As 26 members of the Brandeis baseball team and staff were arriving in the Orlando International Airport March 7, Dave Almeida '09 was taking a far less glamorous trip-a 15-hour drive from Waltham to a convention center in Columbus, Ohio. Having made the trip to Florida three times as a former member of the baseball team, Almeida knows what he was missing: pristine fields, warm sunny weather, pearl-white baseballs for batting practice and a solid base tan. But this year, he decided to pass up all of that to make the drive to Columbus alone to compete in the sport that now drives him: Olympic weightlifting.

Olympic weightlifting, also known as competitive weightlifting or Olympic lifting, is an individual sport that divides competitors into weight classes and combines their highest weight total of three attempts in two types of lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk. Almeida says the level of dedication needed to succeed in the sport is unique.

"I'd say that you have to enjoy beating yourself up if you really want to excel in competitive weightlifting," Almeida says with a smirk on his face.

Since giving up baseball to train and compete full-time as a weightlifter, Almeida has had success, finishing second in New England at regional championships in his weight class last December, but the event he was driving to Columbus for, the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, was his first national meet. "The Arnold," which has a Web site that includes several photos of the California governor himself, features not only weightlifting but everything from martial arts to arm wrestling to race-walking, with well over 150,000 attendees annually.

Even though it was his first national meet, Almeida managed a third-place finish out of 15 competitors in the Open Men's session and notched a new personal record in the snatch, managing to throw 93 kilograms (205 pounds) over his head in one fluid motion before finishing with a total of 211 kilograms on the day, also a personal best.

Almeida's path to the lifting platform was hardly straightforward. The first time he stepped into a weight room as a freshman in high school was when he had no ride home and meandered into the claustrophobic weight room at Fairfield College Preparatory School, near his house in Bridgeport, Conn., as an accident. Almeida started with basic weight training as a way to get stronger and more explosive for baseball.

"Most really good elite athletes are going to do Olympic weightlifting in their training," Almeida's current lifting coach, Ben Fuller, says.

Almeida expanded his training while at Brandeis but changed his course when he met Mike Shoretz '09 while in the weight room at Brandeis during his sophomore year. Both shared a passion for lifting and decided to make the 25-minute walk to the Excel Sports and Fitness Center, a new gym in Waltham, where Almeida would meet Fuller.

Those literal first steps brought Almeida into the new world of competitive Olympic weightlifting. He says after his first few training sessions, he was hooked, and in just over two years he transformed from an amateur athlete in Waltham to meeting German Olympic gold medalist Matthias Steiner at "The Arnold."

Almeida still played baseball for three years while at Brandeis, and says the two sports are similar in some respects.

"The focus on the mental preparation is very similar to baseball, just like the attention to technique," he says. "You have to be mentally prepared; you only get six total lifts, and when you train for months for those few moments, you have to be focused."

Almeida says training for the sport requires hours in the gym not only to increase strength, but also to practice and perfect the difficult technique that goes into each successful lift.

"You have someone watching every lift, even in training, and coaching you on every movement you make," Almeida says. "While you aren't typically doing many repetitions, it's all about mental focus."

"You're going to be lifting 2.5 times your body weight over head if you're really good, and nobody likes to have 400-500 pounds over your head," Fuller says, explaining the training further. "It doesn't feel natural to have that sitting up over there. You've got to be able to attack the weights and be able to fail and try again and try again, which is something that is hard for a lot of people, but in the end it's something that's hard but rewarding."

Almeida competed at "The Arnold" in the kilogram weight class as one of the lightest competitors in his class, but he will be moving down to the kilogram weight class for his next competition in August. At 5 feet 6 inches and roughly 160 pounds, Almeida is not as large as many of his larger peers, but with the different weight classes, strength is measured in weightlifting relative to the athlete's size, giving athletes like Almeida vindication.

"There are no limitations on what you can do," Almeida says. "There aren't scouts there to measure you; the numbers speak for themselves."

After competing at "The Arnold," Almeida is training again in preparation for the American Open in August in Mobile, Ala., the second-biggest weightlifting competition in the country. Down the road, he says he plans on testing himself at the Olympic trials for the 2016 and potentially 2012 Olympic games. When asked about his preparation in the meantime, he said, "training, training and more training.