Firstly I’d like to thank everyone for the positive reviews on the first article, it is going to take a little bit of time to settle in so they are only going to get better from here.
I’d like to introduce who I am and my story of how I got here and trust me, it has been a wild ride. I live in the outer suburbs of Western Sydney in New South Wales, Australia and have done since I was born. I was quite average in school, didn’t really apply myself at all, finished the HSC exams with an average ATAR, nothing special. I was quite active growing up being involved in soccer, cricket and cross-country running. I played soccer for 12 years and on the final game of the 2009 season, I twisted my knee in a dirt-covered cricket pitch and dislocated my patella. It is as bad as it sounds, your knee cap slides over the bottom of your thigh and hangs off the edge of your leg, screaming to get back over to its original position. It was the worst pain and feeling of my life and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. That game was obviously the last game I played and it was a blessing in disguise as it got me to begin resistance training to strengthen the entire lower limb so it wouldn’t happen again.
In 2010, I joined my local Plus Fitness and at the same time, I started an undergraduate degree in Exercise Science at the University of Western Sydney (now Western Sydney University). It was here where I would first come into contact with Powerlifting and strength sports. I met Matt Stewart (@coachmattstewart on Instagram if you would like to follow him) in a Functional Anatomy tutorial and two years later, he invited me to watch a Powerlifting competition that one of his athletes was competing in. I would come to realise that this competition was the 2012 Oceania Championships and after watching it, I was hooked and wanted to try it.
By 2013, my leg was feeling better, I had just finished my undergraduate degree and had chosen to do Honours, a one-year research degree under the supervision of a researcher who I had wanted to work with since I was 17, Dr Bobby Cheema. During that year I started training for my first Powerlifting competition, I would be competing in the -74kg class (I’m also around 185cm / 6’1” tall so I was very thin with not much muscle at all) at Hercules of the West which was run by Adonis Athletics in Granville. I weighed in successfully and finished my first competition with a 145kg / 319lb squat, a 87.5kg / 192lb bench press and a 200kg / 440lb deadlift.
I have since competed in nine more competitions since 2013, however, injuries have halted my progress. I had surgery on my elbow in 2016 and have been dealing with a back problem from a sprained ligament since 2014. Considering that though, I managed to increase my Squat to 217.5kg / 479lb at the 2015 junior national championship, increase my Bench Press to 122.5kg / 270lb in Tashkent in 2015 and increase my deadlift to 250kg / 551lb at Lift Performance Centre in 2015 as well as increasing my weight from 73kg / 160lb to 96kg / 211lb. I represented Australia three times at the Oceania Championships from 2013 to 2015 in New Zealand (Auckland), Australia (Melbourne) and Uzbekistan (Tashkent). In Uzbekistan, I was runner-up in the Asia/Oceania Championship and won the Oceania Championship in the junior -93kg class.
Here is my 217.5kg Squat and my performance in Tashkent, plus the attempt at the historic 285kg with a little video edit:
During this time, Matt and I teamed up to bring ‘Team PB Powerlifting’ to life and it would certainly change my life. The ‘PB’ is an acronym for ‘Peak’ and ‘Bunker’. Peak representing Matt’s business at the time, Peak Performance Strength and Conditioning, while Bunker represented a gym I was running out of my garage called ‘Bunker Barbell’. I started coaching under this banner and grew more and more interested in strength adaptation and how it occurred.
In 2015, I started a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) in Exercise Science at the University of Sydney with focus on how to optimise training prescription for the development of many aspects of human performance, including strength. Since then I have published eight research articles (as of January 2017) in the strength and conditioning field and continue to work on other projects. The link to my ResearchGate page where you can access all my articles is at the end of this piece. I also started to write previews for the big events that the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) sanctioned such as the Classic World Championships which brought a lot of traffic to my Instagram especially. I love Powerlifting and to present the best that the IPF has to offer has been very enjoyable and these pieces will continue from the City Strength blog so keep an eye out for it!
What is going to happen with this blog? Lots of different things, however, the majority of the content will be driven by you, the reader. I intend to present research findings in strength and conditioning, opinions of popular training programs, training and technique tips as well as previews and reviews from big competitions all over the world.
I look forward to this and I hope you are too!
My next article will be about Powerlifting belts in which I will attempt to answer such questions as; should you wear one? What does a belt do and how does it help or hinder your lifts? Are there circumstances where you should or should not wear one? All of which will be answered in two weeks.
Until then, train hard, train smart and dominate on the platform!
Tim Davies – Team PB Powerlifting
Instagram - @teampbpowerlifting
Facebook – Team PB Powerlifting
Email – t.davies@hotmail.com.au