Hello. I’m Katie Cooke, a 50 year old para-powerlifter, working hard to rebuild after an injury that left me on the sidelines for almost year, completely unable to lift.
I didn’t hit that previous “dream with a time limit” but that doesn’t mean I’m done. Right now, I’m taking things step by step, and rep by rep, and trying not to think ahead too far.
This is where I was, before things got interrupted by injury…
Hello. I’m Katie Cooke, a 49 year old para-powerlifter with a goal to be part of Team Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Australia in April 2018.
They say that a goal is a dream with a time limit on it: I need to reach the selection standards by the end of October 2017*. I’ll be doing everything I can to achieve that when I lift at the World Para Powerlifting Champtionships in Mexico City in October, as part of the GB team.
A screenshot from the stream of the British Championships in 2016, sitting on the bench about to set up for my successful third and final lift of 68kg. This year I’m lighter, and stronger, and hoping to lift a lot more before I’m done.
I’m using this site as a blog about my journey, to share some training videos, and think out loud about starting a sport as an older athlete, and as a disabled athlete as I work to get strong, get good, and get it done.
Want a little background about me or about para powerlifting? Nae bother.
* For the detail-oriented: this means ranking in the top six lightweight women in the Commonwealth (or, at the very least, in the top eight, but with a best lift within 5% on AH points of the top six. In more straightforward terms: based on the current rankings, that means I need to bench press about 1.6 times my own body weight at an internationally ranked para-powerlifting competition, for the equivalent of about 100 Wilks points.)