Lifting4JC’s Powerlifting Blog

After either making no progress or even losing strength in the last three powerlifting meets it’s time to do some serious evaluation of my lifting strategies. The last eight months of this year I’ve been doing what everyone else suggested. Hey, it worked for them and they made gains. Me, doing the same program… nada. Thankfully, I’ve kept a detailed training log for the last couple of years. I’ve spent the last week going through it workout by workout before the meets and tried to determine what was working and what wasn’t. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

1. My best gains came from higher volume workouts. I’ve been decreasing my sets for fear of overtraining. However, I still consider myself a beginning lifter. I only have four meets in two years under my belt. Decreasing my volume subsequently decreased my GPP.
2. Core, core, core. I regretfully neglected most core work for the last meet. There’s a giant forehead slap (and it needs to be with a 45-lbs plate). In this last meet I could see my core giving out in both the squat and dead. If I’d strengthened my core better I’d probably have broken two PR’s.
3. Do the three main lifts (squat, bench, deadlift) and then use variety. When I decreased my volume I got into a rut of a half dozen basic accessory lifts. I have over a hundred different lifts written in my training log. Why haven’t I been going to that list for some variety.
4. Cardio. Another no-brainer. I shouldn’t get winded walking up a flight of stairs… duh! You moron.

I’m sure that there are more things I need to change and work on. But for now, the four points above will give me a good start.

One other thing that I think may have affected me was that I did four meets this year. Every time I finished a meet I had to start a training cycle for another meet. I’ve decided not to do another meet until May at the earliest. That gives me six months. A half a year to get back to where I need to be and have fun doing it.

This plan goes into action tomorrow morning at five. It’s my regular squat day, but guess what? I’m not going to squat.

Later

I have to fly to San Diego tomorrow. I’m from Denver, so I’m really hoping that Denver wins the game tonight. It will make showing up at the job site a lot easier. Thankfully, I’m not flying out before I can get squat workout 3 of 5 done tonight.

Tonight’s workout is 6 sets of 2, at 80% 1RM. I’ll rep out the last set. My last two squat WO’s have been strong, so I’m looking forward to tonight’s.

I don’t normally go this long without posting, but I don’t doubt that everyone knows how life gets in the way. I participated in the ‘09 Colorado Grand Powerlifting meet in August and I did absolutely terrible. My bench wasn’t on and I only made my opening lift. What’s more, I only made my opening lift on my squats as well. I actually made lifts 2 and 3, but because of a small step back at the top of the lift I lost them. I can’t believe that I did that. I’ve never even lost my balance in training, so to do it in a meet TWICE set the tone for the rest of the meet. I missed my third lift in the deadlift, but not before breaking my own state record in number 2. Still, it felt harder than it should have and I realize that I’d already defeated myself before I stepped on the platform that day.
After every meet I go through a post-meet lifting depression. I know this happens. I don’t fight it. I accept it, let it run its coarse, and start lifting heavy again in due time. This happened again after this meet but lasted a little longer. I think it was because I only made four of my nine lifts. Maybe yes, maybe no. Either way, I’m not going to get stuck in a paralysis-by-analysis cycle of thinking. I’m moving on to the next meet, the 2009 NASA Colorado Regionals on Nov 14.

As it stands with this meet, I’m fired up far more than I was for the last meet. My diet is better, my motivation is solid, and my desire to go out and break some records is pushing me hard.  I surrounded by a focused group of lifters with the same objective that I have and lifting with others always makes you push harder in the gym.

Tomorrow starts week three of the training cycle. It’ll be a squat night. Week two is always the hardest for me and I blew through it, setting a new rep record at the same time. My training is geared towards specificity this time. I know it’s not smart to train for a powerlifting meet without specificity in mind, but that’s what I did last meet… and well, the record speaks for itself.

So let’s get out there and lift heavy.

It’s been six weeks since my last meet where I deadlifted 480 for a PR. In that six weeks since, I’ve been trying a new cycle of lifting for all three lifts — squat, bench, and dead. At the end of the six weeks, I set a new RP for the squat at 430 (best +6), and although I haven’t max on the bench yet, I feel I’ll be adding some to my best there, as well. When I maxed out on my deadlift, however, I dropped by 25 lbs!!

So obviously, the cycle that I’ve been doing for my deads just isn’t working. I’ve always had a back that could take a lot of work. But on the last lifting cycle I kept the deadlift volume about the same but really decreased my accessory lifts.

I spent the last couple of days looking through a couple of years worth of logs evaluating what was working in the past. And it was the accessory stuff. I’m not talking about a huge amount of extra work, but enough to get that good workout in. I had decreased my accessory lifts by almost half. So now, it’s time to add them back in and see how far I can get before my August 15 meet.

This morning I woke up early and went and did a great powerlifting bench workout. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and my computer is behaving. That’s such a big change from the last two days.

Wednesday, most of the neighborhood was out watching some very, very dark storm clouds start to collect and spin almost right on top of the neighborhood. Everyone was making sure that kids were all home and pets were safe. Just as we all started to head to the basement, the tornado-in-the-making broke up. Of course, it did hail for the second day in a row. My poor veggie garden barely had a chance this year.

Yesterday, I was sitting down to start writing when my 10 year old came in crying from rollerblading. I expected a skinned knee or a scraped hand. But I didn’t expect to see her left arm all bent out of shape. I’m not talking about a "this might be broken" thought. There was no doubt about it. The two bones in her forearm were between 25 and 30 degrees out of shape. Thankfully, the hospital is only a ten minute drive from the house and the ER was empty. This is a case when as they were setting the bones and she was screaming, that as a parent, you’d give up anything to gladly take the pain for her. Yes, she was heavily medicated. And the stuff they gave her was an amnesiac. So once she woke up, she didn’t remember anything about it.  Now she’s in a full-arm plaster cast. In two weeks, they’ll take it off and put on a gortex cast so she won’t lose the entire summer of swimming. (We live two blocks from the neighborhood pool).

Let’s pray for a boring Friday.

My workout today:

• Bench: (Warm-ups) 10×115, 10×135, 5×135, 5×155, 3×185,
• (Work sets) 2×210x5, 6×210 (80% 1RM)
• Bench Reverse Grip: 5×185, 5×205, 4×205
• Overhead Rope extensions: 15×120, 10×130x3

Worked out with a couple of my training partners today. Typically, I deadlift alone since I usually have to work around this time. But I’m off this week So I take advantage of it. Went in at 5 AM (on a vacation day, remember, that should earn me extra points) and deadlifted. Here’s my workout:

• Deads: 10×155x2, 5×205, 5×255, 3×305, 3×325, worksets- 3×385x3
• Knee pulls: 3×450x3
• Low cable rows: 12×160, 10×220x2

I’ve completed my third meet and I’m noticing a trend. After a meet for the next three weeks or so I get into a workout funk where I simply lack a lot of motivation to really lift heavy and watch my diet. But usually by the third or fourth week after I start to pull out of it and get focusing on my next meet (67 days out). I’ve been doing my routines, but for the most part, only going through the motions. But now, with today’s workout, I can tell that I’m finally pulling out of the post-meet depression phase. I went into my squat work set with a routine attitude, but after that first heavy work set, I felt things change. It felt awesome to get the wraps back on and get Jack (my coach) yelling at me about depth or breathing or dozen other things.Now I’m ready to go again…

Here’s today’s WO:

• Squat: several x Bar, 8×135, 5×135, 5×225, 3×275, 3×315, work sets — 3×340x6
• Standing ab crunches: 40×180, 30×200, 25×200
• Standing Calf machine: 12×230x4
• Leg extensions: 10×195, 210, 225

First deadlift WO of the next meet cycle. They felt really good and strong. I changed two things. Rather than doing sets for reps, I did singles with only a 30-second rest between. Doing singles makes each rep a ‘first lift’ which gives me some extra work on getting set to the bar and making the lift. On the last 10, I used a modified sumo style to change things up a little. Typically, I’m a conventional deadlifter.

Here’s my workout:

• Deadlifts: 10 x bar, 10×135, 5×225, 3×315, (work sets) 1×335x15
• Bent over BB rows: 5×185, 5×195, 5×205, 6×215
• Reverse Hack Squats: 10×180, 10×230x2
• Lat pull downs: 12×165, 10×180, 7×180
• 20 minutes of cardio

For some odd reason, I haven’t done bentover rows for a long time. It felt good to do them again, and I could really feel them in my lats. Tomorrow will be an off day and I’ll squat Monday.

Had a bench session early this morning with a couple of my lifting partners. Inexplicably, I was able to talk my 16 year old son into getting up at 4:30 AM to go lifting with us. While benching I attempted to give him a few pointers. He didn’t pay attention to them. Rich, my bench partner, goes over to spot my son for a set, gives him the same pointers I did but was ignored for… and my son’s bench improves. Hmmm…

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy that he’s learning. Even Rich’s daughter who lifts, trains with a different coach. I guess parents just aren’t too smart. Perhaps it’s just easier to hear something from someone who you don’t see everyday.

Anyhow, it was a great lifting session for everyone.  It was week 1 of my next lifting cycle, so went light, with 8 sets of 3 at 70%. I’m looking forward maxing out in five more weeks. I hadn’t put a pound on my bench in two years regardless of what I did. Two months with a couple of experienced guys and I put 7 pounds on in two months.

I thought I’d have to wait until November for my next meet, but a new one was added to the schedule. The NASA 2009 Colorado Grand full PL meet will be in Loveland on August 15. Unlike the last meet, which was just push/pull, this is a full meet so the squat will be included. The squat is my favorite lift.

It’s not my normal leg day today, but I went in for some light work to get a cycle started. Here’s my workout:

• Lat pulldown: 10×165
• Lat pulldown - underhand: 10×165
• Squat: 10×135, 5×225

Work sets –

• Box squat - to parallel with 80 lbs of chain: 3×225, 3×275x4, 5×275

• Leg extensions: 10×180, 195, 210, 12×225
• Leg Curls: 10×165, 180, 195
• Hammer bar curls: 15×70x4
• Curl Machine: 10×80x2