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Mitch Klimek and Justin Helps, both juniors this past year at Chisago Lakes High School, recently joined the 1,000 Pound Club.

The 1,000 Pound Club has nothing to do with their size, but their strength. The term refers to a weightlifting achievement attained previously by only four other students at Chisago Lakes High School.

Through a point system, athletes must lift the equivalent of a combined 1,000 pounds in three weight events – the bench press, the squat and the power clean. The bench press involves lying in your back on a bench and pressing a weight upward off your chest with your arms. In the squat, the weight bar is held behind the neck on the shoulders, and the lifter bends up and down at the knees. In the power clean, the lifter lifts the weight off the ground from a standing position, pushing the weight high enough to rest the weight with his or her elbows in the “V” position.

Klimek achieved the goal a few days before the end of the school year, and Helps made it on the last day of the school year.

“I started lifting the summer before eighth grade,” said Helps. “I do it mostly to get better for football, but after a while I started trying to do it to make the “clubs” at various weight levels.” Klimek began lifting a little later. “I started lifting the summer after eighth grade,” said Klimek. “I’ve lifted every summer and winter and even did some in the spring this year.”

Both Klimek and Helps play football for the Wildcats. Klimek is a defensive lineman/fullback and Helps plays defensive end. And in addition to playing football and lifting weights, they’re both good all-around athletes. Klimek plays soccer in the spring and summer and ran track for the Wildcats through his sophomore season. Helps has wrestled and is a member of the track team. He participated in the discus and the shot put at the section tournament this past season.

Klimek also won the Wishbone competition at Chisago Lakes last winter. In that competition, the athletes get points for six events: bench press, squat, power clean, shuttle run, jump rope and vertical jump. More than just a weightlifting competition, it tests the participant’s all around athletic ability.

Helps plans to go to college to study pre-med or engineering and might play football. Klimek would like to become a teacher and coach and will likely go to college in Minnesota or Wisconsin. He doesn’t plan to play football in college. Both young men said they planned to continue lifting while they’re in college, but only to stay in shape – they’re days of competitive weightlifting will end once they graduate from high school next spring.

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