A pair of local athletes have burst onto the national powerlifting scene.
For the past two-plus years, Taylor Thomas and Evan Lampkin have tested the limits of human musculature, quickly becoming two of the southeast’s strongest high schoolers. At the USA Powerlifting High School Nationals last month, the longtime friends proved they’re among the best high school lifters in the nation.
“We met each other when we did wrestling together, and then we would skate together, and then we went to the gym once, and then twice, and then four times,” said Lampkin during a break in his and Thomas’s class schedules at Franklin High School recently. “When we started going to the gym we didn’t even really know what we were doing, and we didn’t have a program or a set way of doing things. We would just go to hang out a little bit, and we fell in love with it more and more and more. For me, I always thought being stronger was better than being on stage and looking cool, so that’s why I started chasing powerlifting – because there’s a use to your lifting.”
Having tried their hands at wrestling and skating, Thomas and Lampkin eventually found their home in the weight room. After roughly a year of lifting on their own, the pair became interested in competitive powerlifting, and found a local coach to take them under his wing.
“Actually, our friend – his name’s Solomon – he used to powerlift too, and he was his coach,” said Thomas of local powerlifter Chandler Gammons, a veteran of several competitions around the state. “They met each other at the gym and got linked together, so he was his first coach, and me and Evan eventually ended up being his athletes.”
With more than a year of training under their belts and an experienced coach in Gammons in their corner, Thomas and Lampkin began setting their sights on organized competition. At the Scenic City Open in Chattanooga last July, they had a chance to qualify for the USAPL High School Nationals.
“What you have to do is, you have to go to a sanctioned meet, and you have to hit a qualifying total to be qualified to go to nationals,” said Thomas. “So, your squat, bench[press] and deadlift, all three of those numbers combined is the number you have to get to go to nationals.”
“I think that year’s qualifying total was 1,080 pounds total, and going into it we weren’t nervous at all because previously in the gym all of our maxes had been well above 1,080,” said Lampkin. “So, we were just going there to get that number so we could go to Nationals.”
Sure enough, the Scenic City Open turned out to be little more than a formality, with both lifters hitting their qualifying marks with ease. From there, they undertook their toughest training regimen yet.
“You go up to a peak, so you’re training to peak at a certain meet. However many months out, you’re going up by certain percentages, and by the time the meet comes [athletes should lift] 110%, 120% of what you need,” said Thomas. “So, we were on a 10-month prep where we were just slowly peaking until we got up to that moment.”
“In the beginning our coach had us doing like 40% for like 12 [repetitions], and like six sets of that. It was excruciating – not excruciatingly painful, but excruciatingly boring, because you go in and you don’t even have to take pre-workout [nutritional supplements meant to help boost athletic performance] or anything – you just go in, and you do it and you leave,” said Lampkin. “But that’s important, for sure. You can’t see growth if you’re going in and lifting heavy every single day; you need rest, you need time to build your form, to recover and all that stuff. The fun part is like two weeks out, three weeks out when you go in and you’re hitting the heaviest weights you’ve ever hit, and then the realization is like, ‘Oh, I’m really close to going to this meet.’”
After 10 months of rigorous training of muscle groups across the body, last month Thomas and Lampkin travelled to Baton Rouge for the High School Nationals. There, all of Thomas’s hard work was nearly put to waste the morning of the meet.
“We closed our eyes at like 7 p.m. to be able to wake up at 5, and we couldn’t eat or anything because I was five pounds overweight,” he said. “With my metabolism, I lose so much weight in my sleep – I’ll end my day sometimes at like 187 [lbs.], and I’ll wake up at like 181. I used to wrestle and I had to lose weight a lot and gain weight a lot, so my metabolism changes. … For the meet you couldn’t be over 82.5 [kilograms] and I was 82.4 weighing in, so one more ounce and I would have been done for.”
Despite being over his target weight scarcely 12 hours before weigh-ins, Thomas’s wrestling experience more than came in handy, allowing him to lose roughly five pounds in a single night. But while his incredible metabolism gained him entry into the meet, weigh-ins were not the only challenge the lifters faced.
“We thought warm-ups started at 8, but the actual event started at 8, so we didn’t do as good as we could have done because we had like four crackers in our system and we were just squatting off of those,” said Thomas.
“I actually hurt my back a little bit on the first lift, so I ended up getting disqualified from the whole meet because I didn’t reach the [weight] that they wanted you to reach,” said Lampkin. “When you compete, you have three lifts: you have your opener, your second and your last. Your opener is just something light you’re supposed to hit, and your last is supposed to be super-heavy and a PR [personal record].”
“Going into it we were projected to do very well, because 80% of the kids’ last lifts – and I’m not saying this in a bad way, I’m just explaining – 80% of the kids’ last lifts were lower than our first lifts were, so I think if we were more well-prepared, had more food in our system and weren’t so tired we would have blown it out of the water.”
Lacking food in his system and warm-up time before the meet, Lampkin entered the first event at a major disadvantage, straining a muscle in his back that continued to plague him throughout the day. But while Lampkin’s injury prevented him from hefting his target weight, Thomas emerged as one of the best high school lifters in the nation.
“I got 23rd out of 100 people. … [In] squats, I was first in my flight,” he said of his class of lifters grouped together by age and weight. “I hit a 485 [lb.] squat, I hit a 265 [lb.] bench and a 501 [lb.] deadlift. I definitely could have done more on bench but my back cramped because you’re really arched, and so your back cramps as soon as you push forward and then once your back cramps you just can’t get that leg driving, and it’s out. So, I was very disappointed with my bench, but everything else I was decently OK with.”
In placing among the top quartile of lifters in his flight, Thomas staked a claim as one of the strongest high schoolers nationwide. The pair now plans to join the International Powerlifting Federation, in hopes of one day representing the U.S. on the world stage.
After more than two years of intense training, which requires a delicate balance of sleeping, eating, schoolwork and lifting, the USAPL Nationals more than vindicated Thomas and Lampkin’s efforts. As likely the only competitive high school lifters in WNC, they said matching rivals from around the country pound-for-pound was a source of pride.
“Before that meet happened, we were projected to be like top-15, top-10 in the country,” said Thomas.
“It’s super-cool thinking about it when you realize that all your hard work wasn’t for nothing,” said Lampkin. “That’s a result of your hard work, the years that you put into it and the amount of time that you could have been doing other things, but you went in there. Or, the days you didn’t want to go in there and you went in anyways. It’s definitely a good result, and a satisfying feeling.”