Hi there.
So, I haven’t received an actual diagnosis, I’m active duty and getting a doctor who knows what EDS is is hard, let alone one who will listen to me or properly try to diagnose me. I’m working it. But most of my immediate family on my moms side have classical. I don’t have as great a hypermobility issue as they do but I have had a shoulder dislocation and a rib subluxation. I present with heart palpitations, costochondritis symptoms, permanent gum recession, easy bruising and some hypermobility.
I’ve been powerlifting for the last 2 years and I love it. I’ve competed 3 times and hold 3 records in my state. I’ve taken the summer off to help heal some overt raining symptoms and reevaluate my training because… I’m just not repping weight. I’ve tried to incorporate GVT, I’ve tried to push through the pain and fatigue, but it’s nearly impossible for me to rep out the closer I get to my max.
For example. My max Deadlift is 425. Since I hit it at my last meet I’ve gotten close (405, 385) on multiple occasions. But my 5 rep max is only like, 275 on a good day. Squat is pretty much the same. My bench is always poverty so my reppable weight there is pretty close to what I see as normal, but I’ve been coming back from a shoulder injury so it isn’t a great tell.
A lot of experienced lifters I know can easily rep 75-90% of their 1rm. I just can’t seem to build it up, but if I continue training I have no issue increasing my 1 rep. I don’t believe I’m skimping on training, I’ve followed CT Whitney, and Hybrid performance over the last year and have increased my total by more than 100#. But my rep weight is still just… Awful.
Anyway. Ultimately I’m searching for other zebras. But if anyone else with or without EDS suffers from this problem, I’m curious of your experience as well. I’m starting to think my rep capacity might have something to do with my compromised ligament development, as my joints tend to feel the fatigue more than anything. Thank you for your time!
Many lifters struggle with reps, particularly natural lifters who have trained in the lower rep range on compound movements.
EDS is not fully understood other than its particular collagen disorder. How this is manifested clinically ( individual symptoms) can be variable from person to person.
If you want to train for reps, drop,the weights and start more sub maximum and work up, say 65% and build up over several cycles. Personally I believe DL for reps is silly unless you completely reset.
Thank you for your service.
Other than what I skimmed over in the wiki, I don’t really know anything about the disorder.
But before you start looking into complicated reasons related to your disorder about your difficulty with reps I’d take a look into these possibilities:
-
You said you feel reps more in your joints than muscle. When pumping out reps especially with big compound movements it becomes very easy to allow form to break down as you get closer to failure. This is why when I first did 531 my joints took a thrashing when before I worked with heavier weight. Take some video of your rep work and see if that fits you before going deep into medical explanations. I’m not at all saying it couldn’t be medical but this is much easier and simpler to look into first.
-
You’re just as practiced with rep work. And work done with GVT isn’t really good to compare to pure strength work. GVT is purely for hypertrophy and it’ll improve muscle endurance too. Something like a 8 to 10 rep max are better indicators.