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Great Britain Junior Powerlifting Squad

The Club was proud to host this first squad training session for the newly selected Great Britain Junior & Sub-Junior Teams for the World Championships in South Africa in September. A number of the members of the team competed at the British Senior Powerlifting Championships the week before, so they were resting up this week, so this gave the coaches the chance to fine tune the competition technique of the ten remaining lifters.

The session was overseen by Team Manager, John Halfacre, with Team Coaches Ben Banks and Rebecca Yeoh, in addition to two further volunteers. Both lifters from the Club performed well Daniel Taylor rehabilitating well from his car crash, and Faisal Ahmed Spaul coping well after suffering an attack from a dodgy kebab.

With lifters selected from across the country, these sessions give the team access to advice from coaches with experience of international competition. Many of those selected for the team will be attending their first international competition, and it is therefore important to establish a balance between achieving the highest possible competition weights, and attempts that each athlete is able to perform to a standard that will meet the approval of the international referees. It is crucial that every competitor is able to go out onto the international stage with confidence in their opening lifts, and get off to a good start in the competition so that they can compete for positions with their second and final attempts.

This year in particular, many of the young athletes have a further years left in the Sub-Junior or Junior categories, so this competition will prove to be an excellent opportunity to allow them to get accustomed to international standards and prepare for an attack on a podium position in future years.

With eight weeks left until the team flies out to South Africa, all the members of the team will be focusing on establishing some further strength gains in the coming weeks before working on cementing their competition technique and building their confidence with their warm routine and opening lifts.

The Club will be hosting one further squad session in August for the team. In this session the coaches will be looking for each lifter to display their opening lifts confidently and look to iron out any technical errors.

With such an array of talented Junior & Sub-Junior lifters, the future of the Great Britain Powerlifting Team looks promising, and we hope to report back on some strong performances from South Africa in September.

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