The International Powerlifting Federation’s Open World Championships is one of the biggest highlights of the year for any powerlifting fan, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it’s available for you to watch right now in the comfort of your home (or your office, we won’t tell).
The events, and some of the heaviest lifts ever to be lifted in Earth’s history, are currently taking place in Pilsen, a city in the western Czech Republic. All you need to do is head over to the IPF’s livestream page at this link, or you can watch it on YouTube right here.
The lifts will be streaming all week — the whole event lasts six full days and wraps up on Saturday November 18th with the men’s superheavyweight division. You can see the schedule here to scope out when your favorite weight class will be competing, though not all of the athletes’ names are included in that document. We think Bryce Krawczyk has a good shot at breaking the equipped world record in the -105kg division on Thursday.
What’s a little unusual about this livestream is that you’re in control of which camera you’re looking through: you can watch the athletes or you can watch the scoreboard by hitting the ‘switch camera’ icon that’s just next to the ‘settings’ button in the bottom right corner of the video. This way you can see who is lifting and what’s been lifted without waiting for the athlete’s stats to intermittently pop up at the bottom of the screen. The streaming service is sponsored by the famed powerlifting equipment companies Eleiko (check out our interview with their CEO here) and SBD (our review of their super comfortable knee sleeves here).
If you missed your favorite athlete, don’t sweat it — after each division’s session is complete, the video should be uploaded relatively quickly to Powerlifting TV’s YouTube channel here. Make sure you click on “videos” instead of “home,” since the home page is mostly clips of older competitions.
Keep checking BarBend for our coverage of the most notable lifts.
Featured image via @theipf on Instagram.
