Early in the morning during sunrise, Will Harrison, then sophomore, stared out of the bus window travelling to his first ever powerlifting meet. Fueled by anticipatory adrenaline, his mind raced with anxious thoughts:

“Do I have enough calories in my body?”

“Am I overweight or too underweight?”

Harrison arrived at Ranchview High School at 7:00 a.m. Looking around the school gym, he stressed about not being prepared enough. He never watched any videos of the gym layout or the equipment they used. Harrison looks around in confusion, and powerlifting coach Samuel Gray steps in, guiding Harrison around the gym.

After Harrison takes off his warm up clothes, Gray helps him adjust his rack height scale and weigh him in. A rush of relief washed over Harrison. He was locked in, and nothing could go wrong.

Sitting on the bleachers with his teammates, Harrison rests and eats for the first time after making weight. 

When the announcers called the first round of lifters for warm-ups, Harrison’s nerves returned. 

Positioning himself on the mat, Harrison’s palms become sweaty and his legs become shaky while paying attention to the judges in both the front and to the sides of him.

“Wrap!”

Harrison prepares to pick up the weight in front of him. 

“Pull!” 

It’s difficult for Harrison to pay attention to the cues while he’s so full of emotion.

He completed his first two squats with ease. His courage grew and so did his confidence. For his third set, he lifted 465 lbs. A weight he had never lifted before.

“Nothing is going to stop me,” Harrison told himself as he faced the bar. With his friends cheering him on, he lifts the bar “easy as pie”. 

“I had never touched anywhere near that weight my whole life,” Harrison said. “And when I got it I was super happy and started celebrating with my buddies”. 

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Since joining the Marcus powerlifting team, Harrison has competed at the state level. Gray coached Harrison for both football and powerlifting.

Harrison competes with Marcus but practices with a personal coach his age, Daniel Tyutunnik, who attends Princeton High School.

“We have a really strong relationship,” Harrison said. “We competed last year together at the state meet, and we got to bond a lot, and we train four times a week together.”

Harrison says he prefers training with other lifters over working out alone.

“There’s a very noticeable difference whenever you’re working out alone versus when you’re working out with your buddies,” Harrison said. “Just having dudes screaming in your face when you’re going for a PR or something really helps.”

He holds his practice schedule to a high standard, alternating between squat, bench, deadlift and bodybuilding days, with a day of rest in between each session.

“I have a set schedule of days where I lift, and no matter what, I can’t skip those days unless something happens, then I just schedule my work around that,” Harrison said.

Along with his typical practice schedule, Will has to pay extra attention to his weight and diet. He says changing weight class is one of the most mentally challenging aspects of being a powerlifter.

“Maintaining is easy,” Harrison said. “You just eat what your body needs. Cutting is hard because you have to deal with cravings at night and when you’re hungry.”

While cutting weight is difficult for him, Harrison considers bulking to have the biggest impact on his mental and physical health.

“It’s like you are forcibly feeding yourself more than your body wants to take in,” Harrison said. “The amount of times I’ve thrown up from having to eat so much is diabolical.”

Forcing himself to eat when his stomach is full is worse for him than being hungry.

“There’s been moments where I know I have still 1500 calories left to eat for a day, and it’s 10 p.m. at night, and I’m super full, my stomach hurts, and I just want to go to bed, but then I have to get up and go cook something and force feed it to myself,” Harrison said. 

On top of powerlifting, Harrison also manages his car-detailing business, Elite Finish detailing. He runs the business out of his truck with his friend, Logan Loxley. 

Harrison started Elite Finish Detailing with Loxley during the summer of their sophomore year.

Harrison recalls hanging out in his parent’s garage, messing around with a pressure washer, thinking about how it would be cool to use it on something other than concrete.

The next day, Loxley texted him and asked him if he wanted to start a car detailing business. Harrison agreed, and they laid out their starting plan.

“We sat down, just wrote down a bunch of notes on equipment we need, where we’re gonna buy it, how much it costs, What are the best products we can buy? How are we gonna, like, what name are we gonna give it, what’s our logo gonna be, all this stuff,” Harrison said.

Loxley said starting the business was tough.

“The first year and a half was rough,” Loxley said. “I think we bit off more than we could chew. I’m glad we did it that way. We learned the hard way, but starting a business from the ground up was a really humbling experience.” 

Loxley says the biggest learning curve of starting a business is learning how to manage responsibility and discipline with little of their parents’ intervention.

“I think the biggest mind shift for both of us was, like, when you have a job under your employed by somebody, they tell you your hours, and what you have to do,” Loxley said. “When it’s on us, there’s no guidance, we had to figure it out on our own.” 

Loxley says that being self-sufficient is the key to managing your own business throughout every stage.

“Everything relies on you,” Loxley said. “No one’s gonna pay for extra chemicals, no one’s gonna pay for tools, scheduling, finding clients. It’s all on you.”

Loxley says he appreciates Will for putting forth extra effort despite their equal distribution of work.

“We try to do everything 50-50,” Loxley said. “Our pay is always 50-50, we pay for everything 50-50, but he always has stepped up in the role of being that guy who can always go the extra mile.”

Harrison says he appreciates the opportunity to run Elite Finish Detailing with a friend his age.

“My favorite thing about it is probably being able to work with Logan,” Harrison said. “Because running a business with one of your best friends is amazing. We’re getting paid to practically hang out.”

Harrison and Loxley plan to attend the University of Oklahoma together and continue their business there.

“Our plan right now is to sell our client book around here to somebody who’s interested,” Loxley said. “We’re gonna reach out about that soon, and then move our business to Oklahoma and advertise primarily in Oklahoma City. Just try and start from the ground up there.” 

Harrison considers passing on his clients to detailers he trusts.

“We were thinking about finding a detailer that will stay down here while we’re up in college,” Harrison said. “That way we can sell our clients so that they can be taken care of over at college and not just left in the dust.”

Harrison and Loxley acknowledge that trying to start up their business again during their first year of college will be challenging.

“Both of us will probably find some cheap weekend job, giving first year of college can be hectic,” Loxley said. “Until we can get our clients rolling, get back on our feet a little bit, and by then, we’ll just be back where we started.”

Despite a possible delay, Loxley is anticipating an exciting future for Elite Finish Detailing.

“Honestly, I’m excited for the future,” Loxley said. “If we just keep scaling [our business], we have no clue what we could lead to.”

Harrison says he finds the joy of transformation in both powerlifting and detailing. 

“I find joy in doing my work because it’s satisfying watching the transformations of these cars, and being able to work on these super nice cars, and cars that I would want to have in the future is super cool.”

Seeing his own progress during a lift has a similar effect, it encourages him to keep going.

“It’s really satisfying seeing the hard work being shown, and reaping what I sow and stuff like that.”