Sport
29 September, 2025
Powerlifter’s heavy national record
A NATIONAL record, personal bests and a plan to send a team again next year were the takeaways from the Australian Powerlifting (APL) championships attended by a Cairns group last month.
Team coach and co-owner of ZeroW strength training gym Wes Vick said the experience had been a fantastic challenge.
“The comp was extremely well run, it was the biggest powerlifting nationals of any Federation in Australia,” he said.
Held at the convention centre in Melbourne, the three Cairns competitors – Mike Blackwood, Sam Coelli and Mark Rogers (Rocco) – took to the stage on the Saturday for their events.
“Big Mike Blackwood, he had a bench press personal best (PB) of 232.5kg, which was also a masters national record,” Mr Vick said.
“He came in and beat his previous weight, which was nice, and upped the national record for the whole of his group.”
The Australian Powerlifting (APL) auditorium was a packed house, with more than 400 invitation-only entrants from across the country taking part in the competition.
A large screen above the two stages showed each competitor’s statistics in powerlifting, what they were pushing for, and where they were in the competition, before cutting to their actual lifts on stage.
“Rocco had a pretty good day,” Mr Vick said. “He squatted 342.5kg and went for it for his third lift, which would have been a masters national record as well, but didn’t quite get there.
“He had a PB of 195kg in the bench and equalled his PB deadlift of 315kg.”
For Sam Coelli, his first time at nationals, he performed extremely well, Mr Vick said.
“He squatted 255kg, benched pressed 172.5kg, which was a personal best, and then he deadlifted 250kg.
“He narrowly missed out on a massive PB (282.5) just due to a technicality of losing his balance at the top and not completing the lock-out.”
Until the lights buzzed red, the crowd, the commentator and the live feed had cheered the lift as good.
“Overall, it was an extremely good performance from Sam on the big stage and we’re happy with how he’s progressed,” Mr Vick said.
