We’ve Been Doing Our Thing Since 2018
In the beginning we kind of winged it… But every year we’ve gotten better.
From flyers in MS Paint to highly detailed post-event recaps… The GGC began as, and continues to be, the biggest and baddest powerlifting meet for at home lifters!
2025 FALL GGC Primal Armor
For the #25FallGGC we have officially raised $2000 for @primalarmor and their work with Huntingtons Disease Research. This money comes through a few avenues…
We had 357 competitors for the Fall GGC, so that is $1 per participant. We raised $942 through the @pioneer_fit Belt Raffle from donations from all of you, which is FREAKING AMAZING.
We raised some additional funds through merch sales (I have the profit margins real low so that $23 is actually a decent amount of sales). And @gray_matter_lifting decided to roll it up to an even $2k total donation for funsies by kicking in an extra $678.
$2k goes to Primal Armor, bringing our grand total since 2018 to just over $18k donated to Non-Profits through the GGC. Thank you everyone for your support and donations, this continues to be an awesome group of people lifting weights and helping others.
2025 SPRING GGC More Donations
We had just shy of 500 peeps enter the 2025 Spring GGC . I think it was actually a little more, because I know a few who submitted videos but didn’t complete the submission form. Tisk tisk… So we rounded up to $500 for donations.
All of you donated an extra $170… Bringing our total for Special Olympics so to $670. The GGC also donated $200 to a fundraiser via @tkinneyv2.0 for Hope Kids (you can find details through Travis). And another $200 donated to a fundraiser via @mr._adorable .
2024 FALL GGC Welcome To The Club
This was the biggest leap in 5 Year Club memberships to date, adding 76 new members to the crew. We had 43 under the age of 18 athletes lift a whopping 7,708lbs! 457 athletes in total. $1000 donated to @strongerthancomp Here is how we got there…
1) 457 of you competed in the #24fallggc , which means the GGC and @gray_matter_lifting donated $457 right out the gate
2) With the @pioneer_fit Belt Raffle, we raised an additional $366
3) Josh Berry, one of our contributors, donated $50, from his Cardio for Powerlifters article to the cause
4) We were sitting at $873, so I said screw it and tossed in another $127 to bring us to a grand total of $1000
Thank you to everyone who participated and donated as well.
2024 SPRING GGC Prime Surprise
JuggernautAI came back as our presenting sponsor, letting us beg, borrow, and steal their incredible lifting knowledge. They tossed up a bonkers 1 FULL YEAR of JuggernautAI access alongside their prize pack of merch and books and a Zoom chat with Chad himself.
Prime Fitness brought their Mystery Prizes which ended up being TWO winners including a HLP Prodigy Rack, Shorty Bench, Super Squat Bar, and more.
They were joined by a whopping 25 TOTAL sponsors, tossing up over $22k in prizes… All handed out in our Open Drawing, where you can win with a 100lb total or 1000lb squat, or anywhere in between.
2023 FALL GGC Papa Bear Rogers
We had 15 GGC Local Meets in the Fall with the help of Garage Gym Experiment as our local meet sponsor.
With the help of Pioneer and their Belt Raffle, we raised $843 for the Papa Bear Strong Foundation. Add the $125 raised from 2023 GGC Meet Shirt sales, and the $583 donated based on GGC Participation, and we came out to $1,551 dollars total… I decided to match the Pioneer raffle (and a little extra) to get us to $1,850 to help put food on the table of families in need this holiday season.
Thank you to our sponsors who continue to make this possible. The next time you go to buy something for your lifting needs, check the sponsor page. You’ll find discounts and ways to support the sponsors, and the Garage Gym Competition. These links and codes make sure the sponsors come back year after year!
We had 23 sponsors with $20k in prizes for the Fall… and we’ll be back next year for more!
2023 SPRING GGC Return of Juggernaut!
2023 brought back JuggernautAI as our Presenting Sponsor who helped us with a ton of awesome tips, tricks, and more, especially for the GGC Newsletter crowd. We had new comers like American Barbell join our squad, with repeat offenders like Prime Fitness, Crandall Fitness, and Strength Warehouse USA show up with some BONKERS prizes. We had 19 GGC Local Meets in the Spring with the help of Garage Gym Experiment as our local meet sponsor. And we donated over $1000 to Special Olympics in the Spring. We brought back our coaches and judges to provide some helpful feedback, and we kicked off our FIRST GGC Live Stream with Average Joes on Twitch! The 2023 Garage Gym Competition Results are below… Dig In!
Thank you to our sponsors who continue to make this possible. The next time you go to buy something for your lifting needs, check the sponsor page. You’ll find discounts and ways to support the sponsors, and the Garage Gym Competition. These links and codes make sure the sponsors come back year after year!
We had 26 sponsors with $20k in prizes for the Spring… and we’ve still got another event coming in the Fall.
2022 FALL GGC Our First Fall Event
The very FIRST Fall Garage Gym Competition was a blast! We reached a new high of 40 sponsors and over $32k in prizes, we brought in our first Fall Non-Profit, Pull Your Heart Out, and we CRUSHED a ton of PRs. JuggernautAI was back as our presenting sponsor, even having the big man Chad Wesley Smith and the INCREDIBLE Marisa Inda competing. JuggernautAI teamed up with Surplus Strength to create the Grand Prize package for the Fall, as we saw Texas Power Bars bring in another 3 of their incredibly sought after bars alongside over 100 other prizes! Check out the full 2022 – Fall Results below.
We had another dozen plus local meets scheduled, once again sponsored by Garage Gym Experiment. And our Top Athletes took home some hardware courtesy of Weight it Out.
2022 SPRING GGC Here Comes Juggernaut!
2022 was a year of firsts. We introduced JuggernautAI as our Presenting Sponsor who helped us with a ton of awesome tips, tricks, and more, especially for the GGC Email crowd. We brought in Texas Power Bars as our Official Barbell Sponsor who helped us with some Barbell 101 education. Surplus Strength was our Family Sponsor who helped promote strong families in the home gym. We introduced our GGC Local Meets with the help of Garage Gym Experiment as our local meet sponsor, with over 20 registered meets and almost 200 athletes participating in one. And we crowned our Top Athletes and GGC Ambassador, who are receiving the first GGC Medals! The 2022 Spring Garage Gym Competition Results were our first “official” Post COVID results showing that we weren’t going anywhere!
And we had over 35 sponsors with over $30k in prizes, donated almost $2,000 to Special Olympics… and we’ve still got another event coming in the Fall.
2021 GGC What Next?
2021 was the year we didn’t know what to expect. Was COVID still a thing? Were home gyms done? Would our 1200 participants come back? The 2021 Garage Gym Competition Results were confirmation once again, that we were doing something worth the effort. Read about the entire thing in the overview here.
You’ll find details about the behind the scenes processes, sponsors and prizes, high level athlete overviews, break downs by gender, age, location, and more! As well as a link to the entire results spreadsheet if you want to take a deep dive for yourself.
2020 GGC COVID
At the very end of the 2019 event, I created the GGC Council. A group of people meant to help me take this from a rinky dink little side project, to a mainstage virtual powerlifting event. Friends and community members who were doing this to help build something really cool.
We went all in on a new website, Instagram, Logo, rules, processes, data submission, and more. And then COVID hit.
We found out real quick that Home Gym Lifters had been preparing for this all along, as the entire world joined us in our garages!
2019 GGC We Are Back!
You asked for it, so I made it happen. Year 2 of the GGC was a little more refined, a little more planned, and a little bigger. We went after some sponsors who tossed up some good stuff, we kept all the same crew behind the scenes, but we made sure to keep the same general concepts in place.
Free, easy entry, donate to non-profits, you get it.
2018 GGC Where We Started
2018 was our first year. I came up with the idea in February, chatted with my buddies, and we launched in Mach. I created the flyers in MS Paint. We ran the entire thing from my Gray_Matter_Lifting Instagram. Our biggest prize was a Flat Bench. And it was AWESOME! The 2018 Garage Gym Competition Results are one of the coolest pieces of Home Gym History I can think of. We had 84 participants and lifted over 86,000 pounds!
In year 1 I reached out to several of my guys like Garage Gym Lab, Garage Gym Experiment, and Garage-Gyms.Com. You’ll notice their logos have changed, and back then they had roughly 10k followers, compared to their 100k+ today. But they are still around. Avid supporters of the GGC from day 1, ride or die. Working Class Barbell was an original sponsor, and they took home the first ever GGC Ambassador award in 2022. We also started our non-profit donations this year. I put up $250 to the charity of the winners choice. My dude picked Special Olympics, and we never looked back.
Year 1 laid a lot of foundational aspects for the GGC. We began with the week long event, allowing people to spread their lifts, use the hashtag, and have fun. Specialty bars were allowed, we allowed partial lifts, we broke all the powerlifting rules. We were in pursuit of an inclusive environment for at home competition, and we nailed it! I am so happy I had this idea and didn’t just let it die in a notebook. It would have been easy to do so. The things that have come from this would have never registered with my brain in Year 1. If you were here, you were part of something truly special. Thank you!