A new squat PB!

Training at the town local gym with two friends, I was about halfway through my squat session when I thought '....I'm finding this unusually easy tonight.' I had been told by others at my powerlifting club that 'If you're strong use it,' as hey, we all have good days and bad days. So deciding to go for it, i put my current PB on the bar, 160kg. Easy. I felt like i couldve done 3 reps on it. So ecstatic, and pumped up, I put 170kg on the bar, grabbed a third person for spotting, and went for it. I couldn't believe myself how comfortable it felt! I was on top of the world for the next few hours! So here is hoping for the start of a move up in strength!

Tom Platz, the Master of Squatting

After going through some old Tom Platz video's on squats I stumbled across one which I have currently been applying to my training. This may be old, or an obviously technique to some people, but for some reason it hadn't crossed my mind until discovering it.

The king himself goes on to explain how he has one day squatting, just doing rep work, going for the 15 - 20 rep mark, and a second day, going heavy. The idea is that the rep day is what sets you up for building muscle, increasing capillary development and mitochondria function, and increasing the blood flow to the working muscle. Then the heavy is done to put the stress on the muscle fibres, creating micro-tears, and therefore leading to protein synthesis. I think this sounds like a very good routine, which is why i am trying myself (currently one week in), and will keep you updated as to the results. I'm pretty certain it, will go well, after all, who hasn't seen the famous 500lb for 23 reps??

Thanks again,

Sam

After a few weeks off, I am back! I apologise for the time away, but due to changing jobs etc I have got a little sidetracked, but I am all sorted, and fully back into the swing of training and dieting.

As a short update, I did my competition, with results I was happy with, achieving what I had hoped for.

Also, as my birthday is next week and I turn 23, I will now be in the open class, and so I have decided to not enter competitions for a while, so that I can concentrate  a little more on bodybuilding, as I feel I have way more muscle I can put on, in so turning into strength.

I will be posting more updates on how I go, and ideas and thoughts I have on the sport as a whole,

Cheers for reading,

Sam

Deadlifting with the Master

A regular at the gym I attend (Absolute Fitness, Boroughbridge) Benedikt Magnusson is a familiar face now, I guess I could say. There are a lot of high level strongmen, powerlifters and bodybuilders that attend, but there is always a certain presence with the worlds best. I recorded this video last Friday, October 31st, and shows this entirely. He has 400kg on the bar, and the whole gym stopped to watch as he made it look like nothing:

Sam

My Arm Injury .... Pre Operation

I always had this party trick I could do, where i could basically twist my right arm in a certain way, and it would bend back in the wrong direction. This may sound very freaky, and everyone said that's how it looked, but from my perspective it didn't look that bad and wasn't fussed about it, and besides, it never hurt me, so what could be wrong?

It was only when I had joined a local (and VERY average leisure gym) that I noticed that my right elbow had very little, if no stability at all. In fact in some exercise such as skull crushers, they were completely impossible to do. And I'm not talking about the weight being to heavy here, im talking about not being able to do 1 rep on 10kg/ 22lbs.  It just felt as if my arm would drop out of socket (obviously I know there's no socket joint in the elbow!) but that's the only way i could describe it. Again though, no pain, so I just assumed it was maybe weak or something, and a thought it would get stronger with time.

After a year or so of training, still no luck. I could bench press 34kg / 75lb dumbells, but could not complete a single rep of tricep extensions with 6kg / 13lbs. This is when alarm bells started ringing. Especially as I could see my left tricep starting to develop, and only the long head tricep really making any change in my right arm. So with me having a doctors appointment booked for a different need, I thought I may as well show them and see what they say. Explaining to her that I've been able to do it as long as remember, and with no pain, I showed her the 'Trick' I could do. I laugh now, but I can remember her reaction looking at it, then looking at me and said ''No pain?''  ''Nope, never'' I replied. Thinking I was going to be told I wasn't training it properly, or something along those lines, to my surprise she then said ''You need to go to the hospital, I've never seen that before. I could take a guess as to whats happened, but you definitely need to see a specialist.'' So shocked, I left, went home, and laughed about it with my parents, not knowing I was going to get more surprising news in the next few weeks...

Sam

Finally making some progress at the Bench!

So today I finally saw myself make some progress at my worst event, the bench press. Due to horrendously long arms, and an injury to my right elbow i really find the bench difficult to make some headway in. My current PB is 97.5kg press pause, which for my weight class in the two competitions i have competed in has put me last....by a fair margin.

However today i managed a full set working on 95kg. My workout was as follows (I'll skip out the warm up sets)
2 x 95kg press pause
2 x 95kg press pause
1 x 95 kg press pause, 1 x 95kg regular
1 x 95 kg press pause, 1 x 95kg regular assisted

Now these weights may look puny to a lot of guys, but for me this is huge. Before this session I had never managed to double 95kg, so as you may imagine, I am quite happy. The past couple of days I have consumed a very high amount of carbohydrates, so I'm obviously blaming it as a result of that.... so I'm going to continue! just a quick update for myself, and anyone that is actually reading these.

ciao

Keeping focus! - Pt. 1 - Stuck in the hole

I thought today i would go into my recent competition in more detail (I briefly mentioned it in my previous post). I'll split this into two parts as to not make it a long read. So to kick things off straight away, here are my results:

Weighed in at 89.1kg

Squat.        1. 150kg   2. 160kg (Fail)   3. 160kg
Bench.       1. 90kg    2. 95kg     3. 97.5kg (PB)
Deadlift.    1. 215kg   2. 225kg (Fail)   3. 225kg

Total: 482.5kg  (or 1063lbs)

As my title states, I think my main downfall at this competition was my focus. After looking at the pictures and videos it is very clear that i wasn't even ready for my first two squats. My first lift I step out from the rack, and i can remember thinking as I was about to squat 'I'm not balanced yet, what am I doing' but went ahead and did it anyway. From there on I was downhill. My second squat was absolutely dreadful, and as you can see i failed it. I walked out of the squat cage thinking 'What the hell just happened, I've done this weight for 3 in training before,' before going and seeing the footage.

The first thing I spotted from this picture was that my hands are pretty much just resting on the bar...so not thinking what I'm doing. The loose end of my belt isn't tucked in....not ready. And it looks to me as if I'm already leaning forward, which is consequently how i failed; as i was squatting back up, I leaned forward, putting all the weight onto my lower and mid back and just couldn't finish the lift. I was set up to fail looking back on it, I started the entire lift completely off-balance. I completed an incredibly scrappy third lift of the same weight, but I think it was purely due to determination (that, and the fact i was annoyed with myself for failing a fairly comfortable weight for me!). The video wasn't the prettiest of things, that's all i shall say! So going into bench press I knew I needed to get my head right before doing any lifts. And bench is my worst lift.

Sam

So this is my first post. I am a 6ft 3inch, 92kg (currently) powerlifter in training. I decided to start a blog as i thought.... I've not seen many tall skinnier guys out there in powerlifting. I mean I've seen skinnier people training, and I've seen taller but heavier people competing, but I've havent seen many, if any lifters like myself; 6ft plus, but on the lighter side. I also thought  I would do this, as it will be beneficial to myself in seeing how i progress through my training. So as a quick summary this is where i am at (I will go into more detail with upcoming posts) :

Just competed in Absolute Fitness in-house charity event (12th Oct)

Squat: 160kg
Bench: 97.5kg  PB
Deadlift: 225kg

*very unhappy with squat, after watching video's of the lifts i was all over the place
** was hoping for a heavier deadlift, but first attempt on 225kg got failed due to hitching, which to this day even watching the video i still argue against this

So overall 482.5kg total, which i believe was 309.6 wilks points (BW 89.1kg)

I am competing at the end of November again, and again my eyes will be set on that 500kg total, but we shall see what happens.

Thanks for reading,
Sam