After breaking the Australian Oceania raw bench press record in January with a 151kg lift, Mudgee’s Jono George set a new record at the Australian Powerlifting Union equipped national championships at Penrith’s Strength Nation Sunday.

George lifts in the 66kg category and knocked out a repetition of 170kg, setting a new Australian record for his weight range.

Ray Owen is the head coach at Strength Nation and has guided George throughout his young weightlifting career, giving him much-needed guidance.

“He helps me out with programs and stuff because I’ve got no idea what I’m doing,” George laughed.

“I don’t normally do these lifts during footy season but it’s the Australian nationals and I’ve ever done the equipped competition before so I thought I’d give it a crack.”

You might be wondering what the word ‘equipped’ means when it comes to weightlifting.

There are two kinds of bench press competitions you can enter into – equipped and raw.

Raw sees the athlete perform the lift with little to no additional equipment, whereas the equipped competition sees the competitor where a suit that aids with the lifting process.

This suit helped George lift 19kg more than what he did in the raw competition back in January.

George’s recent accomplishment is particularly special, given the fact that he’s been fairly busy coaching his under 18s Mudgee Dragons side.

“I’ve only coached for the last two years and I’ve only been lifting for two years and trying to get a weekend off – with footy on Sunday – is a bit much,” George said.

“I managed to get to it this time, though.”

Although Jono juggles footy, lifting and work, he still found the time to rigorously for the event – something he needed to do to prepare for the equipped format.

“For this I had to train pretty constantly because I’ve never done this type of lifting before. It’s a lot different and you can lift a bit heavier so you’ve got to get your body used to it,” he said.

“I only got to my coach twice in the lead-up to this… I probably should have been a bit more. I’ve got a (equipped) shirt here and you need a couple of blokes around to help put it on.”

Two records in six months and George is looking towards the future with plans in mind to re-break his record at the next raw event at Newcastle in October.