It Took a Few Years, but Lord Elliott Got the Power : Weightlifting: Edison High junior has set several age-group powerlifting records, including a world record in the straight curl.

Vic Elliott used to take his son, Lord, to a local gym to watch him train for upcoming powerlifting competitions.

Vic figured it was the perfect way to spark his son’s interest in the sport, which the elder Elliott had been competing in since 1986.

Guess again, Dad.

“He was more interested in playing with his G.I. Joes,” Vic said. “He was a little roly-poly back then (when he was 10). He was supposed to be helping me out back then, but he was too busy laughing.

“He had other interests, and weights weren’t one of them.”

Before an overseas tour in the Marines, Vic bought his son a weightlifting set. Suddenly, the “roly-poly” kid began to drop pounds and add muscle.

“The next thing I know,” Vic said. “I’m getting letters saying he lost weight and had started playing football.”

By age 12, Lord began working out on his own at a local fitness center.

His motivation?

“I wanted to get big and look good for the girls,” he said. “I really didn’t have powerlifting in mind.”

But a few months later, Elliott watched his father, a master gunnery sergeant at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, compete in some local powerlifting meets.

Suddenly, training meant more than flexing the guns for the girls.

Since then, Elliott, a junior this fall at Edison High, has added several more candles to his birthday cake--and a lot more weight on the bar.

At 16, he has set several age-group and weight-class records, including a world record, an American junior mark and a U.S. record for his age group.

His room in his dad’s Huntington Beach apartment is filled with trophies, plaques and awards. His parents are divorced.

Elliott carefully spreads the certificates acknowledging his awards across his bed. One by one, he explains what each represents.

He broke the world record in the straight curl last September with a lift of 122.5 pounds.

He set the U.S. record in the dead lift by lifting 420 pounds in May 1991. He later broke his own mark with a lift of 440 pounds.

His American junior record (for the 14-15 age group) was a 242-pound lift in the bench press. Elliott points to a seal on the certificate.

“It’s a drug-free competition,” he said. “It shows that you can do it without steroids.”

This is a topic that rouses the Elliotts. They think drugs such as steroids and growth hormones have given their sport a black eye.

Lord knows first-hand. He hears the snickers in the hallways at Edison.

Some of his classmates taunted him when they saw his stocky frame and his Popeye chest and arms. They accused him of taking steroids.

“They didn’t think I could do it drug-free,” he said. “They had no knowledge of how to train with weights to your maximum ability. They accused me of using steroids, and that put me down, real hard.

“Many of the seniors at my school still say it. They say, ‘It’s impossible to lift that much if he’s not on steroids.’ It’s not impossible. If you train hard and consistently, anything can happen.”

Still, the criticism irritates Elliott. He lifts in drug-free competitions, and has been clean each of the three times he has been tested.

“Back in the 1980s, everyone thought that if you took steroids, they just made you bigger,” he said. “Everyone took them. Now, everyone’s dying. Look at what happened with Lyle Alzado.

“There’s more drug testing now. There’s still some steroids in powerlifting, but the good news is that it’s starting to move with drug-free organizations. That’s the best thing that could ever happen.”

Elliott credits his diet and training program for his progress in the sport.

His diet includes plenty of pasta salads, red meats, apples along with multivitamin and mineral supplements. He even tries some spinach now and then.

He works out three times a week, and begins training for a competition about nine weeks in advance. He writes a list of his goals before he starts.

“My goals depend on a competition,” he said. “I look ahead and write out, then have my dad check it over to make sure I’m not doing too much.”

When he first started training, Elliott dead-lifted 165 pounds, benched 110 and squat-lifted 135.

His first competition was the California teen-age championships in June 1990. He won the 148 3/4 weight class, dead-lifting 396 pounds, benching 192 and squatting 357.

Since he began competing, Lord has trained under his father’s guidance. Vic says he pushes his son hard when training but is cautious not to overdo it.

“As we were watched (at competitions), some people have called me too much of a disciplinarian with (him),” Vic said. “You know, one of those right-handed bolo punchers, where if you don’t do it right, you get whacked. But you have to test the limitation of your strength against progress.”

But lately Vic, 42, has let his son work out on his own. They participate in many of the same competitions, and Vic can’t always be there to help him during lifts. Lord is learning to be his own coach.

“He’s no longer a novice in this sport,” said Vic, who began lifting in 1978. “He’s on his own now. But he doesn’t always know what to do because he’s so used to being coached by me.”

Lord’s training paid off in May at the U.S. Powerlifting Federation junior national championships in Boston.

He won the 14-15 age group, beating out four of the top lifters in the nation by bench-pressing 225 pounds, squat-lifting 424 and dead-lifting 440.

The nationals were the biggest competition Elliott has competed in. He was “extremely nervous” when it came time to compete.

“I remember my dad asked me how nervous I was,” Elliott said. “I was leaning back against a chair, listening to my music and trying to breathe normally.

“My dad took me outside in the fresh air. He gave me a yoga routine to do, and that helped me a lot.”

Elliott increased his combined lifts to 1,107 pounds at the California State junior championships in late May. He also won his age group (14-15), and was unopposed in the 148-pound class.

He is currently training for his next contest, the Venice Beach dead-lifting championships on July 27. Vic and Veronica Elliott’s only son was born on May 19, 1976, in Long Beach. They wanted him to have a unique name. They settled on Lord Lester.

His father’s travels with the military have taken the family to Germany, England and Las Vegas. They have lived in Huntington Beach since 1983.

“When he lived in England,” Vic said. “The name Lord was a noble title, so women would curtsy him when they met him.

“Finally, the head schoolmaster said we couldn’t call him Lord because he wasn’t part of the Royal family. So we called him Les.”

As a child, Lord dabbled in several sports, including Huntington Beach’s Pop Warner football league in 1986. He also wrestled on Edison’s junior varsity team, but quit after his freshman year to concentrate on powerlifting.

He said he enjoys the individual challenges of the sport and training with his father. Team sports just don’t appeal to him as much.

“Powerlifting is more important than any other sport to me,” he said. “I wanted to play football, but training for (powerlifting) meets takes too much time. You just can’t do both.”