Kevin Llewallyn
Jackson Powell might have just officially begun his career as a powerlifter, but he’s already doing things that few people in the sport have seen.
Competing in his first officially sanctioned United States Powerlifting Association (USPA) event on January 18, the Baylor junior broke the national record in all three lifts – squat (832 pounds), bench press (380 pounds), and dead lift (644 pounds) – which also gave him the new mark for the combined weight of 1,856 pounds.
“My squat was a new personal best for me both in the gym and in competition,” Jackson said of his performance.
“I’ve benched 405 in the gym, but it was ugly and wouldn’t meet competition specifications. The 380 pound lift was the best I’d ever done in a competition, and my dead lift was the same. I would like to think I haven’t hit my limit; I haven’t hit a potential peak yet in my lifting.”
Jackson got his start in weight-lifting in the seventh grade. That’s when he met the Raiders’ strength and conditioning coach Dave Reynolds.
“In the seventh grade I came into the weight room and saw the football team lifting, so I jumped in and did a squat workout with them,” said the soft-spoken Jackson. “I squatted 405 pounds, and I’d never lifted anything like that.”
When Reynolds saw Jackson’s raw talent, combined with his proto-typical powerlifting physical frame, he had just one question to ask him: “Do you want to be good or great?”
“He chose the great.”
Jackson lifted throughout middle school, but really got serious about the sport in his freshman year as he started to learn more and trained for it after football season. He competed in his first event in April of his freshman year.
From that point, Jackson – who now stands at 5’10” and 340 pounds – dedicated himself to the sport. He typically lifts five days a week for an average of an hour to an hour and a half. That runs contrary to some who may not have a lot of knowledge of the sport and feel that in order to compete at that level it requires being in the gym for several hours every day.
“Typically I take Wednesdays and Sundays off, but sometimes I take the entire weekend off depending on how my body feels,” Jackson said. “It’s important to take a step back and take a day off during the workouts. When I put in a really heavy squat workout and follow that up with a really heavy day on bench, that day off is critical because it gives your body a day to recover and catch back up so I’m ready to go again the next day. You don’t have to spend hours a day in the gym; it’s how you spend that time.”
Jackson – who is from Chickamauga, Georgia – is motivated by a lot of things, but his eyes lit up and his smile widened from ear to ear when he talked about the two people who have meant the most to him in his life – his mom, Diane Griffey, and his younger sister Leslie.
“I could never thank my mom enough for what she’s done for me,” said Jackson after a brief pause. “The sacrifices that she’s made to get us (to Baylor) and to keep us here are unreal. She’s always been there as a support. All the times that I didn’t want to come to school or didn’t want to keep going, she’s been there and told me that I can do it. She’s always been that driving force behind me to keep me going.”
“My sister and I make the 30-minute drive to school together,” said Jackson, whose sister is a sophomore at Baylor. “We fight like cats and dogs sometimes, but in the end I love her to death. She’s my biggest supporter. She’s really big into the arts. She’s a very good artist, and what she does is unbelievable.”
Jackson also has a special relationship with Reynolds, with the two becoming more like friends than coach and athlete.
“He makes it easy to love him and care for him and like him,” said Reynolds. “He’s just a great kid. He’s been adopted by my family and has become like family to us.”
“He works his tail off; you will never outwork this kid. He’s not afraid of hard work, and just comes in here and does it. He’s gone on this journey, and he’s had a lot of people behind him. I’ve been in this for 25 years, and it blows my mind to this day how fast he gets strong. A buddy of mine from Georgia State came up here the other day and wanted to know how ‘The Beast’ was doing. That’s what they call him down there because they don’t have a guy doing what he’s doing.”
“My mom and my sister are my support team, along with Big Dave and his family,” said Jackson. “Everybody here (at Baylor) who doesn’t come to the competitions are always behind me, too. It’s amazing; I never thought I’d get this far, and with what I’ve been doing there’s no stopping now.”
The other thing that fuels Jackson’s drive to become great is his desire to become successful in the face of those who have told him that he couldn’t. He talked about how he uses those people and all of the things he’s heard throughout the years when he’s preparing to lift.
“Going into a competition I am a little nervous, but when I get in there I put myself in a box. It’s kind of like a controlled state of rage. It’s that place where I want to prove the people wrong that said I couldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t make it at a school like Baylor or go far in powerlifting. I put myself in that box where I hear the things in my head those people have said. I put myself in a mindset like ‘Watch this.’ I think everybody has to find the dislike in their life and channel that into what they love, but I channel that hate into my powerlifting and I’m ready to roll.”
The young phenom is turning heads in the powerlifting community. In a typical powerlifting competition, competitors are divided into classes by age, category, and weight. Jackson competes at super heavyweight, which is any weight over 308 pounds. Athletes get three attempts at each of the lifts, and the heaviest successful lift is the one that counts.
Jackson said that the strategy is typically to open at a weight that he is comfortable lifting for three reps during his workout. His second attempt is usually an amount that is closer to his max, while his third lift is always set at a new personal best, assuming the first two lifts were successful.
During his first competition, the typical fire that he has to prove his doubters wrong was aided by new skepticism.
“Before the competition started, I had to give the officials the weight that I was going to open with in the squat. All of the weights are in kilos, so there is a chart to convert over from pounds. I told the official I wanted to open at 347.5 (766 pounds), and he told me that he was going to need the weight in kilos, not in pounds. When I told him that was in kilos, he looked at me filled with doubt and said okay.”
“He was one of my spotters when I did my lift, and I moved it easily which completely shocked him. It felt great to prove myself to someone who doubted me.”
Jackson’s lift of 832 pounds – which was a new personal best – obliterated the record by around 200 pounds. He hopes to keep pushing the limits and admits that his other two lifts, particularly the bench press, have room for improvement. His goal for the next competition is to reach 2K, or 2,000 pounds overall, which is a gold standard for powerlifting and will put him in a different tier of lifters.
While powerlifting is not recognized as a TSSAA sport, Jackson hopes that it will someday be introduced at least at the club level because he feels that there are a lot of kids in high schools across the state that would benefit from having the opportunity to compete in a sport not many know about.
“I would love to see it become bigger in high school because when I go to meets I see more and more younger people competing. There are clubs that you can join to compete, but I would like to see more recognition in schools whether it’s with the TSSAA or not, and kids be given the information and resources on how to compete.”
Jackson hopes that his recent performance gets him invited to international competitions where he can have the opportunity to break world records. He doesn’t know exactly when he will compete next, saying that the competitions move around a lot and if he isn’t competing internationally he just has to catch more local competitions at the right time.
One thing he does know is that he wants to pursue this after he graduates from Baylor, and for as long as he is able to compete.
“I want to do this for as long as I can, until I’m old and have a few marbles running loose upstairs. I love it; it’s my favorite thing to do. When I get out of high school, I’m looking at hopefully going to college, and if I don’t get a scholarship to lift I’m still going to pursue it. Then after college, it’ll just be wherever I can go from there. I have talked to a school in Missouri that offers a scholarship, and if they offer one I’d like to go there. But if that doesn’t work out I’ll continue to lift on my own and get a private coach.”
“I’ve always been taught to be humble,” Jackson concluded. “But (when I do well at competitions) I think to myself that I did that, and I’ll continue to do that as I move forward. I’ve made myself one of the greats and I’ll continue to. I know I’m a little fish in a big pond right now, but one of these days I’ll come out on top.”
(Contact Kevin Llewallyn at kevin.llewallyn@gmail.com)
Baylor's Jackson Powell works on his squat in preparation for a meet.