Not Just a Man's World

I am serious about wanting to qualify and compete at powerlifting, but at the moment there are a few key problems:

1. I’ve just spent the last two years trying to improve my form and find the weaknesses that were being masked by poor form (like my abs) and working hard at eliminating weaknesses.  I’m not there yet, but I’m definitely moving in the right direction.  However, the flip side of that is that I’ve not done any proper powerlifting moves for a while and my good form weights are below qualifying weights.
2. My hip mobility is dreadful so I can’t squat deep enough and it hinders how much I can deadlift.
3. When I bench, I can’t stabilise the bar once there’s a mildly heavy weight on it and I tend to fail about halfway up.

This series 

This week has been the end of the fourth week of a new program designed to see me through into the New Year.  Fixing the problems while also driving up the strength numbers are the priorities of the program.  I’m recording my progress in this series: powerlifting progress.  It is serving as a journal and makes me a bit more accountable to my goals.

After last week’s 5 days of absolute rest I had high hopes for this week.  Here is what happened.

Squat

Action plan

• Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
• Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength

Progress this week

• I’ve been doing some Romanian Deadlift work with an empty bar this week as a sort of cardio warm-up to deal with the cold gym and my hip mobility is definitely improving.  However, I’ve not had an opportunity to get Chris to watch my empty bar squats and find out if I can get any deeper than the 15.5 inches I was at before.  I’ll test before Christmas gets here and see if all of the rolling and stretches have paid off.
• Leg strength has hit my target.  Having dropped my set and rep scheme on my rear-foot-elevated split squats from 10 sets of 3 reps to 5 sets of 2 reps (I was starting to struggle with the dumbbells for such a long period) I have worked my way through to and completed 50kg this week which is body weight.
• Dragon flags have also hit a new high having increased the weight to 3.75kg (and had an amusing session doing something that resembled double leg cycling in the air for several reps).  However, the 2.5kg weight was getting too easy so my ab strength is definitely still improving.
• Having hit my first goal on leg strength and with the improved hip mobility and ab strength it will be time to start to consider putting some real squats back into the program after Christmas.  I’m thinking of starting off with Front Squats while I continue to do Romanian Deadlifts with some weight to build up my lower back strength in preparation for Back Squats.

Bench

Action plan

• Maintain – technique
• Develop – lat and shoulder strength

 Progress this week

A week off made a huge difference.  While the push presses have had to start back from 30kg (though by the end of this week I was back at 34kg), my pull ups have gone up to a new level with extra reps appearing all over the place and, even better, some really good form showing with more frequency (and a full awareness of when I do reps with poor form).  This new-found self-awareness has really made a difference to me.

Now I just need to be careful, since a day of meetings left me with a locked out upper back again and a crick in my neck (muscles up both sides were like solid ropes of steel).  This is going to be a careful balance between busy season at work and regular hard rolling and stretching to ensure I don’t lose the gains I’ve made so far.

Deadlift

Action plan

• Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
• Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength

Progress this week

Disappointment on the deadlift front.  Coming back after 5 days off we noticed some problems with my form (the knots in my upper back probably weren’t helping this either) and I had to drop down to do my deadlift workout with 70kg because I could barely get 75kg off the ground.  A full 10kg less than the deadlift I’d completed the week before it all went wrong. 

On the plus side, the 70kg weight was feeling easy by the end of the workout and my form was improving with all the work grooving the movement on the lighter weight so there is hope.  I’m planning to jump back up to 75kg next week and then I’ll be off on holiday for a week, so it’s going to be a while before I manage to recover back to where I was.

As with squats, my hip mobility, leg strength and ab strength are showing significant improvement but lower back strength and upper back mobility seem to be my sticking points at the moment with this.  Hopefully the Romanian Deadlifts and continued rolling and stretching will do the trick.

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress: week one
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week three
3. Powerlifting progress 2010: week thirty-seven
4. Powerlifting progress 2010: week thirty-five