Six days until meet day. Rest begins. I will still go to the gym two times just to move a little bit. Nothing taxing.
Still not sure what kind of numbers I will be attempting for max squat and max deadlift. If I'm well rested and have that many eyes on me I may be capable of more than I think.
Well, in hindsight I've been a dumbass. I did the exact opposite of what I planned to do and it backfired.
In the moment I was feeling so good I overshot my 3rd attempt squat by so much I failed miserably, then also failed my 3rd bench attempt, and then got conservative with my deadlift leaving too much in the tank. Hit 175/110/220 for a 505kg total which is not great because it's the exact same I hit during my test day except I felt a whole lot better and was without doubt good for more.
If I would've stuck with the original plan (lower squat higher deadlift) I might have had an extra 17kg.
I am extremely surprised with the speed and ease of all my 2nd attempts, though. This makes me wonder if I perhaps chose my openers too light and my jumps too big.
The good news is I won my weight class. The bad news is I was the only contestant in that weight class (100+) that did all three lifts. I weighed in at 101.3kg (223lbs).
A meet is way longer and more exhausting than I imagined. I think we lifted from 3PM to almost 9PM with about 40 contestants.
It was a lot more competitive than I thought, I thought it would've been random gym bros but they were all fairly serious lifters. All low bar squatters too except for maybe 3 people which kinda made me cringe cause I always associate Chinese squats with beautiful, deep, graceful, elite, perfect form hbbs. Nope, all wider stance, questionably parallel, low bar squat faces.
My squat was somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. My bench was a joke compared to everyone else. My deadlift was at the higher end.
The judging was a bit of a joke done by inexperienced people, so almost everybody got white lights despite many mistakes. But still, a way better event than expected.
Picture with some training buddies.
Fatty at the bottom is a 28yr old South African record holder who casually pulled 305kg (673) with lots of speed and then after the event did a quick 250x15 (551) for fun.
Here you get a better view of the size of the guy.
Here's the guy pulling 673 raw as if it's a warmup.
For comparison:
He was complaining a lot about my bench grip, said the way I grab the bar makes zero sense and is very inefficient because I can't "pull the bar apart". Never really realized how weird it looks, I swear I thought I saw it explained like this in the SS book years back and just got used to it. It's basically a thumbless grip with the thumb still around. Thoughts?
He also say my deadlift looked great and that if I were to cut depth to parallel I could probably squat 200kg quite soon based on the speed of my 175.
These felt more snappy than ever. I failed 100kg but I could've easily made it if I give it a few more tries. Moving to the local crossfit soon so I don't have to worry about dropping weights anymore.
He was complaining a lot about my bench grip, said the way I grab the bar makes zero sense and is very inefficient because I can't "pull the bar apart". Never really realized how weird it looks, I swear I thought I saw it explained like this in the SS book years back and just got used to it. It's basically a thumbless grip with the thumb still around. Thoughts?
He also say my deadlift looked great and that if I were to cut depth to parallel I could probably squat 200kg quite soon based on the speed of my 175.
Is there where I switch to lbbs? To be continued
Congrats on doing the meet! fwiw, I have never gone 9/9, and if I did, I would wonder how much more I could have done. You did well, especially considering it was your 1st meet and on short notice.
yeah, your bench & squat could use some work. Please forget whatever you learned in SS. Ask me for more form critique if you are interested in improving your powerlifts.
squats - You do not need to rack the bar lower in order to widen your stance and cut your depth a bit. The way you squat now is hard on your knees because your knees shoot forward in the bottom - that puts a lot of stress on them. I think a wider stance would be very good for you.
Congrats on doing the meet! fwiw, I have never gone 9/9, and if I did, I would wonder how much more I could have done. You did well, especially considering it was your 1st meet and on short notice.
yeah, your bench & squat could use some work. Please forget whatever you learned in SS. Ask me for more form critique if you are interested in improving your powerlifts.
squats - You do not need to rack the bar lower in order to widen your stance and cut your depth a bit. The way you squat now is hard on your knees because your knees shoot forward in the bottom - that puts a lot of stress on them. I think a wider stance would be very good for you.
Thanks! Yeah, I was mostly disappointed because I know I could have done a lot more if I was a little smarter about my attempt choices. But I guess that's where the experience comes in. So all good.
I will definitely work on my squat, starting with removing the excessive bounce. Although I want my focus to stay on weightlifting, so I do everything in function of that. Don't really mind my weak bench. Thanks again for your help!
Quote:
Originally Posted by BustoRhymes
Congrats on winning your weight class.
I think your attempt jumps are actually kind of small, sort of like your biceps.
Thanks for suggesting Eckhart Tolle all that time ago. I get it now.
Thanks, it was great winning against no one else.
I am very happy to hear you get it now and it's been helpful. I ended up marrying the girl we talked about back then despite many red flags. Things continue to improve a lot over time. Very happy. It was mostly the indecision and doubt that made me go crazy. Once I made my choice and fully committed to it, everything got a lot easier.
I will definitely work on my squat, starting with removing the excessive bounce. Although I want my focus to stay on weightlifting, so I do everything in function of that. Don't really mind my weak bench. Thanks again for your help!
Dont think about removing the bounce. Just try to bounce off muscle tension, not off the knee joints.
Snatch
3x1x40
2x2x50
2x1x60
2x1x70
75 caught high
80x failed
80x failed
70 caught lower
75 caught lower
80 caught high
80 caught high
Well my pull and bar path improved but still very little improvement on pulling under with higher weights. At least 80 is a PR match and it didn't scare me like it used to.
Spent a couple of weeks traveling and not training too much. In the meanwhile I found wlforum's equivalent of Montecore coaching and because of how helpful he's been in analyzing my videos I agreed on taking up his remote coaching offer.
We haven't really done that much yet but as far as I can tell from his advice he's got my weaknesses exactly nailed down and he's doing actual week to week adjusted programming for my individual problems. I'm very happy I found him.
Spent half a year with that coach doing customized wl programming and video reviews, mostly hammered my weak ab and glute activation. Fixed my jerk up until a point where it's actually pretty solid. It went from my worst to favorite movement. Snatch still sucks. Maxes have barely moved because I decided to quit when we were just about to start our first peaking phase. I was feeling too lethargic about it all at some point in November.
Did a blood test and discovered I was fairly deficient in Vitamin D (measured 19.5ng/ml, most online ranges mention 40-80 as optimal), so I started supplementing that.
Hormones were all mediocre, test came back at 400ng/dl and estradiol (E2) 30pg/ml. DHEA on the low side, SHBG on the high side. Not great but nothing alarming. Surely not helping.
After talking with a buddy I got into the keto diet loophole and decided to give it a try. I'm now one month into ketosis, went from 225 to 209 lbs and I'm especially feeling incredible in bed. My erections feel like teenager level hard, my wife can't stop commenting about it whenever we have secks or spoon. I'm getting morning wood every single day and I find myself fantasizing about sex often again. Even sneaking in some shower wanks. Also noticing very vivid dreams.
I had been struggling with libido and ED issues for many years prior to this. Could not get hard when I needed to at all. I would end up using viagra almost every single time because without it I would barely get 20% hard, or I'd get a semi and then lose it as soon as I wanted to put it in. I lived like this for 5-6 years and got into countless fights with the wifey because of it.
Needless to say I feel like a changed man! I'm 99% sure it's not because of the Vitamin D because I've been supplementing that on and off for many years without noticing any difference in bed.
Looking forward to the updated blood test in ~2 months. Hoping to see a big difference because of the new eating habits.
I've also decided that I want to continue chasing the health/fitness/strength path a little more in 2020 rather than wasting more time sucking at the olympic lifts. Starting with GSLP next week and will log here.