Brian W.

"Not a bad day though, 1025 lbs... I did it. It felt good to do something really hard."

If you were to look at my last 15 years, you’d likely say, “Brian Walsh is a runner.” And that is true. I love running more than is probably good for a person. That said… I’ve put on a few pounds, and got sick of overuse injuries, and re-discovered CrossFit with my wife (Amanda Walsh) when we moved nearly next door to the gym in July 2020. Then I started to get strong…

Fast forward 2 years, and in October I got a relatively standard marketing email from Rogue about one of their challenges, though this one really piqued my interest… The 1000 lb club challenge. For some general context, this is a common aspirational goal for the combined total of the 3 powerlifting lifts: Bench Press, Back Squat, Deadlift.

For a while now I’ve been contemplating this task, and after pulling a 425 deadlift during my second strength cycle with Crossfit SoChac about 18 months ago I had an inkling I might be able to do it. Though, I would need to really work on my bench, and ensure I could get to proper depth on the squat.

To my delight, when Rogue posted the challenge, I figured I’d been through 18 more months of CrossFit and strength training, and had made significant progress on my bench and squat, so perhaps it was my time. Lacking complete confidence, I briefly floated the idea to a few of our coaches (Amanda and Josh), who were pretty stoked on the idea. So…. for $30 I signed up and decided to give it a burn.

Timing gets a little crunched around the holidays but I had until Dec 31 to complete the challenge. That said, I’d need access to a gym, and at least one spotter. Turns out that those lifts need to be HEAVY. While running one morning, I mentioned to Amanda that my folks would be in town Thanksgiving weekend, and it’d be pretty cool if they could see me make the attempt. She graciously offered her services (as a spotter and keys to the gym!) if I wanted to give it a shot.

At this point, all I needed to do was read the rules, and show up in good health. I’ve got this…

Well, it turns out the rules are a bit more challenging than expected. First, all 3 attempts must be done in under 1 hour. That hour also includes weighing the weights. (Quick aside, for those who doubt, all of the weights at SoChac are within ~0.25 lbs of what is listed… I weighed most of them myself for verification.) The attempts must also be completed in the order of Bench – Squat – Deadlift, which is not the order used in powerlifting competitions.

Saturday morning rolls around and after a brief conversation with Coach Amanda the night before, we’re ready to roll. We show up to the gym with a digital scale, and my whole family in tow (minus Mama (our dog)). My folks watch me start to warm up my bench press and stare in awe at the incredible fitness of our coaches as they’re doing a descending ladder of deadlifts and bar muscle ups. Eventually I warmed up to ~235 for bench, and figured my next go at 255 will be my opener for bench. Here’s where things start to get fun/hard/strange…

Enlisting the help of my wife, Amanda Walsh, and my folks, we bring out ~435 lbs of weights. The bar, 3 sets of 45s, a set of 25s, 3 sets of 10s, and a set of 5s. Now, each of these has to be weighed and initialed, on camera. Luckily, a number of our coaches were in the gym, and hopped in to help to make this process as fast as possible. After realizing our first digital scale was off, we were able to enlist the SoChac coach army to move weights to and from the scale so we could efficiently get them measured and I could get started.

Weighing the weights and initialing took much longer than anticipated, given we needed to have Amanda (Walsh) run back home to grab a different scale, so I had cooled down more than desired before my first attempt. Regardless, after 10 minutes of weighing weights (I want to reiterate, all our weights weigh what they say they do), I settle in for my first attempt at bench press. Coach Jen, despite lifting in her own preparation for competition, very graciously offered to spot me. While it wasn’t my best lift, I got 255 down and up without much issue. I was really pleased, as that was a 10 lb PR. That said, I knew that I had done all I could do, and we turned off the camera. Had I wanted to attempt it again, we would have needed to reweigh all the weights. So… That was NOT going to happen. At this point, the question became, “What’s 1000 – 255?” Ok, I just need to lift 745 between squat and dead. Well… My PR squat is 345 and my PR dead (from 18 months ago) is 425… I should be able to do this if my squat holds up.