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!

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