The T&T Pow­er­lift­ing As­so­ci­a­tion will fi­nal­ly stage a Na­tion­al Bench Press com­pe­ti­tion next year.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Pow­er­lift­ing Fed­er­a­tion Adri­an Brown said the move is to get in line with what's hap­pen­ing all over the world.

"All over the world for years now, peo­ple have been do­ing bench press­ing alone, in­stead of adding the dead­lifts and squats. In the Unit­ed States and oth­er parts of North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, there seems to be a pref­er­ence for the bench press event but it's just that in T&T, we have not caught up with it," Brown said.

The Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onship is be­ing set ten­ta­tive­ly for May or June. Brown said though he has ob­served bench press tak­ing place in num­bers all over the world for more than a decade now, in T&T they have been very slow to act.

"We see it when the na­tion­al team goes out to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions and at the gyms. The ide­al thing would have been to try it out at the gyms first, how­ev­er, we at the Na­tion­al Pow­er­lift­ing Fed­er­a­tion can­not force any gym to put on com­pe­ti­tions," Brown not­ed.

Mean­while, a bumper sea­son of pow­er­lift­ing events has been set for 2025. It in­cludes the Pow­er­lift­ing Na­tion­als which will get the sport off on Jan­u­ary 25-26 at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas. The event will be­gin with the weigh-in at 7 am, fol­lowed by the ac­tu­al com­pe­ti­tion which will get go­ing two hours lat­er at 9 am.

Apart from Na­tion­als, Brown said the One Pow­er Bar­bell Gym which usu­al­ly hosts a show an­nu­al­ly, will again have an event on the cal­en­dar next year but it will be on a larg­er scale. The Raw Fit­ness Gym, ac­cord­ing to Brown, is al­so ex­pect­ed to stage an event this year hope­ful­ly, while in ei­ther Ju­ly or Au­gust, the coun­try's na­tion­al team will head out to the Cay­man Is­lands to com­pete in the North Amer­i­can Pow­er­lift­ing Fed­er­a­tion Cham­pi­onships.

He said the coun­try usu­al­ly does well at this cham­pi­onships so they are look­ing for a bet­ter show­ing. Brown made it clear the na­tion­al team would on­ly be cho­sen from the na­tion­al cham­pi­onships and not from the oth­er com­pe­ti­tions on the pow­er­lift­ing cal­en­dar.

For the Na­tion­al Cham­pi­onships, the top pow­er­lifters will come to­geth­er to face off in nine di­vi­sions, for the right to wear the red, white and black at in­ter­na­tion­al events.