I met Mike McGivern a couple of days before his wedding. It was raining. His fiancé was very worried about it doing the same on their big day.

My girlfriend and I moved to Kansas City, Missouri, a few days before I met Mike. He runs the small gym in our apartment complex. He offered to show us around. I shook his hand. The tour didn’t take long; you can pretty much see the entire thing standing in one place.

He pointed out the locker rooms, told us to check them out. He’d meet us at the front desk if we had any questions. Kristin and I scoped out the locker rooms; they were fine. As I wandered towards the front desk to ask Mike about membership options, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the wall: bios of Mike and his co-worker.

The paper said Mike had a degree in fitness management and really impressive numbers in the back squat, bench press and deadlift. Impressive enough to be a nationally ranked powerlifter, actually. “Hey, Kristin, check this out.”

She looked at the piece of paper. “Wait. That weenie?” she asked, pointing at Mike sitting at the front desk, browsing the internet.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
I had to learn more. “Maybe after my wedding,” Mike agreed to chat.
“Of course, man. I look forward to talking next week. Good luck with everything," I shook his hand again.
The weather cooperated on his wedding day. Very warm, beautiful and sunny.

When you Google USPA, the first result is United States Parachute Association. The quip below the link says they have nearly 35,000 members, dedicated to promoting skydiving. The ad above is for USPS Priority You™, in the banner to the left the United States Polo Association. The second result is United States Powerlifting Association.

The website for the USPA (the powerlifting one) is a WordPress blog from the early 2000s. Mike competes in the USPA. He’s been active for less than a year. He’s done four meets.

People tell him to be careful, don’t want to burn out. We spoke in November. The next meet on his schedule was December 6th, the Strong Like Bull Kansas City Powerlifting Championships at Impact Elite Gym.

If you grew up in the Midwest, you recognize Mike’s story. He was raised on a farm in Dysart, Iowa. His father and brother still run it. He played sports to get out of having to do farm work, though he still did plenty of farm work. He was always lifting, throwing or fixing something.

Mike played four sports in high school: football, basketball, track and baseball...a few conference championships in there, some long distance running, his football team always got walloped because they were the smallest school in the 3A division.
Through his junior year, Mike didn’t do much work in the gym--bench and curls with his brother, and that was about it. Mike’s father, the farmer, had played football in college. His son was small for a quarterback and a pitcher; he called him a wuss and a wimp. He sent his boys to the basement where he stored a hodgepodge of workout equipment, saying, “Don’t come back up ‘til you’ve done fifty dips each.” Mike shared this story with a smile, rubbing the back of his neck.

Mike went on to play baseball at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. They won four conference titles. Their strength and conditioning consisted of running, plyometrics and some med ball stuff. Mike was a closer, a pitcher. Nerves never got to him the way they did to other closers. He was only focused on success.

In college he weighed 170 pounds. He could bench press 350, didn’t do much deadlifting and never had a good reason to put more than three plates on the bar for the back squat, 315 pounds was probably his best. He got his degree, said goodbye to his baseball buddies and moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Monday is press day. Wednesday deadlift. Saturday is squat day for the powerlifting team at Stone and Barbell Club in Overland Park, Kansas, where Mike trains now.

We spoke on a Thursday, the morning after a deadlift session. Mike got up to stretch and said, “Wasn’t my day, man. I had a few drinks last Friday and Saturday, at my wedding.”

Each workout looks pretty similar. Start with the primary lift, work up to a set of three at an RPE (rating of perceived exertion) of 8, then a set of three at an RPE of 9. Do a few back off sets, and then move onto an exercise that focuses on the weak portion of your lift. For back squats, Mike does pause squats with a cambered bar. When that’s done, he finishes with some accessory work: triceps press downs on press day, front squat on deadlift day.

Mike says it’s all about the effort you put in. “You don’t do anything else?” He gets that question a lot from his friends.
“Nah. It’s enough. On Friday, I may move a little bit. Bike or foam roll. Work out some kinks,” he explains.

For lunch on the day we met, Mike had Chinese food, extra rice. He walks around at 190 pounds, and competes at 181. It’s work for him to keep the weight on. They have a snack drawer at home, and his wife has a four-year-old son.

“I start my workouts around 6:30 PM,” he says. “Everyone rolls in. Some of those guys hang out all night. I don’t. I gotta get home to my family.”

Mike moved from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines, Iowa in 2010. He had a decent personal training job, and he found powerlifting online: www.elitefts.net. He couldn’t get enough. He absorbed as much information on powerlifting as possible. YouTube helped.
At this time, he wrote most of his own workouts: a little Wendler 531, but mostly whatever. Each lift once a week. Squat grew to 495 pounds, deadlift about the same, meet quality bench at 365.

In Des Moines, he balked on a few meets. Signed up, then pulled out. “I always had some excuse. Never a good one,” he says.
He fell in love with a girl in Kansas City in 2013 and moved there.

December 6th, 2014.

Mike looks very different than most of the competitors at the Strong Like Bull Kansas City Powerlifting Championships at Impact Elite Gym. He’s all limbs; they’re all gut.

My girlfriend and I sat reading on our Kindles. The bench was up next; the squat flights had just finished with an 880 pound squat by JP Price. The staff bought about 20 large pizzas for the competitors. Everyone was taking a break as they were consumed.
Mike wandered over to say hello. His eyes looked bruised, broken blood vessels maybe. “I just pounded jelly. Needed the sugar.”
“Awesome lifts, man. Thanks for having us,” I said. I shook his hand.

“Yeah. Not feeling great. I was hoping for twenty pounds more,” he sad. Mike’s final squat looked easy. The crowd got very loud when the weights got heavy. They admired and respected strength. And beards.

The lady behind us was the mother of Mike’s coach, who was also competing. “LET’S GO GREENO. YOU GOT THIS GREENO. UPUPUPUPUPUP. YEAH. GREAT JOB. I’m sorry. That’s my son. I’m proud of him. YEAH GREENO. LOOK OVER HERE. PICTURE.”

Mike pointed out his teammates. “My big, dysfunctional family.”

The family aspect was clear. Intense conversations with faces very close together, hugs and screams, pats on the back that would paralyze a weak man. There were ladies competing, young men and old ones. The head judge turned to us during the bench and said, “You can make some noise for these lifters.” We obliged.

Here’s a video from Mike’s last meet, August 2014. 639 pound squat. 402 pound bench. 645 pound deadlift. Body weight of 180 pounds.
The lifts look easy.
He’s now the number one lifter in his weight class in USPA’s classic raw division.
At his first meet, less than a year ago, Mike hit 540 pounds for the squat, 330 bench, 551 deadlift.
“How did you improve your numbers so much, so fast?” I asked.
“I learned how to lift. And how to peak for a meet.”
When I asked Mike a question that made him think, he’d say, “Jeepers,” or “Oh gosh.” He said neither when it came time to focus on competition.
“In a meet, you default to what you’re comfortable with. In training, you can focus on your weaknesses, but in a meet, you do what you know,” he said.
He filled me in on many of the things he has learned about how to succeed at a powerlifting meet: how to prep for weigh-ins, the shenanigans of a warm-up room, how to eat over the course of the day, and so forth.
“Why compete at all?" I asked. "You said there’s no money, no glory. It doesn’t even align with health. Your words. ”
“Everyone likes to do what they’re good at," he explained. "I’ve always liked being strong. I never want to fall into the trap of being average. I always wanna be exceptional at something.”

In powerlifting, you decide your fate. This was one of the first things that drew Mike to the sport. “You need to be your strongest once. For nine lifts,” he explained.

On December 6th, Mike hit seven out of nine lifts. “I was very disappointed with how I did," he said. He wanted bigger numbers, to feel better. In my humble opinion, there was no reason to be disappointed. “For me, success is fun,” That's Mike's mantra.
650 pound squat. 407 bench. 633 deadlift. 1692 pound total.

“...2.5 kg meet PR HAHA.” This is from an email sent early in the morning, two days after the meet.
When Mike lifts, his gaze is focused a mile in the distance. To a point the rest of us can’t see. He doesn’t yell, hardly grunts. As one lifts ends he turns all of his focus to the next.
I saw him smile as well. It looked like he was having fun.

Mike and his wife and son have two dogs, a pug-Chihuahua mix and a lab-retriever-collie mix. “That must be the smartest dog ever,” I proffered.

“No. Mix those three and you get the dumbest dog ever,” Mike laughed, and showed me a picture of them both on his phone. They looked like brothers from another mother. I’m not even sure they’re both male.

Mike’s total on December 6th handily won his weight class. He placed second in the meet to the gentleman who completed the 46th best total of all time. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC1j_UargTc)

“I’m looking forward to doing nothing. Time for a nice long break,” he says. It’s deserved, I think.

He has no plans to do any of the national meets in the foreseeable future. He turned down invitations to the Olympia and the LA Fit Expo. “You don’t know who’s going to be there. I’d have to take three days off work. And my wife just isn’t into it. Maybe someday if I get sponsored,” he says.

Mike thinks a total of 1750 pounds is in his future. That was the world record in his weight class until a year ago. Now it’s up in the 1830s.

“I have a permanent chip on my shoulder. I always want to be getting better at something,” he says, adding that he is terrified of becoming old and inept.

Mike’s Facebook profile picture is of him and his wife. Other than a few pokes from her, his feed is all about powerlifting.
During our first conversation, Mike said, “I’ll compete as long as my body lets me.” I believe him.