Choose to be Inspired.
- Taylor Shadgett
- May 1, 2024
- 8 min read
It can be easy to be envious, negative, jealous of other powerlifters, co-workers, people in the same business, competitors, or even just some random person on social media who may not even live in the same country as you. Social media probably makes it worse. Our ability to access the lives of the richest people, celebrities, athletes, musicians, or even the best powerlifters, is overpowered. Within seconds we can log in to social media, and for the most part you have access to almost every powerlifter on the planet. Except for people like Jason Byrne, who still live in the real world, too busy working, and training hard to bother even knowing what the Instagram is. If you don’t know him, Jason Byrne recently won best male lifter at OPA Provincials to the tune of 380kgs/225kgs/370kgs, massive. Even then, it can be easy to get caught up in numbers, forever comparing yourself to others, always feeling like you aren’t doing well enough. I suffer from this as much as anyone. As a self-proclaimed has been, I can be hard on myself, especially when it comes to powerlifting numbers. The progression in strength numbers and world records since I started in powerlifting has been mind boggling, while my own progress has been slow and cumbersome, if at all. I can insert a bunch of excuses like age, injuries, wear and tear, former sport participation, work, priorities, and so on, but at the end of the day I can find people close to me who have the same or similar excuses, that are still progressing in their powerlifting development. Normally I would tell people to compare yourself to yourself, fight your own battles, but even that is not terribly helpful for me because I start comparing my squat and bench to who I used to be. I have definitely allowed negative thoughts to creep in more than enough times, but this year I have been working on making the choice to be inspired by people who are more successful than me. The earned success of others should not make you jealous, envious, or negative, it should inspire you. Choose to be inspired. The goal of this blog is to provide some examples of people that I have chosen to inspire me every single day.
Bryce Krawczyk
Once upon a time I felt like I was in direct competition neck and neck with Bryce. Heck, I guess it is almost 10 years ago now. At 2015 provincials I hit what was, at the time, my biggest Squat, Bench, and Total (8/9 775kgs, 300/170/305, 315x). Being the youngblood dummy that I was, after winning provincials, I decided to cut to 93, thinking the road to a national squat record and a national championship was easier at 93. Boy did that turn out to be a mistake. I ended up forcing myself to cut weight too fast, used workloads that were too high, based on expectations that were too high, injuring my back along the way, and somehow making the cut from 105 to 93 in 86 days, shredded, dehydrated, withering away, holding a CPU National squat record for one attempt, and finishing up in 5th in what ended being one of the most competitive classes of CPU Nats that year (top 7 were all within 460-480 wilks). Bryce went on to be National Champion, and I would have placed second if I did nothing else but add 5kgs to the total I had hit in November. Bryce went on to place second at the world Championships that summer. Fast forward to 2017 Nationals, Bryce whoops my ass 24 hours after winning best equipped lifter. Read that again, Bryce one Raw Nats less than 24 hours after winning Equipped nats. He almost get too greedy, but he nailed it in the end.
Since then, Bryce went on to win more provincial, Regional, National, and NAPF championships, and he has competed at the World Championships 5 times since then. He also recently hit a PR total of 900kgs at The CPU Western Championships. Achieving all of this while growing and scaling his coaching business, YouTube, Twitch, apparel, reach, and circle of influence. At different times it has been very easy for me to become envious of Bryce’s success as a lifter, and coach, I’d be lying to you if I said that never happened over the last 10 years. Things become complicated when you work for your friend and former competition. Fortunately, the way Bryce carries himself as a person, lifter, coach, Boss man, and friend, inspires me more and more every day. I have chosen to be inspired by Bryce to be a better coach, athlete, and person.
Walter Cariazo
Walter is another guy I have been lifting against since 2015. When I won Provincials 2015 and decided to cut to 93 (don’t do it kids), Walter was just coming off of his provincial win at 93kgs. Apparently, Walter had a crazy deadlift cycle, because he put 22.5kgs on his deadlift in the same amount of time it took be to make weight. I will forever kick myself for this decision to go down a weight class for 2016 nationals. Walter had been trailing after benchpress but put in a hail Mary 322.5kgs attempt for this third (having pulled 300kgs at provincials). Queue the most insane deadlift grind I have seen to this date. The room was electric. I swear it took 10 second for him to lock it out. I would have dropped it by then.
One of the reason’s that Walter inspires me is because we are the same age and have the same sporting background. Walter also played CIS Football for the University of Toronto before switching to powerlifting. He played one of the more violent positions, tailback, and anyone familiar with CIS Football knows that U of T has never had the strongest of offensive lines in the past 20 years. I am sure Walter took a beating.
Since competing against each other at 2016 Nats Walter has won 6 Provincial Championships, 2 central Canadian Championships, He has competed at Nationals 5 times (3 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze), won an NAPF Pan-American Championship, and competed at IPF World’s twice, having recently secured a spot for IPF World’s 2024 with a huge 886kgs National Record total (302.5/207.5/376NR). Walter and I used to joke about the 10 year peak to M1, but at this rate Walter will be competitive in the Open class for a long time. When I bombed out of 2018 OPA provincials on depth, Walter was the first one to come up and hug me. If you watch Walter through the competition day he is always smiling and having fun. Walter inspires be a better person, have fun, choose love, and train smarter every day.
Brittany Schlater
Brittany is the Open Women’s Total World Record holder with a 710kgs total (285/157.5/267.5) that she recently set on powerlifting’s biggest stage, the 2024 Sheffield Powerlifting Championships. She is a 2x IPF World Champion and placed second in 2019.
Anyone who has been following Brittany’s training would see that she basically been travelling around to volunteer at meets and visit friends to train. It seemed like every weekend she was a in a different part of the country, spotting, loading, or refereeing every single session. Anyone who has spotted and loaded before knows how taxing it can be, let alone how exhausting the energy and noise of a powerlifting meet can be. Brittany seemingly gives her time every weekend giving back to the sport, helping to lift others up, all the while training to be the strongest drug free female powerlifter in the world.
From what I have heard, this is active strategy taken on by Brittany to choose to be inspired herself. Travelling to train with friends and actively be a part of the powerlifting community was something she and Bryce had talked about doing to help her motivation and inspiration. As many of us have learned over the past 4 years, training alone in home gyms can be convenient and highly productive at times, but it can also be very lonely. There is something magic about feeling the energy of others working hard around us, even if we are simultaneously in our own little world living life through our headphones.
At the most recent OPA provincial championship, Brittany came up to me and said something to the effect of “I was watching your flight thinking that I wish I squatted that much, and then I realized I do squat that much now, and now we can have a friendly competition to see who squats more.” At first, I was taken aback, I am always comparing myself to my former self, and once upon a time I squatted 307.5kgs, and benchpressed 175kgs. It would have been easy for me to become bitter and simply throw these numbers at her, but where’s the fun in that? It helps that Brittany is the nicest person in the world, is a fellow CBB team member, I know how hard she works in the gym, and I see how much she gives back to the community. Brittany you inspire me every single day. I’m going 290+ at Nats, you better bring it.
Alex Pearson-Jones
I had the honour of travelling to the UK with Bryce in 2019. We were there for about 9 days, covering two weekends, where we did seminars in Basingstoke, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Alex Pearson-Jones picked us up from the airport, bought us a coffee, and immediately started talking training. That weekend was full of too many laughs, stories, fun training, successful seminars, and multiple trips to Nando’s. Cheeky.
Side story, the origin of me using Snatch Grip RDL so heavily in a lot of client training started in Basingstoke training at the host gym that Peej was working at. It was Peej, Bryce, RPE lifter, myself, and others. Bryce was doing something like ramping SSB Squats and Snatch Grip RDLs for sets of 10-12 up RPE 9. Watching Bryce snort ammonia so that he could smash through a set of something like 200kgsx12 on SSB Squats, followed by what was more impressive to me at the time, Snatch Grip RDLs up to 225kgs x12 left my mind blown. My inner dialogue went something like this “Right Bryce deadlifts 800lbs, I do not. I definitely do not Snatch Grip RDL anywhere close to 500lbs for reps, so if I build my Snatch Grip RDL, my deadlift will go up.” I still don’t deadlift 800lbs, or use weights that heavy for SQRDLs, but it has helped grow my deadlift over the last couple of years, and many client’s as well.
Since that time Peej has done an amazing job building his name as a coach, working with the UK International team on multiple occasions. Building his brand, Battalion Barbell, scaling upwards and employing multiple coaches, running a podcast, becoming more active on social media, and doing an amazing job taking top tier lifters to an even higher level. None of these are a small feat, but to do them all at the same time impresses me even more.
Peej has done so well that he even attracted Dani to work with him recently leading into the Arnold UK. I would be lying if I told you that Dani ending our coach-athlete relationship didn’t hurt. Dani is a special breed, she will hike up a mountain to attend music festival, get her pushups in, somehow check in with her clients, and then squat a PR on Monday. She has continued to kill it, growing her business, muscles, brand, and total. The ending of our coach-athlete relationship was a wakeup call that I needed, and one of the impetus’ that led me to start writing again. Dani you inspire me every day.
Garrett Bentley
I’ve known Garrett since I worked at a Goodlife in 2011/12. Back then, Garrett was a massive, strong, opinionated bodybuilder, who deadlifted with straps and complained about grip issues (Shame). Garrett and I shared a workspace from about 2015- 2018. I saw Garrett do some crazy shit like squat 600lbs every day for months.
Crazy grinds, crazy misses, sketchy af failed re racks, all this was before he got even crazier, learning to lift equipped with no helps or spotters.
Since then, Garrett has built his own successful gym, having upgraded locations and equipment multiple times now. His coaching business has exploded, largely in part because on top of all that he slowly worked his way up to be one of the Head Coaches for Team Canada, allowing him to scale by doing things like hiring one of my former students, who has become a successful coach himself. With all that going on Garrett has become one of the greatest IPF Equipped Bench Pressers in history, he currently has the 6th biggest bench all time in the IPF, having done so recently at the Arnold UK bench only competition where he finished first. I don’t actually like you G, but you inspire me every day.
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