Lecheminant grows as a powerlifter

When Orson Lecheminant heads to Peak Performance for his workouts, it turns out the weights might just be lifting him too.

The 15-year-old Crocus Plains student from Brandon, who will be attending the Canada Powerlifting National Championships from March 9 to 14 in St. John’s, N.L., said the training has changed him as a person.

“It’s the personal rewards that I get,” Lecheminant said. “Working hard, I see it through my body and my mentality, not just in the gym but work outside the gym, like in my actual job and schoolwork. I put all my effort into that the same way I do I powerlifting.

“I think it just made me a better person and gave me more respect for myself.”

Lecheminant played basketball and volleyball in Grades 7 and 8 — “I was decent but I wasn’t a prodigy or anything” — but he started going to the gym when he was in Grade 7.

His mother Lisa is a bodybuilder, so the inspiration was close at hand. He quickly learned that was important.

“You’ve really got to find the confidence in yourself because it’s not a team sport where there are other people around you,” Lecheminant said. “There’s no one to motivate you or telling you do something. To do the stuff you’re supposed to, you have to be accountable for yourself and make sure you’re doing it yourself.

“That’s hard for some people. You just have to be obsessed with what you do and what your goal is.”

In the sport, athletes compete in the squat, bench press and deadlift, in that order, with the goal of posting the highest combined total.

The gains have come quickly for Lecheminant, whose personal bests are 259 pounds in the bench, 331 in the squat and 380 in the deadlift. While it’s obviously a physical sport, it also has a significant mental component.

“I need to get into my emotions and get into my head and be one with myself,” Lecheminant said. “I don’t really think about anything else that is surrounding me. I don’t really know about anything that’s around me. I’m in my own head and tapped into my emotions.”

He’s been to just one provincial event, last May in Winnipeg, and this will be his first nationals.

At provincials, he went 8-for-9 on his lifts and achieved his national qualifying totals. But he didn’t do it without some drama, because he missed on his third bench press.

“With bench press being my best lift, that was the lift I was counting on to secure my national qualifying total, but I failed,” Lecheminant said. “So on my last deadlift, my last lift of the day, if I didn’t lift that, I wouldn’t have qualified for nationals. It was that lift and it was a grinder, it was hard. “I didn’t think I was going to get it — my back was hurting before and the warmups didn’t feel great — and I was not expecting to pull it.

“I pulled it and I dropped it and freaked out. I cried. I was telling my parents ‘I didn’t know I could lift that.’”

He had a bit of a setback with a hip injury for a few months since but is hoping to be completely through it soon. While that negatively affected his squat and deadlift, he continued to work on his bench and did what he could with the surrounding muscle groups around his hip to ensure he wouldn’t be starting over when he healed up.

At nationals, he is competing in the sub-junior division for ages 14 to 18 in the 66-kg (145-pound) division, which is within a couple of pounds of where he’s at now, making it an easy cut.

Now he’s ready to go.

“My big goal is to podium,” Lecheminant said. “I want to get top three. I try to keep up with my competitors’ training through social media and see where they’re at. It’s not like I’m chasing what they have but I want to set myself up for what they have so I can match it or beat it come game day.

“I like to set the bar high for myself. I don’t want to think before I go there that I’m not going to podium or I’m not going to do this or not do that. “Even if it is realistically out of reach, I’m going to tell myself I can do it and aim for that. If you don’t, you’re selling yourself short.”

» In future issues of The Brandon Sun, Brandon’s Halle McCorrister and Trinity Nwaozor discuss their journeys to powerlifting nationals.

» pbergson@brandonsun.com