A – full power competition is the name given to traditional powerlifting competitions, where the lifter necessarily proceeds from the squat round, through the bench press round up to the deadlift round. He must have a valid “best lift” for each round, or else he is disqualified from the competition. The result of a full power competition is given by the “total”, which is the sum of the lifter’s best squat, best bench press and best deadlift.
Fourth attempts for record breaking purposes are not counted to make the total.
A lifter may not choose to lift at the bench press round and skip the squat and the deadlift, or any other combination of lifts (also known as “self-service powerlifting”). He will necessarily do all three lifts.
In a full power competition, all lifters will lift together in their assigned flight, except for those that are disqualified in the squat or bench press round, who will not reach the deadlift round.
A single lift competition is organized for a given lift – bench press or deadlift only. All the lifters will be organized in flights and lift at the same flight throughout the meet.
Push-pull competitions are bench press and deadlift championships. Usually the result is not based on a total composed of the sum of the lifter’s best bench press and best deadlift.
Single lift or push-pull competitions may NEVER be combined with full power competitions. This means that if a lifter registered to take part on a bench-only competition, he will be placed with other bench-only lifters in their specific rounds. A single-lift lifter may NEVER be accommodated in the respective round of a full power competition.
In other words, an organizer may NOT accommodate the bench-only or push-pull lifters in the bench flights and deadlift flights of the full power competition. This is easy to understand by logic: such a meet would be a hybrid combination of full power and single-lift/push-pull meets, hurting the rationale of both, since:
– Full power lifters will not proceed in the tidy, up to 15 members groups they were organized into and their squat, bench press and deadlift rounds will have random duration
– The benchers and deadlifters have a hard time planning their participation, since they are being inserted into another competition as an “extra”
It is also easy to understand that such arrangements, besides ruining the full power lifters’ performance, is a confrontation to powerlifting’s traditions.