Mt Everest Goals

I like to think that in the weights rooms we have two types of goals: bread and butter and Mt Everest. Bread and butter goals being adding a few kilos here and a few kilos there to your lifts and your total. Then you have the Mt Everest goal, the one that will take years to achieve and when you have done it, it has true meaning. 

The question I challenge you with, do you have a Mt Everest goal? I don’t mean just a number you wrote down or one you joke about in the gym, saying that you will get this one day. I mean a true Mt Everest goal that you want. A goal you want so bad you would do anything to get it, a goal that has true personal meaning behind it, one that scares you, a goal that once you get it will leave you an emotional mess. 

Just like Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay showing the world what is possible, in the pursuit of moving kilos many who have come before you have done the numbers you want, just showing what is possible “for you”. “For you” being the key line, unless you look like Eddie Hall or Thor a 500kg deadlift should not be your Mt Everest. Make yours personal to you! 

Once you have locked down this number, my challenge to you is share it with those who are close to you. If you truly have it right you should be scared to say it, but when you have said it those around you will back you, knowing you can do it.  

For me I’ve been lucky enough to do this three times in my lifting career. 

20/5/17: 270kg deadlift at 90kg. The long journey probably started in 2007 or 2008 when I first pulled 220kg. Back then I always wanted 300. Coming back from a couple years off due to some discs hanging out my spine in 2016 and restarting the journey of lifting, I had resigned the path to 300 and decided I wanted to take down a triple bodyweight deadlift.  

29/9/2018:  300kg rev band squat 

Coming from the glory days of equipped powerlifting I felt like I had unfinished business in the equipment. I set my sights on a comp in Perth. I had a target of 300/180/290. For this training run I was lucky enough to train alongside Luke Poli who in his comp in September (Big Dogs) totalled 1000kg for the first time. The two of us squated together every Saturday. This will go down as one of my most memorable training runs. My last squat session I squatted 280kg and I had programmed a reverse band 300kg next.  Check out the environment in the vid, that number was going to happen no matter what! Unfortunately when I unracked the bar I had subluxed my shoulder, torn my labrum and had a fracture, so unfortunately I didn’t get to compete but you better believe I still squatted the weight. To this day this squat is my proudest achievement in squatting.  

2/6/2021: Mt Everest climb number 3, the one I have been chasing since the day I started deadlifting, the 300kg deadlift.  

Post pulling 270 in 2016, I put this number back on the board. With my daughter, Kendra’s due date looming at the end of June, I set the goal to finish what I first started out to do in 2013. I missed it many times, learned from every miss and calibrated everything towards this day!! 

These are my stories, my Mt Everest that I have now been lucky enough to set out and climb and complete. For now I find myself scratching around for my next summit. Will it be a 300kg wrap squat, a total in a competition or a worlds. In the New Year I’ll start to lock this down.  

Learn from my journey. From 2007 to 2021 I have been lucky enough to successfully complete three summits. Each one took longer than I thought, I had to constantly recalibrate the goal and path I took to achieve it. Most importantly watch the video, look at the emotion, see what it meant for me to get it, watch how stoked my friends were for me to achieve these milestones. For when you set yourself your Mt Everest goal, you too can have these amazing experiences! 

“Sometimes it’s important to focus on things that are important to you.”