{"id":103,"date":"2017-06-18T20:14:48","date_gmt":"2017-06-18T20:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/?page_id=103"},"modified":"2017-06-18T20:15:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-18T20:15:27","slug":"what-is-para-powerlifting","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/what-is-para-powerlifting\/","title":{"rendered":"What is para powerlifting?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Para powerlifting is a test of upper body strength, for people with a range of lower body disabilities.<\/p>\n<p>Lying down on your back, you get three attempts to unrack or receive a weight at arm&#8217;s length, hold it steady, bring it down to your chest on a start command, pause it and press it back up again, holding it until commanded to rack. Two out of three referees need to give you a white light to score a good lift (and that means no lifting of the head, no lifting of the bum, no downwards movement of the bar after pressing up, and no wonkiness.)<\/p>\n<p>There are a few differences from the bench press discipline you&#8217;d see in able-bodied powerlifting competitions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the bench itself is different, being longer and wider. Legs (if you have them) are as flat as possible on the 2 metre bench, and can be strapped down.<\/li>\n<li>weights are in whole kilograms.<\/li>\n<li>while there has to be a visible pause on the chest, the referee does not give a press command, only the start and the rack commands.<\/li>\n<li>the bar has to rise evenly. It&#8217;s technically more difficult, as the entire upwards movement must be even, and the lift has to finish with equal extension of both the arms with locked elbows.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All athletes compete in the same sport class&#8211;though split by weight categories. If it&#8217;s in strict bodyweight categories (there are 10 for women ranging from &lt;41kg to 86kg+) it&#8217;s down to who lifts the most kilograms; if it&#8217;s a smaller comp with wider weight ranges (light and heavy) then the winner is decided by AH points (multiplying a bodyweight-based co-efficient by the kilos lifted). International standards are incredibly high&#8211;with a remarkable percentage of women lifting twice their body weight, and men tripling their weight.<\/p>\n<p>Want to see some of the best and strongest\u00a0 bench pressers in the world? There&#8217;s a huge collection of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paralympic.org\/videos\/videos-archive?category=Powerlifting\">videos from Para Powerlifting internationals<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Para powerlifting is a test of upper body strength, for people with a range of lower body disabilities. Lying down on your back, you get three attempts to unrack or receive a weight at arm&#8217;s length, hold it steady, bring it down to your chest on a start command, pause it and press it backContinue reading &rarr;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-103","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-thumb"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P8QVeq-1F","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":65,"url":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/a-bit-of-background\/","url_meta":{"origin":103,"position":0},"title":"The story so far","author":"Katie","date":"June 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In which I provide a bit of background about me, about starting to lift, and what happens next. I am not a lifelong athlete\u2014I\u2019m a late starter, a very late starter, with a lifelong disability. I finally found my sport in my mid-forties, after decades of sitting on the sidelines.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"an x-ray image of a proximal femoral replacement","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/x-ray-177x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2,"url":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/","url_meta":{"origin":103,"position":1},"title":"Small lifter, big dreams","author":"Katie","date":"June 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/bwl-2016-setup-1024x565.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/bwl-2016-setup-1024x565.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/bwl-2016-setup-1024x565.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/bwl-2016-setup-1024x565.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":158,"url":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/blog\/","url_meta":{"origin":103,"position":2},"title":"Blog","author":"Katie","date":"June 22, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katiecooke.com\/powerlifting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}