To date, there is no evidence to support the optimal competition strategy for success in powerlifting competitions. The purpose of this study was to analyse Powerlifting (PL) competition data to assess the relationship between squat attempts, the success of each lift attempt, and weight increase between attempts, with winning.
10,672 individual competition entries (males: n = 6617, females: n = 4,055) were included within the analysis from 'raw' Powerlifting Australia sanctioned competitions held between 2008 and 2019. We reported Cohen's d, statistical significance, 95% confidence intervals and the univariate odds of winning an event. Factors were assessed by separate simple logistic regression and reported as an odds ratio.
Overall, first squat attempt weight for those who won was on average 7.0kg greater (P<0.001, d=0.14 [0.10, 0.18]) than for non-winners. In the total sample, athletes selected opening attempts which were an average of 92% of their achieved maximum on the day with 93.5% of competitors improving on this weight in subsequent attempts. Winners had a 0.5kg (P<0.001, d=0.10 [0.06, 0.14]) greater absolute increase in weight between first and second lift attempts than non-winners. Overall, ~68% of winners successfully lifted their third attempt weight compared to ~64% of non-winners (P<0.001).
A powerlifting athlete's odds of winning a competition overall are significantly increased by selecting a larger opening squat attempt weight than competitors and completing the attempt successfully. The opening squat may be one of the most important lifts during competition.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 August 2021.
All research outputs
#11,171,591
of 34,378,656 outputs
Outputs from Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness
#509
of 1,689 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#177,684
of 481,335 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness
#11
of 47 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,378,656 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 67th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,689 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.1. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 481,335 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 62% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 47 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.
