Marilia’s Powerlifting Blog

Strength sports are still a lot about pushing the athlete through the stress curve. As a competitive powerlifter and researcher, I have been looking at this subject from inside and out. From the inside, there are two distinct approaches to achieving the “special maximum strength” observed in certain meets: the extreme stress-driven performance, with a lot of screaming, hitting and other means of enhancing alertness and stress response, and the focused approach. The latter is less common.

With the help of a more experienced and accomplished lifter, I came to adopt the focused approach about a year and a half ago. We called it the “white chair thing”. Basically, I spent the moments preceding my turn to lift facing the back of an available white plastic chair, emptying my mind. It is hard to claim this is the one or chief reason why my performance leaped to another level, I broke a couple of national and continental records and visibly improved. There were other factors involved.

After this event, however, I started systematically searching for evidence in the literature. Besides a very old article from decades ago showing competent Olympic lifters performed mental rehearsal of their lifts in opposition to less competent ones, there was very little published material. The search brought me to martial arts techniques. That, however, is a whole different realm of encoded knowledge. I wanted to understand the concept and application of QIGONG training to strength tasks.

The only way to do it, it seemed to me, was to learn through practice. I spent one year (from November 2007 to October 2008) learning qigong in a tai-chi-chuan program. During this one year, I was frustrated. My performance was irregular, mediocre at competitions and my injuries were a real impediment.

About three weeks after I quit tai-chi-chuan, however, I started applying some qigong techniques in weight training. The results impressed me. I want to create a self-experiment on this and record my results. I haven’t been doing this the way I want.

I think I will create one entry just for exercise and progress log.

Let’s see where I get from here. All input is welcome.

Again it seems that between science pull and market push, innovation, in this case, came from the latter: try typing “prehab” or “prehabilitation” in any scientific search tool. You get very few results (to be precise, 7 at Pubmed). But Google it and you get 45.200 results.
A number of prehabilitation clinics have already taken advantage of the generalized perception among coaches and athletes that prevention is the key to performance. They must rely on their own clinical experience and feedback from patients, since Academia hasn’t provided a critical mass of empirical evidence yet.
I started doing prehab too late: technically, it was not prehab. It was just a more systematic approach to rehab, since my injuries had evolved to a point that I could no longer train or compete without excruciating pain. I don’t have to add that it has been a mediocre competitive year.
Prehab is about a special type of physical therapy intervention: monitoring the athlete throughout the competitive season. Early signs of injury are checked, a periodized program of injury prevention is developed according to the competition calendar and exercises and treatments are adjusted according to the athelete’s response.
I think I can only say that I am engaged in prehab now. I still feel my epicondylitis in both elbows, but it is improving. Not fast, but improving. We have slowly added new preventive practices to my weekly and daily routine and, if I stick to it, I am pretty sure I will get better.
All in all, prehab requires discipline from the athlete. Not easy, but a sufficient amount of love and commitment to your sport should do the trick.
Check this:
http://www.prehab.com/

Whatever it is, I feel like Jell-o. Maybe just a bad combination of work related stress, urinary tract infection and a lot of injuries. The fact is that I decided to give up training for meets this year, and this has been a relief. I’ve got to concentrate on writing and taking care of our Federation, translating SSA and GPC rulebooks and much more. And rest – man… I need some rest…

I’m back to work, training and going to meets. But the after-effect has been a strength deficit and loss of motor coordination in the left hand. I am not sure about the arm – triceps, biceps and certain forearm muscles seem to be less affected. I have less episodes of numbness in the last three fingers and I am already able to type. But the strength deficit beats me: I can’t figure out what’s actually going on.
I am adopting quite heterodox strategies, such as writing, playing with small rubber balls and doing other weird motor tasks with my left hand to stimulate neural re-adaptation.
I am not giving up reaching a real good mark on the deadlift this year, still…

For more than a week I have been struggling with an excruciating pain located primarily right under the rhomboids, migrating to posterior deltoids (like it were inside my armpit) and inner part of triceps. According to my physician, this injury was caused by an inadequate office arrangement, particularly a ridiculous kitchen plastic chair. Some months ago my office chair was broken. Instead of buying another one and checking for postural adequateness, I just grabbed the plastic kitchen chair and have been working on it ever since. Obviously, with the most inadequate posture, all hunched and contracted, elbows held high with permanently contracted upper back muscles and much more.
About 10 days ago, the inevitable consequences showed up and I have this weird back pain irradiating to the tips of my fingers. They seem to be related to nerve compression at the T2 region, but it comes and goes. Other symptoms show muscle involvement and muscle relaxants help more than pain killers. Electro-acupuncture is really good and cortisone local application helped a little.
I lost some control on my left hand and there is a measurable strength deficit on this side as well. It seems to be getting a little better, though.
Yes: I bought a new chair.

That was on July the 27^th – the First São Paulo Raw Bench Press Meet. I was opening with 75kg “just to make sure”, but everyone – myself included – expected something around 95kg. After all, I always lift better at meets than at the gym – I had done 92kg at the gym.
Never went beyond 75kg.
Reasons? Not sure: until 15 minutes before I was still typing the results spreadsheet; people were discussing political issues related to PL in the country while I was already wrapping my wrists; I expected myself to apply advanced “qigong” techniques which I still lack… whatever it was, it made me fail on a day where I was physically at my best.
Well… what can I say? S* happens.
The week after that I was obviously suspicious and tried my strength at the gym: 2 sets of 3X100kg + 2 sets of 2X110kg, easy. Some little veins burst open over my face – blood shot eyes, too.
No problems with my strength…
 

I’ve been reading “Power to the People” again as I write my own stuff. I had forgotten how much I like Tsatsouline’s writing. Not only it is sound technical material, but it is also funny and bold. Just the way it should be. The man is talking sense about neural aspects of strength for such a long time and academia has still not even starting crawling on his tracks…

Since I broke my leg in June 2007, I must admit I have not paid much attention to squatting. I squatted back my leg and glutes volume and strength, more in order to improve my deadlift than for the sake of squatting itself.
About two months ago I did a load test and 140kg was pretty heavy. No way I could do 150kg. Yesterday I did 2 X 150kg, easy. I estimate something around 165kg-170kg max in competition.
What is this improvement? I attribute most of it to neural training with sustaining work. I have periodized my squats in combination with deadlifts, did not max out during this month and a half or so and this is the result I got.
I am happy.
 

My friends taking part on the South American Powerlifting Championship in Quito, Equador, are having problems with the altitude. This is called Acute Mountain Sickness and can develop complications. It is recommended that athletes increase their water intake and completely avoid alcohol, anti-histaminics and sleep medications.
There are other alternatives, but many included the use of substances that are banned by WADA.
I had never thought of this before, but maybe it is a good idea not to host competitions in high altitude towns, since high altitude dwelling people have no problems down here, but we do, if we climb up there without proper acclimation, which takes about two weeks.
Just an idea.
 

This site is the best I found to this moment concerning “hidden” information on sports in general. It is where I found documents and publications about weightlifting during the Cold War, histories of specific institution and athletes, everything you can imagine.
Of special interest is Iron Game History, an amazing periodical with rich material concerning our sports.
Check it out: http://www.la84foundation.org/