Marilia’s Powerlifting Blog

We are all doing a modified Sheiko periodization training targeted at this year’s competition calendar (http://www.joeskopec.com/borisp.xls ). Many of our team members have found the first week to be especially heavy, but the following ones are lighter. You are supposed to follow exactly that percentage increase in order to achieve the desired competition mark. We have decided to adopt this periodization along three 5 week stages, one aiming 80% of the real target, one at 90% of the real target and one “really real (100%).
I don’t follow it as prescribed for a series of reasons. I disagree with this extreme specificity where auxiliaries are left out or only restricted to a certain time of the year. Lou Simmons has an article on that and I will find it, but I’m sure I read it. I believe auxiliaries should be present during the whole preparation. The high-set volume, high intensity maximum-effort training certainly should have the greatest impact on neural adaptation. However, I am not convinced that this is how you create the best powerlifter. For the simple reason that the muscles that respond to adapted motor centers should also be strong and have a large number of fibers. This is maybe because I came from bodybuilding culture, but I advocate a more “rounded approach to training.
Therefore, I, personally, have included auxiliaries in my workout schedule. Some people claim this makes the whole thing way too heavy and will lead to overtraining very soon. Maybe … if the person is not properly fed, supplemented or rested. I am privileged to be able to guarantee all three.
I also do my cardio at least 4 times every week. I run … I don’t walk on the treadmill. I am small (heavy, but still small and have a low BF, always around 16%) and I manage my joint condition quite well, I think. I am not willing to leave the running … I just don’t train for races any more because I am aware of the interference both intense training should have on one another, and my sport is powerlifting.
I don’t know: Lot’s of people will disagree, I know. But I have only myself to test stuff, right? So that’s what I’m doing. Testing. Let’s see if it works.