10 Weeks to GPC Qualifier

Today I marked commencement of my preparation for the GPC qualifier in May. I have decided to go hard at the qualifier, more due to paranoia that work is somehow going to be crazy busy and I wont be able to attend Nationals (fingers crossed).

Still feeling banged up from my illness from last week but it's starting to become apparent to me that much of my training issues stem from lack of sleep due to my work commitments. Typically I average about 5-6 hours a night which is woeful compared to what I need given the stuff I do on a daily basis for work let alone training. Trying to make some changes to fix this at least 3-4 nights a week, though sometimes life just gets in the way.

Tonight was easy 3x10 deads at 55% followed by assistance for bench. Last year I followed a basic 3 day a week preparation however this year I have benefited from squatting and benching twice a week which has helped me work on technique. I am still learning and feel that I really need to practise technique and 1 day a week on the big lifts doesn't allow this.  Therefore I am running 5x3 or 5x5 sessions on alternate days to keep the frequency and volume up on the 3 lifts.

The powerlifting team looks like it is coming along nicely once everyone can work out what federations they are lifting in. Hopefully a few of the lads will see the light and kick onto GPC: they really are fantastically run competitions.

Overall the session felt good tonight. In and out in an hour, so plenty of rest tonight and ready for the long weekend.

Stay Strong
Thomo

What Do Powerlifters Get for Their Birthday

Today I celebrated my 44th Birthday and I am still trying to work out where the last 20 years went?? It's quite sobering to get close to your mid forties but fortunately I still feel (some would say act) like I am still in my twenties.

I am still not on de-load off week as I finish my antibiotics course so the tension of not training is really starting to build. In fact I find myself already thinking about how the bar will feel in my hand on that first deadlift session. 

Given how well my last squat session went I am quite looking forward to getting under the bar. I really feel the mobility work has started to benefit my squat However it's a long road to good form but I am taking it a day at a time.

I am comfortably reconciled that I will be missing States this year but I am fortunate PTC Perth are putting on a Nationals Qualifier a month out so I will still be good to go for Nationals. Given how work is this year Nationals will be a hit and run mission with a flight over, compete then return the next day.  Not quite the trip I would like but it is what it is.

Tomorrow I will take a little about what I am learning about recovery (often the hard way!).

Stay Strong

Thomo

Try Lifting Naturally for Once

Caught up with the old lads today and invariably the topic turned to gear (drugs not lifting suits!). The consensus was that it's just plain shitty working your ass off for a total then find some ass-hole juiced to the gills with hosepipe vascularity comes out and blows you away.

Now don't misunderstand me, that very same lifter may be working hard but the undeniable fact is that the asshole took a short cut. Essentially they couldn't push through the hard yards to realise gains the natural way.

Despite this I wear my natural status and crappy total as a badge of honour because I am damn happy to be lifting healthy. Though I still struggle to comprehend so many taking this unnatural route so early in their career. I think the young guys that gear do it for the insecurity and the laziness. I mean flogging away day in day out for 15 kgs on your total takes resilience. Much simpler to take D-Bol, test  etc and keep the big gains coming.

Perhaps for me the worst part of it is the duplicity, the fact that may don't come out and say they are on the gear. If you have the balls to take it then have the balls to step up and admit you take the gear because you can't cut it naturally.

I have seen plenty of guys recently that have gone down this path and frankly it's good to know I can look them in the eye and they can see how little I think of them.

Now the question comes up why don't I train in a natural fed, well because in my area they are poorly supported with few competitions. I'd much rather be the anomaly amongst a sea of common cheating halfwits.

In fact it's not even the illegality, for me it's far more about the mental laziness of those that go down this route so early. The smug self assuredness of those that achieve a result for which they are not wholly responsible.

As my older masters friend pointed out, few if any of his peers from those days that geared are in any state to lift or give back to the sport now.

Therefore I am content that many of you gearing and taking false accolades now will be watching from the sidelines in twenty years while I will still be on the platform in my sixties.

You will be in the crowd, perhaps with several torn pecs fucked up backs and chronically low test. Maybe you will just be a fat fuck. Either way I'll be there watching and I will recognise you and maybe even ask you if it was all worth it.


Stay Strong

Thomo

PS that was my 300th Post and thanks to those of you that follow my meandering rants!

Exit Brisbane..Hello Perth

I flew back into Perth today after 4 days spent working in Brisbane. It was a whirlwind trip, made more challenging by a nice throat/head infection that I picked up last week. Straight off the plane I hit the local Dr who actually went through a decent diagnosis before he recommended the antibiotics.

Thankfully this is my de-load week so I am not due to train again for another 4 days which will be 9 days in total off. By the time I get back to training I should be well rested and raring to go.

While in Brisbane I managed to track down a pair of light weight shoes for deadlifting. For the past 6 months I have been using some cheap ass $10 shoes I picked up in a rush at the last minute prior to Nationals. Since then I have been looking for better option than the typical converse with the inners removed. I ran across the Merrell range and found the perfect deadlifting type slipper with flat grippy sole and very light weight. 

I can't wait to get onto the platform in these.

Stay Strong

Thomo

ps for those of you who recline your seat in Economy..where do you think that seat ends up?? In my fucking face while I am trying to watch TV. I had to point this out to a schmuck today on the flight with an 'accidental' but perfectly timed elbow to the back of the head. 

Deloading this Week

Today was my last session of the week. This meant heavy squats, and overhead press. Last night I felt pretty lousy with a sore throat and general lethargy, so going in I wasn't particularly confident  the session would be productive.

Surprisingly I pounded out the requisite sets feeling strong as well as smashing a nice 20 reps  on my AMAP set. It's actually funny how in previous sessions when I have felt under the weather they have proved to be the best session of the week. As a bonus I videoed my heaviest set of squats and it was by far the best form I have had in a long while.

Tomorrow I am on a plane for 4 days for business so I will take the opportunity to de-load and let the body recover a little before kicking off again next Thursday.

I have decided I am definitely not doing States this year as it is likely I will be away for work in and around that week.  So rather than run myself into the ground I will hit the Nationals qualifier at PTC a month out from Nationals. I won't peak for the qualifier, instead I am going to simply lift whatever my scheduled training poundage is for that week. I am not confident of peaking twice so soon so this will allow me to qualify and then run my normal peaking cycle for Nationals.

While it has been a slow start this season I am feeling ok, I am looking forward to Nationals but one day at a time there are plenty of sessions to get through first.

Stay Strong
Thomo

Why don't Olympic Lifters Squat in a Damn Rack

Watching his Vlog 20 as part of my Jon North appreciation society role (kidding yeh but I do like the guy) I saw him dump a squat and almost get stapled on the way down. Check out 9:38 on the video below.




What I can't reconcile is given the inherent risk in getting crunched under a squat why wouldn't Oly lifters perform limit sets  in a rack for safety. Is it machismo, habit or just plain stupidity. Maybe I am more risk averse than most but for a guy like Jon pushing hard why would you not make what is an assistance movement such as the squat safer??

Thomo

ps watched a guy today reverentially put on his new Oly lifting shoes only to then step on to the platform and perform 6 sets of deadlifts

Another Day More Rep Targets to Beat

Tonight was a 50% win 50% lose session. I was on a time limit due to prior committments but lost time first as a) someone was fucking around on the lowest possible pin height rack deadlifting in the rack I needed. Then when it was time to bench I was left with a shitty fat grip bar then when I wanted to pause deadlift I had to wait for a bar to free up. Consequently I had to cut short my deadlifts 2 sets early.

Overall it was a good session.  Still a little weird though that while I don't feel as in the groove as last year the weights are going up a little better and certainly stronger earlier in the season??

Met another guy, Nathan last night and he has lifted in CAPO before and is keen to train on the team. Therefore at this stage we will have 4-5 guys lifting and representing the gym. Not bad for a mainstream gym.

As I suggested in a previous post I am hoping creating an enclave of powerlifting within a more mainstream gym will help attract some guys to competition that otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to it.

We will organise soft suits, t-shirts etc and coordinate some shared training nights and get the team vibe pumping.

Stay tuned

Thomo

Who Squats in Front of the Mirror????

Despite the debacle of training last week on a Monday and waiting  20 minutes for a bar I decided again to brave the masses  tonight.

Heavy dead-lifts tonight translated to a triple at 90% of my 1RM. By the numbers it was a good session tonight but it did feel a little grindy (yes I know I made that word up). The positive is that I am still 4 months out from Nationals so I am more than happy to be pumping these numbers up so early. However I need to manage the intensity. Given I am flying cross country for business next week its an opportunity to de-load and work on active recovery.

My final movement for the night was front squats and as I make my way to the rack it dawns on me the gym staff have moved the rack so they can install a mirror in front. Now I do get this because the majority of lifters here are bodybuilders but thankfully the muscle motion rack allows you to flip the J-Hooks around so that I can face away from the mirror so no harm.

I will finish off posting Dan Green's RUM 7 squat, another insanely strong effort. I met Dan Green at our Nationals last year where he was the guest lifter and was blown away by how densely built he was in person.

Stay Strong

Thomo

Correcting Butt Wink in the Squat

I am envious of people with perfect squat form. As someone with shocking butt wink I watch enviously as those with perfect form just sit down then focus on nothing more than exploding out of the hole when squatting.

The challenge for those of us with poor squatting mobility is three-fold. First you need to work through the laborious process of diagnosing the issue, then identify the pre-hab movements that will assist it rectifying the issue. Then finally you have to graft away and slowly regain range of motion. From personal experience I can attest its quite a frustrating process and it is easy to simply not work hard enough.

For the last year I have been trying to eliminate the dreaded butt wink and half the problem for me is not having access to those that can assist. Unfortunately Cressey Performance or Mash Elite aren't around the corner. Consequently it's taken longer than expected to try and work through the issues but recently I sat down and decided to review the issue logically and run a process of elimination.

As I worked my way through the various tests I started to hone in the things that clearly have been impacting my squat. These include:

• setting up with too much anterior tilt in the mistaken belief I was keeping my back tight. I now keep my pelvis tight and focus on keeping it stacked neutral
• Shitty ankle mobility namely dorsiflexion

They are my top two and recent daily work with bands has seen a slow but demonstrable improvement. Again the challenge for me was to find the right videos/articles to so I had the right corrective movements to work with.

Coincidentally yesterday I spotted a great article by Quinn Henoch on Juggernaut JTS. It talks in detail of fixing butt-wink and runs through most of the movements I am now using. It's a nice little article and I wish this had been written earlier would have saved me plenty of time.

If you struggle with Butt-wink in the squat take a look at this article:

http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2014/02/06/bottom-position-squat-defining-characteristic-human-existence/

Stay Strong

More Funny Shit in the Gym

Saturday afternoon and the last training day of the week. I like Saturday afternoon training, it feels far less rushed and given its a day session I have plenty of time for post session recovery meals.

While finishing squats I noticed 3 young lads heading to the deadlift platform, interestingly 2 of the three had gold gym singlets on and what looked like old fashioned weight lifting gloves from the eighties. Based on the gloves alone I knew I would seeing some interesting lifts.

After 10 minutes of arranging bars on the platform the first guy starts doing clean, front squat, press combo. Though he performs the whole move in slow motion so the clean is really just a grinding upright row. The second guy follows up with a deadlift which brings us to lifter number 3.

This poor bastard has been left to his own devices for too long and his mates clearly haven't got a clue either. He attempts a deadlift but starts with a completely rounded back but get this, he first elevates his heels on two plates?? With this ungainly starting position he almost topples on the first rep while on the second he falls back stumbling off the back of the two plates under his heels.

This crazy trio continue on in this fashion for 5 mins before satisfying themselves they are done, high fives all around and heading off for the day.

Next time I am going to bite the bullet and provide a little guidance because I cant ever see one more  kid deadlift with elevated heels and lifting gloves!!

Stay Strong
Thomo

Squat Fixes

Well it's Friday night and the family is out catching Springsteen playing tonight and here I a thinking about my squat session tomorrow! It's been a crazy week with work but I am keen to nail my final session of the week. Tomorrow is my heavy squats and I am still spending a lot of time working on mobility to improve my squat. Actually if you ever want a good laugh ask me to do an overhead squat, it ends up looking like I am bending at the waist laying a sword at someone's feet!

I think the biggest challenge for those of us with average movement patterns is actually just diagnosing the issue and then working 2-3 movements to get it right. I am doing plenty of goblet squats, lying windmills etc. It's coming together now but hell at 44 just when I get one thing right something else pops out.

Actually I can hear those of you in your twenties laughing now but remember this shit is easy when your younger. Your test is running high and life isn't so serious. Just know that half of you in your twenties won't be training in your forties. You'll just be that fat annoying guy at the barbecue or pub that bore's people senseless telling them stories about when he 'used to lift'!

I came across a basic article on common squat movement pattern issues and diagnosis. I thought this was a nice articulation for newbies so check it out.


http://bonvecstrength.com/2012/11/21/4-steps-to-fix-your-squat/

Stay Strong

Injection of Bodybuilding Wisdom with Damon

Spotted a little gem of a post by one of Australia's great recomposition coaches. I had the pleasure to be trained by Damon and visited his old gym in Qld. I can vouch that he is one of the rare smart guys in the game. Someone driven by empirical evidence from successful results in the gym not random anecdotes.

Check out this link

http://www.damonhayhow.com/the-bodybuilding-religions-10-commandments/




Stay Strong

Thomo

Damn Some Days are Just A Struggle

Kicking back tonight catching up on some powerlifting sites on the net and I am absolutely stuffed. Last nights session took a lot out of me. Its not so much post workout soreness (though traps are screaming at the moment) its more the accumulated fatigue. Of course waking at 2:30am and struggling to get back to sleep then heading to work at 5:30 probably didn't help.

I'm watching Jon North's latest training youtube and he is having a bitch of a session and struggling. Check it out below as watching  it I get deja-vu as it mirrors how badly I felt during my session yesterday.




Stay Strong
Thomo

Rule 1: Don't lift on a Monday night

Tonight I made the fatal mistake of performing my biggest session of the week on a Monday night. I had forgotten just how busy the gym gets. Now at a typical garage gym that is not a problem because everyone is hitting the big three lifts and understand how to work in. Not so at a commercial gym where tonight the platform was taken up by a guy bent rowing and his girlfriend deadlifting 50kg with straps for almost 40 mins.

In fact for the first 20 mins of my warm up there were no Oly bars free at all. When I did get to lift the bar I used may well have been the smoothest shortest bar I have used. On my warm-up at 130 I spotted another free bar and quickly reloaded this so I could perform my top set with comfort.

Following dead's I had front pause squats which felt fantastic and rounded out the session with my bench volume work. Despite being heavily fatigued from pulling and squatting I had a super strong session with good paused repsat 86 and 88% of my 1RM.  Sessions like this keep reminding me how important mental strength is in offsetting fatigue.

I did note today that I need to get another pre-workout meal in prior to training. Typically I will eat at 1:30, get away on time at 4:30 looking to train by 5. However what invariably happens is I get delayed at home playing with my daughter and then by the time I have warmed up and gotten to the gym its 6:30 and with a 7:45 finish I  am only running on my pre-workout and intra workout shakes to keep me going. From now on I will  slip an extra solid pre-workout snack in 1.5 hours out from gym time.

Now I am kicking back digesting some chicken, potatoes and broccoli while tweaking my numbers for Wednesday's session. Post workout feeding one of life's simple pleasures!

Stay Strong

Thomo

Rant of the Week...Dudes in Board shorts on stage

I'm 44 this year but still a novice in my competitive powerlifting endeavours, suffice to say I have a bucket load to learn about competition, technique, diet etc. Notwithstanding , I was still watching competitive strength sports when a lot of my teammates were shitting their nappies.

Therefore I think I am qualified to ask...what in the f^&ing hell has happened to our sensibilities that has allowed the birth of  mens physique contests. I mean for fucks sake dudes in boardshorts, hiding their thighs . I mean is this shit just tailor made for the pumping crews that sit in front of the mirrors at most gyms hitting upper body only.

Look I am sure there are some fantastic training athletes out there that try this form of 'competition' but cmon just enter a bodybuilding contest.

I think the emergence of this... actually I am not sure what to call it, is more a reaction to the perilous state of drug infested pro bodybuilding. Ever since the finish of Haney's Olympia reign 20+ years ago drugs have become more pervasive and as such physiques have become more and more unrealistic for the average man. Consequently women's bodybuilding has ebbed and then in the men's area we have given birth to the ridiculous concept of physique and hey presto tanned dudes in boardshorts with average calves and fuck knows what legs.

Interestingly I spotted a local 'physique' competitor in a mates facebook friends list. Deciding to have a laugh I had look at his profile. I was incredulous to see this guy called himself a natural athlete when it's clear he has that much shit pumped into his shiny misshapen shoulders. Adding to his ridiculous visage was a set of chicken legs that could rival mine. In fact the differential between upper and lower body and the fact he placed in the top three at a major contest only served to highlight the absurdity of this class of contest.

People just need to get back to basics and focus on function over form. Strength endures, the pursuit of aesthetics leads to ridiculous anomalies such as physique contests.

Stay Strong
Thomo