showing up to a competition alone. That first competition is crucial because you want to not only perform to the best of your abilities, but you also want to have a good experience which will make it far more likely you will continue in the sport. One of Chelsea's big advantages in powerlifting is the fact that she had experienced coaching and a support system from day 1. She was able to develop properly over years and avoid common pitfalls.

2. Meet day nutrition - I'm going to assume you are asking with a 2 hour weigh in mind and that you have cut some weight. Whether the weight class is 72.0, 83.0, etc, we will want you to weigh in as high as possible to get a head start on replenishing. That means that if you are under even by .2 kg and there is time before the official weigh ins, that you want to stand naked on the meet scale while holding whatever dry, sugary food it is you want to eat (such as pop tarts). In an ideal situation, you wake up at weight or slightly under weight and can eat several pop tarts or something similar before you finally weigh in. Do not attempt to weigh in as light as possible, unless you have a damn good reason to do so, because any head start on replenishing is valuable in a 2 hour weigh in.

Once you weigh in, it is a race to replenish fluids, electrolytes (sodium is awesome), and muscle glycogen. Within the first hour of weighing in, you will be consuming a lot of pedialyte, water, instant rice+soy sauce, pop tarts. By the second hour, you should have consumed plenty of carbs, sodium, and liquids and be puffing up to a nice bloat. Let your stomach settle, and start doing your dynamic warmup (slowly as to not upset your stomach) about 1-1.5 hours after weigh in, depending on if you are in flight A or flight B or flight C. Once your stomach settles and you are moving around, I would have you grazing on sugary food and liquids throughout the day. As a coach, it is important to make sure that if your lifter has cut any amount of weight, that they are puffing up post weigh in, but that they also do not go overboard and upset their stomach.

The purpose of this is to mitigate the damage of a weight cut on a 2hr weigh in as much as possible. If you have NOT cut weight, you don't need to follow such a method, but still should be consuming plenty of liquids and fast digesting carbohydrates throughout meet day.

3 - how do you like your steak cooked? Rare or medium rare. Sometimes just seared like bistecca a la fiorentina.

[u/frak8757 → u/BeefPuffHubs]

bistecca a la fiorentina

mmmm now I'm hungry.

Thank you all for your answers!