A little background on me:
Training almost 20 years and competitively powerlifting 15 of those years. Started out as a 198er and have competed as high as 242. Currently in the 220’s and as of now, my strength is a good as it’s ever been.
Best total: 1806 @ 238
squat: 639 @ 220
Bench: 474 @ 220
Deadlift: 722 @ 220
38 years old
All of this has been done drug free and in single ply Titan gear. I usually compete in the USPF and AAU. Those are the two prominent feds here in So. Cal.
Firm believer that if a goal isn’t written down, it won’t happen. So here we go: I will total 2000 lbs. by the end of 2010. There, I said it.
Where I am now: I have a meet on March 28. It’s a USPF State meet in Los Alamitos and also a qualifier for the USPF Nationals later this year. Shooting for a 1900ish total for this meet. I’d like to hit 650 sq, 500 bench, and a 750 dead.
Last meet was an AAU event about 10 months ago. Hit a 1780 total @ 220. Went 10 for 10 that day and I was conservative with my attempts except the deadlift. I broke my own AAU deadlift record with a 722 on a 4th attempt.
Training: Beginning in January, I was doing a program similar to 5/3/1, actually it was the “Bigger Faster Stronger” program that I modified for powerlifting. Funny how VERY similar Wendler’s program looks to BFS. BFS has been around for almost 40 years. Anyway, I’ve used this template since 2002 and it consistently works well.
I had an epiphany regarding my squat stance and technique, so I looked for a program that would drill the squat relentlessly. Sheiko to the rescue! Simply, I printed off Sheiko program #29 off the log Eric Talmant writes on Elite and put sorta conservative raw numbers into it. I followed it almost word for word except for the deadlift (I only pull off the floor). This cycle lasted 4 weeks and damn near killed me and my training partner.
We are in week 4 of the Sheiko 5 week competition peak. I knew the high squat volume would do good things for me, but I didn’t expect it to be that good. My squat and bench are way up and I even hit a gym PR in the deadlift. I didn’t touch a weight above 80% for over 9 weeks and crushed a 738 dl. I’ll take it.
So, there we are. Let the games begin…