Morning Bench, Afternoon Full Meet: My 252.5 kg Deadlift (2026)

First meet flashback: Elemental Club Meet, 2024

Two years earlier — 7 July 2024 — I did my first recorded competition: the KDKS Elemental Club Meet in Switzerland. Open, raw, superheavy class. I was much heavier then: about 138 kg as I remember walking around that block of training; OpenPowerlifting lists the weigh-in at 135.3 kg. Either way, not the 126 kg version who showed up in 2026.

Full 2024 card (OpenPowerlifting):

• Squat: miss 130 · make 135 · miss 175 → best 135 kg
• Bench: 120 · 132.5 · miss 140 → best 132.5 kg
• Deadlift: miss 220 · make 220 · miss 225 → best 220 kg
• Total: 487.5 kg · Dots 269.77 · 6th in Open

So the 2026 story is not “came from nowhere.” It is “came back lighter, sicker, greedier with the calendar, and somehow pulled 32.5 kg more on the deadlift.”

Morning: fever, Open bench-only, 140 kg

Fast-forward to 2026. Bodyweight on the morning Open entry: 124.8 kg. Energy level: “please do not ask me to squat yet.” Temperature: not the athletic kind of warm. I was tired, running a fever, and still walking toward a bench platform like that was a reasonable hobby.

Bench-only Open, raw. Attempts: miss, make, miss. The make that counted was 140 kg — 12th place. Not glamorous. Honestly? Surviving the commands without turning into a sandwich was the win condition.

Morning bench was a real meet, not a warm-up. Which is either disciplined… or the fever talking. Hard to tell mid-chalk.

Pro tip: if you feel like a smartphone at 3% battery, maybe don’t book a second competition. I booked a second competition.

The long wait, a friend, then Masters 1

Between the morning bench meet and the afternoon full meet there were hours. Hours of waiting. Hours of “when do I warm up again?” Hours of schedule fog where every announcement sounded like it was in a dialect invented to confuse tired people.

A friend helped me out in the confusion — logistics, timing, the gentle art of stopping me from lying down under a table and calling it recovery. Without that, the afternoon entry might have stayed theoretical.

Second weigh-in / afternoon bodyweight: 126.0 kg. Masters 1, raw, full powerlifting. Same Swiss hall, same day, new job description: squat, bench, deadlift — while already pre-damaged.

Squat best: 160 kg (140 / 160 / miss 175). Bench again: 130 kg (make, then two misses on the jump) — lower than the morning 140, which is what happens when your shoulders file a complaint. Deadlift: opener 230, second attempt 252.5 kg, third 257.5 miss. Official PR: 252.5 kg.

1. Walk-up on fumes.
2. Pull anyway.
3. Lock out, pretend dignity, wait for the down command.

252.5 does not care that you have a fever. It only cares whether the bar finishes higher than your excuses.

Dots prizes, solo in 120+ Masters 1 — and I was basically dead

End of day scoreboard for the afternoon (OpenPowerlifting): squat 160, bench 130, deadlift 252.5, total 542.5 kg, Dots 306.70, 10th in Masters 1. Morning Open bench-only: 140 kg, 12th. Emotional status: basically dead. Not metaphorically. The “please wrap me in a blanket and put me on the train home” kind of dead.

Important asterisk on the prizes: they were evaluated in Dots — a relative-strength formula that compares lifters across bodyweights. I was the only competitor in 120+ Masters 1. So the story of “where I finished” depends hard on the scoring lens.

• Under Dots (how prizes were evaluated): you get ranked against the whole Masters field by formula, and heavier classes don’t get a free pass.
• If it had been scored as a classic weight-class / in-class total day: being alone in 120+ Masters 1 would have made the podium math look very different — less “10th by Dots,” more “the entire 120+ Masters 1 leaderboard is… me.”

Same lifts. Same fever. Different headline depending on whether you worship Dots or class totals. I’m not bitter. I’m horizontal.

How this stacks up vs European IPF Masters 1 120+

Honest comparison time — not Instagram comparison time. In European Masters Classic (IPF/EPF) the Masters 1 men 120+ class is a different planet on total. At the 2023 EPF European Masters Classic, for example, the 120+ Masters 1 podium totals sat around 715–857.5 kg, with deadlifts often in the 245–315 kg range and squats that would have laughed at my afternoon 160.

My 2026 afternoon total of 542.5 kg after a morning bench meet, hours of waiting, and a fever is not threatening a European championship medal. The deadlift is the relative bright spot: 252.5 kg sits nearer the middle of those European deadlift lists than my squat sits near their squat lists. Translation: I’m a puller having a chaotic Swiss club day, not a balanced EPF finalist.

From 2024 to 2026 the useful plot twist is bodyweight and deadlift: first meet around the high-130s (OPL 135.3 kg / my memory ~138 kg) with a 220 kg deadlift, then 126 kg with 252.5 kg. Lighter. Stronger on the floor. Still not Prieto-Freire. Still funny.

And now: compared with the non-athletic population

After the EPF reality check, the ground-floor one: what does this look like next to people who don’t train — no meet, no periodization, maybe just a water crate up the stairs?

Rough, honest orientation (no fake internet percentiles):

• Untrained adults often have never deadlifted correctly. A clean single is frequently well under bodyweight — or never happens at all.
• Casual gym-goers (machines now and then, rare free compounds): bench often lands roughly in the 40–80 kg zone; deadlift, if they do it, often closer to 80–140 kg — and almost never under meet commands.
• My afternoon deadlift of 252.5 kg at 126 kg bodyweight is about 2× my weight. For the non-athletic population, that isn’t “a strong gym hobby.” It’s a different category of everyday strength.
• Even the “weaker” numbers from that day — 160 kg squat and 130 kg bench after fever, a morning meet, and hours of waiting — still sit far above what most untrained people ever load on a bar.

Short version: against European Masters 1 120+ EPF totals, I’m clearly behind. Against the non-athletic population, the same day looks absurdly strong — especially the pull. Both can be true. Powerlifting is rude like that.

EPF says: “Cute total.” The water crate says: “Please stop.”

FAQ: meets, Dots, and bad decisions

What were the two competitions?

2024-07-07: KDKS Elemental Club Meet (first meet). 2026-03-22: KDKS Junior-Master-Bench Swiss Championship — Open bench-only in the morning, Masters 1 full meet in the afternoon.

What are the official 2024 stats?

BW 135.3 kg on OpenPowerlifting (I remember closer to 138 kg): squat 135, bench 132.5, deadlift 220, total 487.5, Dots 269.77, 6th Open. Full attempts on my OpenPowerlifting page.

What about 2026?

Morning Open: bench 140 kg at 124.8 kg. Afternoon Masters 1 at 126.0 kg: 160 / 130 / 252.5, total 542.5, Dots 306.70, 10th Masters 1.

Why mention Dots and 120+ Masters 1?

Because prizes were evaluated in Dots, and I was the only lifter in 120+ Masters 1. Rank by relative formula across the field and you get one story; rank inside the weight class and the empty bracket tells another.

The number, the blanket, the point

I didn’t leave thinking I’d conquered Europe. I left thinking: morning bench done while feverish, afternoon deadlift over 250, friend earned free dinner forever, and please nobody ask me to high-five.

If you’re training for a meet in Switzerland — or considering two meets in one day while ill — keep the goal concrete. Load the bar. Survive the wait. Finish the pull. Then go home and become a blanket.

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