What’s the Best Powerlifting Program for Me?

you inspired me.

At least Chris was creative.

If you Deadlift with hips dumped forward (APT), improperly braced you’re pretty much just flexing and extending at the spine instead of the hips.

If you do sit ups or an-wheel this way, with pelvis tipped forward, improperly braced, you’re just flexing and extending at the spine.

Stuck in ATP, many exercises will be Less Than Worthless. They will just be re-enforcing bad tendencies. They will work against you, making your technique Worse and making you More prone to injuries.

The best stuff do to would be work that gets you Out of ATP, and Into correct Bracing/Position.

I probably should have mentioned this when I found out about it, but there’s a meet very nearby me that I found out about on May 19 that I decided to sign up for. I know I won’t be competitive but it I figure it won’t hurt to get some experience under my belt. I followed the 5/3/1 5’s progression and fsl. It went quite well. For the past 4 weeks, I’ve been doing a single one week and a double the next week with the same weight as the single before doing the prescribed 5/3/1 sets. Because I’m approaching the meet now, this week I did 4 sets of 3 on all the main lifts that were pretty challenging. Next week I plan to either do 2 sets of 2 of 3 reps. The week before the meet I figured I’d work up to an opener on all lifts and then rest 3-4 days. I should also mention that when I signed up for the meet, it was full, so right now I’m in bench only and on the waiting list for the full meet. I figure I should still train as if it’s a full meet in case I get in via the wait list.

@asimon - read this thread

That sounds alright, hopefully you can get to lift in the full meet but bench-only is better than nothing.

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Thanks for all your help! Do you think I should be doing doubles or triples at 2 weeks out?

LOL didnt see 23 day lay off…

Doubles for the top set, could do triples for down sets though. You could even do singles but it’s not necessary, a lot of the best lifters (Ed Coan from example) didn’t do singles at all. Open with something you can definitely get for a triple, set a realistic goal for your third attempt.

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I was asking him some questions in another thread, bringing back this one makes more sense than starting a new one or hijacking someone else’s.

how has 5/3/1 been going for you?

I used to train with an Army brat who trained at Frantz’s when he lived in Chicago. At that time, Coan was training at Frantz’s and according to this eyewitness Frantz had Coan on a steady diet of singles and heavy negative deadlifts. Don’t forget that the elite didn’t always train the same way over the years.

I’m sure he did plenty of different things over the years, but based on what I have seen and heard in interviews, articles, and his book he would finish a training cycle with heavy doubles then deload and go to the meet.

I’m not arguing for or against singles, I use singles but there are people who don’t and lift a lot more than me. Just different approaches that can lead to the same end result.

how does a heavy negative deadlift work? Is this just a controlled, slower-tempo on the eccentric or actually picking the bar up off of a rack around lockout and lowering it to the floor?

There are two ways to do it:

  1. Lift a max deadlift. Have people on either side load extra plates. Slowly lower the bar to the floor.

  2. Place an overloaded bar in the rack a few inches short of lockout. Lift it off the pins and have two people pull the pins out. Then slowly lower the bar.

I believe its described in Ernie’s book "The ten Commandments of Powerlifting. I have no personal experience with the method.

So today was the day of my Bench Only meet. It was an OPA/CPU/IPF meet - the Scarborough Spring Classic Volume 2. I went in with this as a rough plan
Attempt 1: 75kg/165lbs
Attempt 2: 80kg/176lbs
Attempt 3: 85kg:187lbs
For whatever reason, they got my rack height mixed up with another guy’s oh well. on my first attempt, the unrack felt a little high, but I didn’t think anything of it. When I lowered the bar, the safety’s were so high that I couldn’t touch my chest.
Attempt 1: 75kg/165lbs :red_circle: :red_circle: :red_circle:
Attempt 2: 75kg/165lbs :white_circle: :white_circle: :white_circle:
Attempt 3: 82.5kg/181.5lbs :white_circle: :white_circle: :red_circle:
(I think my right butt check moved a bit)
I think 82.5kg/181.5lbs was probably the right call. It wasn’t much of a grinder, and I’m not sure if I could have gotten 85kg/187lbs, maybe if I had a proper second attempt. My best training lift was 185 for 2 (second rep had a short pause). Other than the rack height mix up, the meet was run very well. Someone almost squatted an 83kg unofficial Canadian record (273kg I think), Someone almost set a 93kg bench record (can’t remeber the number) and a girl (can’t remeber weight class) broke provincial records on all her deadlifts. The atmosphere was amazing, everyone was cheering each other on, including people going head to head. They even had a professional photographer take pictures of me for free, I bet all the pictures will be uploaded somewhere. For one lift the entire crowd (100ish people) got up on their feet and cheered for a deadlift. Overall, amazing day. I’m not even upset by the rack height issue. Flight A ended 10 minutes late, and I assume flight B was run in a fairly timely manner as well.

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They should have given you another attempt, that’s what they do if the bar is misloaded. Leroy Walker tore a pec and tricep a few months ago because of the safeties being set wrong, good thing nothing happened to you.

Even though I agree that they should have given me another attempt, they were pretty chill with a lot of the other things. Someone pulled a deadlift and rolled their shoulders back, causing downward motion at the lockout before the down command, and she got 3 whites. There was also a girl who had her 1 minute timer going to lift, and had people helping her yank her SBD sleeves on, and the judges didn’t care.

I got SBD knee sleeves, wrist wraps and a belt for my birthday, and I’m wondering how I should start incorporating them into my training. I was thinking I would just start next workout with this. Only using them on set 2 of my main lifts, and mostly avoid them on accessory’s
Belt: squats and deadlifts, experiment on bench
Knee sleeves: squats
Wrist wraps: bench, and experiment with squat and deadlift

If you have never used a belt before then use it for your last couple warm up sets and all work sets on the competition squat and deadlift, if you have non-competition variations then you could consider doing them beltless. There may be some benefits of doing some beltless training but they are probably less than you would think, the belt makes you activate more muscles if you use it properly. Using a belt is a skill, one time I did a training block with no belt at all and my beltless lifts went up but when I put the belt back on it was like it didn’t do anything and I was not able to match my previous lifts.

The belt adds nothing to bench, if you like it then use it but don’t worry about it too much one way or another.

There is no reason not to use wrist wraps unless you feel that you don’t need them. I use them for squat and bench, not for deadlift. They can prevent wrist pain but otherwise add nothing.

Unless you have a ridiculously tight pair of knee sleeves, they won’t add much if anything. I tried not using them at times (I have a moderately tight pair of SBDs) and basically it seems like what I can squat for 4 without sleeves I can squat for 5 with sleeves. I also squat with a lot of knee flexion so they will do more for me than someone who uses a wider stance and sits back more. So unless you plan to compete raw in a federation where sleeves are considered equivalent to wraps or your sleeves are insanely tight then there is no harm in using them for all work sets since you will use them in competition, and doing squat variations without sleeves is an option you can consider.

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