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