Hobman has strong feelings about lifting

When Meghan Hobman wants something, she can be pretty persuasive. So, when she told her parents she wanted to be a powerlifter, her dad knew he was in trouble. “She’s very stubborn and things have to be her idea so when she came up with this she really pushed to get it done, ” recalled Keith Hobman.

Meghan just smiles when she hears that. “All I knew was that I wanted to do it. I really had to coax to get them to agree,” said the 12-year-old, who will be entering her first powerlifting competition for Western Canadians in Moose Jaw on Nov. 21, 1998.

A powerlifter himself, Hobman initially tried to discourage Meghan from the sport, thinking that it would damage the growing young girl’s spine and skeletal system. But after researching the sport and talking to a number of doctors and YWCA fitness director Roger Stalwick, Hobman and his wife Caroline decided to let Meghan give the sport a try.

“The studies that have been done have shown there is no danger to children doing strength training as long as it’s supervised,” says Stalwick. “And if you think about it logically, if kids can handle soccer, gymnastics, and figure skating where their bodies take a lot of pounding, strength training is a way to prevent injuries.” Stalwick admits powerlifting is at the extreme end of the scale but says from what he’s seen, the Hobmans are approaching the sport in a very responsible manner.

Hobman is a longtime coach and has direct supervision over his daughter’s workouts. In addition, Meghan says she did not lift a weight for the first six months but rather worked to develop a base and the overall strength and fitness necessary to try powerlifting. Once that was developed, Keith and Meghan spent the last six months working on technique–once again adapting the training to suit Meghan.

“We take exercises that would put unnecessary stress on her skeletal system and include exercises that help the supporting muscles around the skeletal system,” explains Hobman. For example, while Hobman would include an arch-back good morning lift (where you load a heavy weight on your shoulders and bend over as though bowing), he would never have Meghan even try such a move. Instead, he says, she does hyperextensions to strengthen the lower back and lumbar muscles. “It’s actually quite interesting working with Meghan because it forces you to re-evaluate all the exercises and how they work,” says Hobman.

That much was obvious during one of their training sessions as the father and daughter discussed each exercises and technique in detail before executing it. It’s a strategy that appears to be working, too, as Meghan has more than doubled the amount of weight she’s lifting in the past six months. For Westerns, for which the 12-year-old has to get special permission from the Canadian Powerlifting Union to allow her to compete in the 23-and-under junior division, Meghan has some specific goals. She wants to top 100 lbs in the bench press, 150 in the squat, and 200 in the deadlift. “I’m almost there,” she says proudly. “Actually I did 105 in the bench press on Monday in training.”

In other ways, Meghan is a typical 12-year-old. She’s in an accelerated learning program at Greystone Heights school. She likes to play ringette, basketball, and softball. She even tried ballet for a while. But nothing has been as interesting to her as powerlifting. “The lifts are fun and it’s kind of nice impressing people,” Meghan says with a smile, noting that there is a boy at school who won’t pick on her because she’s “too strong”. “But most people here (at the YWCA) know me. There’s not much reaction from people. Sometimes I get a few shocked stares but pretty much I’m just another person in the gym,” she said.

An added bonus for Keith Hobman is that he and his daughter have become closer because of the sport. “We’re both compelled to pick up heavy things, I guess, and it’s been great for us. We talk a lot and our relationship has really kind of taken off because we have this in common,” he said.

Still, Hobman admits that there are times when the roles of Dad and coach conflict. “As a parent, when you see your daughter under 150 pounds, especially in a squat, I’m thinking oh, no. As a coach I want her to lift it but as a dad, I just want her to get that weight off her back,” he says.

Meghan thinks he worries too much. “Dad’s a really good coach,” she says simply. “And I don’t think it matters how young you are, as long as you’re committed and take precautions so you don’t get hurt.”

starter workout

• Reverse hyperextension (3×10)
• Hyper-extension (3×10)
• Leg press (3×10)
• DB front raise (3×10)
• DB lateral raise (3×10)
• DB bench press (3×8)
• Triceps pushdown (3×10)
• Pulldown (3×10)
• Crunches (3×25)

day 1 (wednesday)

squat dynamic day

Low box squat (chains) 14×2 @ 65% – 45 seconds between sets

Assistance – hyper-extension / manual hamstring curl / reverse hyper-extension / hanging leg raise / wrist curl

day 2 (thursday)

bench dynamic day

Multi-grip bench press (chains) 10×3 @ 60% – 30 seconds between sets

Assistance – DB Paul Dyck press (7 sets of 8 reps with 15 seconds rest between sets) / DB cleans on a bench / lateral raise / stomach curl on a balance ball

DB cleans are done sitting on a bench with a light weight. The clean starts with the arms hanging and the shoulders rotated back. The dbs are then cleaned so the upper arms are parallel to the floor and the elbows are bent at 90 degrees. Lateral raises are done strict with the arms going straight out. For stomach curls we use an elastic band for resistance and then curl on a ball with the feet on the floor. We sometimes use a weight stack for resistance on this exercise as well.

day 3 (saturday)

squat / deadlift conjugate day

Zercher squats (to a max single)

Assistance – Weighted reverse hyper-extensions

Multi hip machine

Chest-supported rows

Hyper stomach

Reverse hypers you already know, but today we hang a weight from our heels while doing 4 sets of 8 or 10. The adults do Coan rows – very heavy – but Meghan does a chest supported seated row. Hypers stomachs are done by sitting facing upward on the hyper machine and sitting up with an elastic band for resistance. There is resistance throughout the entire movement with this exercise, but it switches from the upper to lower abdominals. Our theory is that anything that hurts this bad must be good for you!

day 4 (monday)

bench press conjugate day

Floor press to a max for one rep

Assistance – triceps extension / front plate raise / leg raise / hammer curl

During weeks 2 and 3 the low box squat with chains stays the same, only we increase weight and reduce sets. We go to 10 sets of 2 reps @ 76% and then 6 sets of 2 reps @ 82%. On the last day we test our one rep max in the box squat after doing the six sets to provide a basis for the next cycle. We then go onto a high box (about 15″ high) and repeat the three week cycle, except we can do much more weight with this box. We keep alternating back and forth between the two box, taking a max single every three weeks after the six sets of two reps.

The multi-grip bench doesn’t change. Once a month on our conjugate day we test our bench press in order to determine our 1 rep max for this exercise. Lifters that use bench shirts do 55% of their 1RM. Meghan doesn’t use a bench shirt so she does 60% of her 1RM. Chains are added to the weight determined above, not factored into the weight. This core exercise never changes throughout the year. However, our assistance exercises are constantly changing. Emphasis is placed on triceps, followed by front deltoid and chest exercises.

The main exercise on the conjugate day changes every 2-3 weeks and we are constantly trying to get new maxes on this day. The only exception is when we do deadlift singles where we base our attempts on between 65% and 80% of our contest deadlift and do singles at a very quick pace. This is our technique work on the deadlift. On average we do this about three weeks out of 12. The other nine weeks we switch between Zercher squats, arched back good mornings, arched back good morning squats, extra wide stance sumo squats on blocks and hi-bar balance ball squats. We use a wide range of assistance exercise including: cable pull through, pulldowns, shrugs, Zercher bench lifts, round back good morning, Zercher hyper- extensions, wide stance safety squats, hi rep deadlifts and numerous other exercises. Our conjugate day always has an exercise we test maximal strength in, reverse hyper-extensions and one other assistance exercise, stomach exercise and lat exercise. The bench conjugate day is similar. We test strength in floor presses, rack presses (doing three lifts lowering the rack from 3 inches to 6 inches to 9 inches every week for 3 weeks and doing as much weight as we can), board presses (lowering the bar to a board on our chest – either 2 2×6’s or 3 2×6’s screwed together) and a Miller floor press (lowering the bar until your elbows are on the floor then moving the bar a few inches towards your throat before pressing back up). Once again a wide variety of assistance exercise are done, normally one each for the triceps and front deltoid. Twice as many reps are done for the triceps as we do for the front deltoid.

As you can see there is nothing normal about Meghan’s program. I like this routine for her because it minimizes skeletal and joint stress, emphasizes acceleration which carries over into her other sports and allows us to focus on technique and first reps. Meghan has doubled her strength in all the power lifts in six months following this routine and is showing no signs of slowing down yet.

Meghan and dad Keith