Semi Final Recap

Hey you guys! I can’t thank everyone enough for the support over the last week and time before leading up to the event. It helped me train harder and it helped me pour every thing I had into this competition. I especially want to thank my wife Meredith for having my back and basically planning the trip down to Knoxville. She makes my life easy and she’s amazing! One funny thing that was repetitive over the weekend was when we were out and about dropping in at gyms or doing whatever people would ask Mere if she was competing and not me! HAHA. I’m never surprised because Mere definitely walks around with the better looking muscles!

I also want to thank the Kilo 2 staff for doing an amazing job holding down the fort and continuing to be great team members and coaches of this wonderful community.

I received a ton of email, texts, and social media shout outs which really helped raise my spirits as we were traveling and it meant a lot so thank you to you all!

This year it was my goal to qualify to a semi final which is basically replacing the old super regionals format, except now there are 4 semi finals in North America as where it used to be 6 super regionals back in 2015-2018. So it was even harder to qualify for this level compared to years past. There are fewer events, more talent, more athletes, etc. In years past I was always a few spots out of qualifying for a super regional as an individual so to just get here felt like a mission complete. Top 120 in all of North America was a hard task in itself for a guy that still likes to compete on the side while running a business.

Going into the event the goal was obviously to try and get into the top 5 and qualify to the games as an individual. Not an easy task. Especially knowing who I was going up against. There were plenty of former games individuals there not to mention a lot of new names who were more than capable of performing at a very high level. I’m happy it was like that though because it brought out the best in me. I ended up in 22nd. And it took every bit of what I had to give to get 22nd. I went into the event ranked 27 so that was a positive, moving up 5 spots from a ranking standpoint. I don’t have any excuses about anything. As the great Spencer Lee once said, “excuses are for wusses.” I ended up right where I deserved to be. I couldn’t of asked any more out of myself. I gave it my all, and I’m proud I got to compete in this event because I know the competition was as strong as any event ever at this level. The event center was absolutely kick ass. The crowd was kick ass. The judges and volunteers were amazing. It was everything I had hoped for from that standpoint.

I will go into more detail about the events and what I saw out of the other competitors during a podcast real soon because I do want to share more about the event and what to look forward to with the Games in Madison. I just want to end this by saying thank you again to the Kilo2 community and everyone else who reached out with support. It was one of the best experiences of my life and it wouldn’t of been without you guys, so THANK YOU!

-Aus