I am serious about wanting to qualify and compete at powerlifting. When I started out on this series there were several key problems, such as poor hip mobility. Having had some reasonable successes at the end of 2009, fixing the remaining problems while also driving up the strength numbers are now 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.
This week
So here I am, back on the training schedule after what ended up being nearly two weeks off for me. To throw some interest into the mix, we have swapped one of our weekend workouts for a “strongman events” style of workout on the back patio. Since this is difficult to build into the powerlifting subtitles, I’m going to include a brief section on strongman work while this is going on.
Strongman events
This week we just did sandbag carries and farmers walks.
I managed the full set of ten sandbag carries with the 40kg bag. A massive relief when I look back at last autumn when Chris made the sandbag and I couldn’t pick the thing up.
Farmer’s walks were agony. Our patio isn’t that long so I was doing double laps for each set, negotiating 4 tight corners each time, so running was not an option. Further adding to the pain was the “improvement” to the homemade farmer’s walk bars of a piece of waste-pipe to the handle so that it doesn’t cut into your palms. I appreciated this amendment to the setup until I realised that it increased the diameter of the handles to a couple of inches and turned it into a grip as well as strength exercise. After four sets my forearms were burning with the effort of carrying 40kg (plus whatever the bars weigh) and I had severe DOMs in my forearms for days afterwards!
The activities we do will expand as the summer progresses and as Chris carries on gathering and building pieces of equipment. We already have the gear for tyre-bashing using the sledgehammers and the equipment to build a sledge. We’re also keeping our eyes open for something appropriate for tyre-flipping.
Watch this space!
Bench
Action plan
- Maintain – technique
- Develop – lat and shoulder strength
Progress this week
As promised before the holiday, I’ve stopped doing bench for now. I’m concentrating on some alternative exercises to give me a long-term improvement to bench: weighted pull ups, weighted narrow chin ups, military (overhead) press, dumbbell bench and decline dumbbell rows. These last are apparently good for hitting the top of the row movement and I felt them working the muscles I use to get the bar off my chest during bench too.
I’m still doing an upper body max effort day and a reps day but military presses feature as main exercises in both workouts, and decline dumbbell rows are an assistance exercise in both.
Unsurprisingly, my dumbbell bench press was dreadful. The lat strength, which was a previous shortcoming on my benching, is definitely improved, but my shoulder stability was poor and caused the dumbbells to fly all over the place. If Chris hadn’t been spotting me I almost certainly would have made a hole in the concrete floor!
Since I believe this lack of stability in my shoulders has a lot to do with why my shoulders slide out when I am benching and why I therefore lose strength when I’m doing multiple reps, the dumbbell bench should be a crucial exercise for improving my overall bench performance.
Squat
Action plan
- Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
- Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength
Progress this week
This workout is now done at the same time as deadlifts, though squats come first. Thankfully. This is also now a reps exercise instead of a max effort exercise. I should have been able to do 5 sets of 2 reps with the same weight of my 5 rep max (60kg) from before the holiday. However, for safety I pitched it a bit lower at 55kg and got out all my reps cleanly with good form. There was no fish-tailing on any reps so I know there’s a bit more in the tank.
I’ve also kept in assistance exercises of hip thrusts, for some targeted glute development, and hanging knee raises, for ab strength, both coming after the deadlift attempt.
Deadlift
Action plan
- Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
- Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength
Progress this week
This came straight after the squatting, rather than when I was fresh but I was pleased with my performance. The last time I did a max effort on deadlift was Christmas Eve when I squeezed 82.5kg out. However, when I did that my form was poor from about 70kg upwards (with my knees bowing inwards) and from 75kg onwards I was having to take two or more attempts at every weight to get it off the ground.
In comparison, this time I did every weight first time, my form only started to go (and it wasn’t in my knees, but more realistically an inability to keep my shoulder blades together) on my last attempt. That last attempt crawled upwards, never stopping but taking a good 10 seconds to get it from the floor to lock-out. But I succeeded and I’m proud to say I did a conventional deadlift of 80kg! After a squat workout!
I’m going to be alternating each week with sumos and I know I’ve done 5 single reps of 87kg with sumos before, so I expect great things next week.
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