>> And I just want to look back one day and have no regrets.

I can do anything I put my mind to.

Failure isn't in the back of my head.

It's more so like, how much can I do?

And what more is out there?

>> Looking good.

>> I'm human.

I have bad days, just like everyone else.

But I don't allow that to consume me.

If I'm thinking negative or if I'm thinking about the worst-case outcome, then most likely it's going to happen.

So I believe what you put your effort and your mind towards is what's going to happen.

>> The world is a tough place.

And it can fold you if you allow it.

When I walked into the sport, I said I wanted to be the best squatter in the world.

I didn't give myself a timeline because I know I can't do that because anything can happen.

But also, I'm trying to do something people have never done before.

>> Oh, my God!

>> I'm trying to figure out how to say this without making it sound terrible.

I hate having people be better than me.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> During the Jim Crow era, black individuals were denied access to gyms and YMCA facilities.

This exclusion led to fewer black people being introduced to the sport.

Dom, Jamarr, and Evan hope to inspire more black athletes to participate in powerlifting.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> My name is Dominic Rowden.

I'm a powerlifter in both the USAPL and Powerlifting America.

I'm a 90kg to 93kg athlete, which means I compete at about 198 to 205 pounds.

I've been doing that for eight years.

It's been a huge part of my life.

But not only am I an athlete, I'm also a business owner, YouTuber, rehab specialist, massage-therapy student, and I'm just a man trying to make an impact in the world.

Truthfully, I was always someone that loved sports.

I loved football, played baseball.

Did track and field and the lifting weights was always my passion.

When I was 14 to about 19 years old, I was a trainer at a gym, and at that gym we had this guy that came in.

He was big on powerlifting, heavyset dude with a beard, and he was like, "You're pretty strong" because I was always squatting.

I was always benching and dead-lifting.

And he was like, "You know, you should try this sport."

And I was like, "What's the sport called?"

He's like, "It's actually where you compete against other people in how strong you are on these big three lifts."

So I signed up for it.

Had no idea what to expect.

He coached me for like two weeks and then he ended up quitting the job.

But knowing who I am as a person, I was like, "Well, if I signed up for it, I'm going to finish it."

So I ended up doing it.

I did my competition with no training, no formal training, to say the least.

And then I kind of went in there and just maxed out.

And then I actually ended up winning.

And that was kind of a gauge to tell me that I might be good at this.

You know, I might be pretty good.

>> My name is Jamarr Royster.

I am a recipe developer, food-and-product photographer, and I'm a powerlifter.

♪♪ ♪♪ I grew up food insecure, so I've turned my pain into my passion.

You know, tough story.

It is what it is.

But I had to learn at an early age how to feed myself.

Sometimes the only meals I got were if you can make it to school on time, breakfast, lunch, and whenever mom gets home to make whatever we had.

In the meantime, we had to fight to survive.

I went on Skillshare for like a year and learned everything I possibly could about food photography because I enjoyed cooking and people enjoyed seeing that on social media.

Some people would argue that I'm really good at it.

I would argue that I have a lot to learn, and I think we can say that about a lot of things in life.

So the food photography just kind of came into play, where I was like, okay, I can turn this into a profession.

And that's why I invest in learning the skills of food photography.

In my early 20s, I saw a guy named Ray Williams squat 1,000 pounds.

I was like, "Oh, that's dope.

I would love to do that."

But from that moment till now, I completely forgot that ever existed.

So I was approached in a gym when I was about 26 years old in 2016.

And a guy was like seeing -- he watched me squat.

And obviously I'm great at squatting.

It is what it is.

So that's a lift that I love.

I've always done since I was a kid.

I really enjoy that.

And he saw me squatting like, at this time, 550 pounds.

He was like, "Oh man, you could, really break some records, dude."

And I was like, "Oh, well, you know, what is powerlifting?"

You know?

And that's kind of how, you know, I was introduced to the sport by someone saying that I could break records.

And that's what was my interest in the sport.

It wasn't the sport itself.

I had nothing to do with -- it was just the idea that I could do something crazy in the sport, and that was to break records.

So when I saw that, I was like, I don't care about state records.

I care about, like, the American or what they call the national records, because I felt like that was very manageable and doable, and I did that.

So that was my introduction to powerlifting.

And then eventually I jumped into my first meet not too long after that, and in my first meet, I broke the drug-free National record in that sport, which was crazy at 180 pounds.

So it's like 535 pounds, something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, we did that.

♪♪ So I've competed at the national stage countless times.

I've placed on the podium countless times at nationals.

I've competed at the highest level.

I've broken American records across the board in all of my weight classes.

I was the first 83kg lifter, which is 182 pounds, to squat 700 pounds, something people didn't think was possible at the time.

So I was the first to do that.

From then I've squatted 800 pounds couple of times on the platform.

I've broken the unofficial world record squat in my weight class, which is now 93kg, 205 pounds at 788 pounds, and that was about 44 pounds over the world record.

So it's unofficial because I didn't do it at the world stage, and that's one place I haven't gone yet.

It's not impossible for me to go.

I just haven't gone that route to get there yet, which will be very possible within the next year for me.

So I've competed at the highest levels, I've competed on the highest stages, and I've competed against the best of the best of the best athletes.

And that's not an overstatement.

That is true.

I've competed with the best.

>> My name is Evan Wimbish.

I am a powerlifter and a powerlifting coach.

I would definitely say primarily a powerlifting coach.

Not that I'm not a heavy competitor, but my main focus is coaching.

After I graduated college, I graduated Catawba College with a exercise physiology degree and just a coaching minor.

So a coaching philosophy minor and I started competing in 2018 and then late 2018, early 2019, I coached a friend for her first powerlifting meet.

I'll give her a shout-out.

Hannah Bennett.

She's still my client now.

Really great individual.

But ever since then I've been a part of the sport of powerlifting, competing and coaching.

People trust us with a lot.

And it's something that you only understand the joy if you've been there with someone because you see their highs, like, I mean, all of their highs.

But you also see their lows.

I've seen injuries.

I've seen, you know, training cycles that just don't go well.

Um, terrible meets.

But you stand with them during those times and you don't leave them.

And that's how it's always been for me.

And that's how I always want to give back to the people who trust me and work with me.

For a lifter that comes with me, the first thing I tell them is just be patient and be inquisitive because there's a lot that needs to be learned about the sport.

People say it's easy, but in my opinion, if you want to have longevity in the sport, if you want to progress, you need some type of patience and you need some understanding.

And you need to be okay with asking questions.

And you need to be okay with progressing in whatever fashion that you can.

Some people, it comes naturally.

Some people have sports backgrounds, or some people have never lifted a day in their lives and they need to understand how to squat, how to bench, how to dead-lift.

They need to learn, you know, bracing, shelfing.

Like, there's so many smaller nuances that are, I would say, natural to some people but not to others.

So understanding that your journey is your own and you need patience in that journey is important.

>> So we only have three opportunities to showcase how strong we've gotten.

Did we progress or did we not like meet the mark that we set for ourselves?

So, in a sense, you are training by yourself right on that day of the competition.

But when you're in the off-season, some people have a great community of individuals that are going to help you, uplift you, and keep you accountable.

And I think that's something that we have here at our gym, honestly.

>> So when you get that competitive friendship, that competitive camaraderie, you're going to elevate to the next level.

And you don't get that by just being stagnant or just being a "yes" man.

Right?

We're pushing each other, but we're also "Hey, make sure you do the right thing here and do this and do that and make sure you're on your P's and Q's."

So you hold each other accountable on top of these things.

So what comes with that community and family is accountability.

There's all these branches that come with this beautiful community that you create.

>> Honestly, one thing about me is one, I'm stubborn.

But two...

I'm trying to figure out how to say this without making it sound terrible.

I hate having people be better than me.

That's where my competitiveness comes in.

I love to see people grow.

I love to see people do what they do.

But also when I see that, I always remind myself that I can do it, too.

Like, it's seeing other people be so successful that reminds me that I can also be as successful.

>> Our community here is unmatched.

We have, in my opinion, the best squatters in the world.

We have some of the strongest people in North Carolina.

Like, North Carolina is on the map.

So in my opinion, it's California is really strong.

Texas is up there.

But between Texas and North Carolina, we're like neck and neck.

We have world-record holders.

we have, just like, no matter where you go for a competition, you could be going against some of the best of the best athletes in the nation and that community, just being around those individuals, it only pushes you to do better.

So that's what I love about what we have here at this gym or just in the state is that we have a plethora of athletes setting the tone not only for the state but on a national level.

And when you have that to look around at these competitions that you go to, I don't know how that can't inspire you to be your best.

>> It's the unspoken moments that matter the most, like when Jamarr hits a big squat.

It's unspoken because it's like, "All right, now I need to do something."

When Dom hits a big squat, it's like, "I need to do something."

When, you know, if I'm dead-lifting, same thing for them.

They're like, "All right."

You know, it's like, I see you without having to say anything.

And that's where the community comes in.

Because it's not that we're trying to one-up each other, it's that we're trying to continue to raise the bar for each other.

And that's what a good community does.

It doesn't always have to be the picturesque, you know, loud cheers the whole time.

Like, you know, it doesn't always have to be that.

It doesn't.

It can be that silent reminder that whatever you do, I can do and whatever you haven't accomplished hasn't been accomplished yet.

And I think that's the big thing.

It's never in a matter of saying like, "You can't do this."

There's always that "yet" at the end of it.

It's like, "I do this.

You can also do this."

>> So if I tell you I've been lifting since I was 14 years old, I'm now 33 and you see an 800 squat, naturally you're going to think, "Oh, that's unnatural."

But what you don't see is those 15-plus years of hard work, doing the same mundane movement day in and day out that focuses specifically on how to move this weight very efficiently and on top of that, in the safest manner possible.

That's a lot of time put in to execute, right?

It's not almost like -- it's a profession, right?

You don't expect a quarterback not to learn or know how to read a defense, right?

So if I'm spending about 15 years in this profession, I should know how to squat, bench and dead-lift and do it efficiently and also move the most amount of weight possible day in and day out, doing this for over the course of 15-plus years.

These are things people don't see.

Again, they see the end result, not the process, because looking at the process will actually give you all the answers you need to know.

So any idea about drug use in the sport of powerlifting or drug-free powerlifting, that is, I, I just think that it's just one of those things where people don't understand because they can't understand and comprehend how much work and effort you have to put into it.

>> I'm protecting my spine.

That's the cool thing about his lifting is that he does everything belt-less, which is a lot harder.

But don't discredit it.

I'm still strong.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> So all of these are warm-up sets.

So depending on the session or depending on the lifter, we'll either do a lot of reps at lower weight to kind of get our bodies warm and efficient.

But as we get heavier and heavier in loads, we try to essentially save energy.

So you'll start seeing us only doing a singular rep to kind of get a depiction of how much strength that we have on the day without over-exhausting ourselves before we get to what we would consider a top set.

>> Yes.

>> And the top set is like the heaviest portion of the session, essentially.

So you do warm-ups, do a top set, and then you might have like a back-off set or back-down sets, which are like the volume work or the rep work that follows whatever heavy stimulus that you get.

>> So everything that we're doing now is just leading up to that.

So right here, this is my top set and this is week one.

Week one means we're just beginning a block of training.

And there's 4 to 5 weeks of training usually.

And we build momentum going into that heaviest exertion being at the end.

So we pick a number that we can do that's still going to give us that stimulus but not overreach to the point that we're, you know, unloading the clip on, you know, too early, which causes us to start to regress or just build up too much fatigue.

So, yeah, it's all about listening to your body and trusting in that process, too.

So...long term.

Do about four reps.

This is bringing back that shoot that we did with -- >> Oh, man.

>> Yeah.

>> I remember that.

I remember that.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> So with us, we get tested very, very frequently, whether at a competition.

We also have out-of-meet testing.

So I know like Jamarr and some other people, like, they'll come here and you have to tell them where you're going to be at all times.

So that way they can come test you no matter what.

They're not going to tell you.

So our drug-testing protocols are pretty, pretty intense, which helps the sport keep it fair.

That doesn't say some people are not using, but I like to pride myself on knowing that what I'm doing is really just -- it's God.

To be honest, it's God's grace to let my body be able to do and hold up for this many years.

And it's just believing that all I have is all I need.

I don't need any enhancement to make me a better athlete or better person.

>> I think it's harder, a harder pill to swallow the truth, which is I'm spending my time day in and day out doing this profession.

I am a professional athlete doing this sport.

I work to make sure that I'm the best possible in condition, shape, health, and all that.

And when it comes to health and the benefits of that, we know that strength training helps with osteoporosis and all the good things that your body needs as you start to age and get older.

>> There's no right or wrong way to do it.

Just like anything, you'll never know unless you start it.

So the first thing I would say is just get into a gym.

Start to see if you like it.

You know, start constantly showing up 3 or 4 times a week, seeing what your body can do.

And then if you have this competitive aspect of wanting to compete and maybe, you know, try something new, then I would say hire a coach, find someone that is knowledgeable, that's going to help you and guide you along this journey.

>> I feel like the future of this sport is brighter than it's ever been.

Everyone knows what powerlifting is now.

Everyone knows what squat, bench, and dead lift is.

It's almost uncommon for people not to know what powerlifting is now.

So I can only see the future being so bright for this sport.

There's more money going into the sport, into these local meets, the higher-level meets.

There's thousands and thousands of dollars now in these sports.

And I'm so excited because we now get platforms and stages that elevate us as the athlete.

I would love to see more sponsorships within the sport outside of the typical sponsors we have.

Like, I would love to see like a Nike and whatnot into the sport to continue to give us more money to aid.

But with the growth of the sport, the popularity of the sport, I can, again, to me, the future's so bright.

I can't tell you what that looks like.

But I can tell you that it's already happening.

>> I think the sport is... has a plethora of amazing athletes, and I would say some of the best people right now are black athletes that are holding it down and breaking all plateaus and breaking all these stigmas of what was possible in this sport.

So I would say, man, this is only the beginning and that this is our time for sure.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪