Occupational Therapy in Powerlifting - Sensory Intervention

Some may know that as well as an OT I’m also a Powerlifting coach in a local club here in Townsville.

I was engaged in the #OTalk2US CPD chat on sensory interventions on Twitter today when the conversation turned to adult application of sensory modulation theories, and instantly I was thrown into a reflective mode analysing how I utilise my sensory knowledge in other parts of my life. Sports.

Now for those of you who do not know what Powerlifting is, it’s a sport that is aimed at the pursuit of mastery of three lifts. The Squat, Benchpress and Deadlift. The aim is with three attempts at each lift to lift the most weight that you can to post a collective “total” greater then your competitor. In order to do this, a very specialised form of strength training is implemented. The training timeline starts with quite broad choices of exercise at lower weight and higher reps and over time moves towards exercises and rep ranges closer to that of competition grade lifts as the comp approaches. This concept of training the movements towards being sport specific is known as Specificity.

Coaching the sport of Powerlifting is often looked at in terms of mental and physical preparedness. Physical obviously is the lifts themselves, using correct form and building physical strength in order to lift as much weight as possible.

It’s one thing to train hard and learn the movements but to truly pursue the mastery of powerlifting you also need to address the psychological side of the sport. For me as a coach addressing and training optimal levels of arousal for my athletes is a massive part of optimising their performance.

I’ve co-written written about this from a coaching point of view before (Ironclad Powerlifting: Train Your Mindset) but until recently I’ve never reflected on this from an Occupational Therapy perspective.

Looking at the vast array of athletes we have at our club it is incredibly obvious that everyone has different Sensory thresholds. As you can imagine, putting 200+kg on your back and performing a movement with it creates HUGE proprioceptive input for the lifter. So one would assume that if a lifter was not able to cope with that level of sensory input may struggle to complete the lift. So a lifter may be physically able to squat 200kg but if their sensory systems are only able to cope with 150kg then that’s where their limit will be.

Other examples are that many people when they train in a gym might train in their air-conditioned, 24hr gym, with headphones in, listening to their “pump up music”, with their friends. Then they go to competition which is hot, noisy, someone else’s music, at a time of day you’ve never trained at. Would you be prepared to give the best performance you could? I highly doubt it.

Now, same scenario. What if your coach had gradually graded the environment that you were lifting in so that it closely (as close as possible) replicated competition conditions. Initial weeks of training the athlete might be allowed to use headphones the whole time, train in different conditions and different times but as the competition draws nearer the environment and conditions are modified so that for the last few weeks of their training program the lifter is (closely) replicating competition conditions. The lifer would start using all of the techniques, such as visualisation, music and/or relaxation that they would use on comp day in order to modulate their level of arousal prior to the lift. The training lifts themselves would be headphones off, club mates cheering, and background music playing that they haven’t chosen, just like in a real competition.

As you can imagine the athlete that has been working in an environment that has been graded towards a competition replica by their coach would be much more prepared for the competition itself and therefore better prepared for optimal performance on the day.

One thing to note is that this isn’t a linear process that all athletes follow verbatim. It’s individualised to the lifters own sensory needs. e.g. If competition environments do not provide enough input to get an athlete into the optimal level of arousal then together with their coach they will need to find a pre-lift routine that allows them to be at their best. Alternatively if the lifter finds the level of sensory input from a competition environment to be over their sensory thresholds then a routine to lower their level of arousal must be developed and practised.

Now I’m not saying that you need to be an OT in order to employ these tactics, Coaches have been doing this since before OT was invented. I do, however, find that my background in Occupational Therapy has provided an amazingly applicable baseline skillset for many aspects of coaching. Applied knowledge such as anatomy, physiology, neuroscience and bio-mechanics, right through to skills such as communication, mindfulness and, in this case, being able to assess sensory levels of an environment as well as an athletes individual thresholds in order to best prepare them for competition.