Hello!

Hello. As you will see from my profile, I am a world age group champion and record holder in bench press.

Bench press is one of the three lifts that make up the sport of powerlifting. I came to the sport late in life, and do bench press only competitions because of a serious injury. In September 1980 I was involved in a serious car crash. Everyone tells me it should have been fatal, but somehow I survived.

The worst of several injuries was a compound double fracture to my right femur. In plain English, I broke my thigh in two places, and both breaks were exposed through the skin. Actually there wasn't any skin as such. I lost a good deal of muscle tissue from the outer and rear thigh and needed a major skin graft to cover the exposed area. All in all, I spent two months in traction, another four months in plaster, and the next two years after the plaster came off on crutches at first and then a stick. I could see the golf course from the hospital window and I was told the leg would never heal enough to get me round a golf course again. Eleven years later, I won the Western Isles Open.

I was inspired to take up lifting while watching the disabled powerlifting event at the Manchester Commonwealth Games. I started off in disabled lifting but, to cut a long story short, I wasn't disabled enough to meet the disability criteria. However through disabled lifting I discovered that I could do bench press only competitions as an able bodied lifter. The other lifts were out. I can not physically bend my right knee enough to do a legal squat, and the deadlift calls for a lot of thigh power and lower back strength. The accident had robbed me of half my right thigh and left the right leg bowed, which in turn threw my hip out and that had an effect on my lower back.

I now earn a living through motivational speaking and writing. My message, in a nutshell, is that winners are just dreamers who didn't quit. If you have a goal and you work hard enough, you can achieve it. My world titles show that you can adapt to disabilities and achieve great things.

People say that there's no such word as "can't". That's just glib nonsense, of course, however well meaning. If your left arm has been amputated, you can't win the world left-handed arm-wrestling championships. But you might win the right-handed title.

Only yesterday, I was reflecting on the message that I deliver in my talks. And something struck me. I can't squat. But I don't deadlift. There is a difference. Maybe I'll never be a deadlifting champion, maybe I'll never deadlift a lot, but that doesn't mean I can't deadlift. Maybe I'll injure my back. Well, maybe I will, maybe I won't. But I was just being a hypocrite if I didn't at least find out.

So I went into the back room and dug out a bar and some weights. I set it up to 47 kilos, and lifted it. Then 67 kilos. Success again. Then 77, then 82. Then I put 92 kilos on the bar just to see if I could manage a 200 pound+ lift. Up it went, and so did 100!

That was enough for one day. The leg held up just fine. The back was put under a lot of strain, but maybe I mollycoddle my back so much that it's weaker than it could be. Or maybe it'll give out in a couple of weeks and I'll have to abandon this madness. At least I'll find out, and I'll know one way or the other.

Deadlifting, for the uninitiated, consists of lifting a weighted bar off the floor until the knees are locked and the shoulders are retracted. Many consider it the oldest and purest test of strength. In the old days, he who lifted the heaviest weight off the ground was the strongest.

This morning, just out of interest, I checked on what the British qualifying standard and current record were for my age and weight. The British qualifying standard is 185 kilos. There is no current record holder. Chances are that if I can deadlift 185 by May, I'll get the British record and be on my way to the British title. Wonky leg and all.

So that's what this blog is all about. To record my progress in deadlift from ground zero to, hopefully, the British podium. And if I can do that with my wonky knee, thigh, hip and back at the age of 52, then it will surpass any of my other sporting achievements in one fell swoop and give more grist to the speaking mill. And if I fail? What's failure? It's just finding out that you can't do something as well as you want to. It's no big deal. The big deal is not even trying in case you fail. The big deal is the fear of failure. Lose that and a whole new world opens up for you.

Thankfully, I understand all the principles of powerlifting training, and I've been around the sport long enough to know about deadlifting techniques, so the knowledge is already there. I just need to apply the knowledge.

I'll be recording all my lifts in each session in the blog. That might be very boring for some non-powerlifters, but is an essential part of the blog. If the numbers are too boring, just skip through them if my thoughts on progress - or otherwise - are of more interest.

It could be a very short journey, or it could be a very long one. Unless I start the journey, I'll never know. Yesterday was the first small step.