Benji Hill is passionate about quite a few things hunting, fishing, fitness, my sister-in-law and power lifting.
This past Saturday I went over to High Altitude Fitness (HAF) in Hailey to check out the Primal Power Raw Powerlifting Competition Benji helped put on.
Benji Hill is a Community School grad, a former ski racer at Montana State and World Champion Powerlifter (he won 220-pound weight class on his 29th birthday in 2003). So this meet wasn’t a huge change for Benji or his job as a Personal Trainer at HAF. From music to t-shirts to awards and food (catered by moms Margie Hill and Nancy Resko), Benji and HAF made sure the first (of what they hope will be many) powerlifting meets in the Wood River Valley was a success.
My thoughts in
itially were meat-heads, screaming and sweating but that is not what Saturday’s competition was all about. There were 16 participants; Hill was a contender as well as Kevin Mora, owner of High Altitude Fitness. Three of the 16 were awesome local women–Kerri Herlinger, Sara Schroeder and Amber Dunford.
The meet was so much more about camaraderie than competition. As each contender took their turn to lift a hopeful weight, everyone in the room cheered them on. If there was a struggle, there was a commotion of encouragement from the entire gym especially the other lifters. This ‘you can do it’ attitude definitely made the meet great fun to watch.
There were three categories: squat, bench press and deadlift. Each participant had three attempts at their requested weight. The highest, completed weight of the three was tallied into their score.
Scoring was done by the weight completed divided by body weight.
Here are the winners:
Best Male: Justin Dietrich
Best Female: Kerri Herlinger
Squat: Justin Dietrich
Bench Press: Benji Hill
Dead Lift: Lashon Smith
Look for the next event in August. Training camp begins in June at HAF where you can learn the proper technique of 3 lifts: squat, bench press and dead lift. Call (208.726.1959) or email High Altitude Fitness for more information (kevin@highaltitudefitenss.com).
The Primal Power Competition was in memory of Emil Cristurean.
All photos courtesy of Stephanie Freid Perenchio.
