Considering that I’d be competing (potentially) in the USAPL at year’s end, I bit the bullet and purchased IPF Approved knee sleeves and wrist wraps to replace the non-approved paraphernalia I’ve been lifting with these many years. I did my research and while I was tempted to buy the SBD Knee Sleeves worn by so many competitive raw powerlifters, I chose the Titan Yellow Jackets instead. The decisive point was ease of use, as SBD are apparently quite cumbersome to put on and I just don’t want to deal with that every time I lift. Since I was already in the Titan store, I bought their wrist wraps too.
I’ve been using EFS’s Heavy Duty knee sleeves and they are incredibly supportive, providing a nice rebound from the hole and probably adding a few lbs to what I can squat. The moment I slid the Yellow Jackets on, I knew those days were over. They’re just neoprene after all, where the EFS Heavy’s are made of something else entirely–maybe canvas or something–and the Titan’s were going to make me earn every lb of my squat. This caused me much consternation, but I don’t want to be stressing about whether I show up a meet and the EFS sleeves aren’t allowed, when I know the Titan’s are. I’ll just have to accept a lower squat and feel the shame.
The Titan wrist wraps are shorter than the ones I’ve been using, but much stiffer, so I like them well enough. I’m now using them on all three of the powerlifts.
I detoured from my regularly scheduled programming last week just a bit and did some assistance movements during the week instead of my planned twice-weekly sessions of the competition lifts, but I got back on track this week. I had a solid session last Friday, did some back/bi/abs/conditioning/mobility work on Saturday and rested up yesterday for a heavy session today. I’m basically right at the edge of what I can handle for triples and as a result, I’m not getting much volume in as even the back-off sets are pretty heavy for me and the top set takes a lot out of me.
Today, for instance, I hit 266 x 3 for squats, which is a PR for triples for me, but when I dropped back to 255 to continue hitting triples at a 9 RPE, I only got one set in. My technique was breaking down on the last rep of the 255 triple, so I called it there and moved on to bench.
I benched 183×3, which was a PR (for Paused Competition Bench), but the 3rd rep was a maximum effort type rep. I’d have to rate the set as an RPE 10 as a 4th rep was absolutely not possible, and the goal was to RPE 9. I did a couple of back-off sets in at 170 and probably could have done a third, but I moved on to deadlift.
The deadlift hasn’t kept pace with the other two lifts, perhaps because I started out lighter and was making small increases session to session, so I’m making larger increases from workout to workout now. Friday I pulled 290 for 5 reps, so today I put 295 on the bar, but cut the set at 3. I was sweating profusely today even though it was overcast and a lot cooler than it’s been of late. I assume the humidity was higher or something, but I was just pretty beat. After resting 3 minutes, I felt pretty good for the back-off set of 285×3, so I did a second back-off set and called it a day. Overall, two PR’s: in the Competition Squat and the Competition Bench.
Using an estimated 1 RM calculator, I should have added 3 lbs to my Competition Bench since February. I did a shaky 195 when I did my 1RM testing then, in part because of the substandard bench I had access to, but if the calculator is accurate, a 183×3 @ 10 RPE should translate into a 198.5 true 1RM. That’s some nice progress!
I’ve lost 7 lbs on the Competition Squat based on today’s 266 x 3 @ 9 RPE, which makes sense considering the aforementioned EFS sleeves were in place for my 1RM attempt in February. If I really only lost 7 lbs on my max switching to legal-in-all-federations Titan’s, I’m not going to complain too vociferously.
As I wrote a while back, the Competition Deadlift is where I need to make the most improvement to produce a respectable total, so I will keep jumping up in larger increments to play catch up. To illustrate what I mean, the average intensity for today’s workout was as follows:
- Squat: 85.41%
- Bench: 89.4%
- Deadlift: 79%
I should have been making larger increases on the Deadlift since I started, because I was getting 6 and 7 reps on my top set in the early going. Adding only 2.5 lbs per session was probably too slow.
I can start to see how continuing to work as I am in this “advanced” novice program will eventually lead to minimal, if any, further gains because I’m just not able to do enough volume. The intensity is pretty high, so the volume drops and volume is a primary driver of progress. The plan calls for moving to a transitional intermediate program once I can’t get 3 reps on my top set. I can see that happening very soon for the Bench, while I think I can probably milk a few more weeks out of the Squat and Deadlift. If that happens, i.e. if my Bench caps out shortly, rather than move to the intermediate program, I may reset the Bench 10-15% and keep going until my Squat maxes out and/or my Deadlift catches up.
It’s disappointing to think that my progress will slow so quickly on this linear progression, but I’m not surprised. I’ve been training a long time, albeit perhaps not optimally for Powerlifting, so if I was able to squeeze out a little more poundage on my poverty Bench and improve my Squat and Deadlift technique, that’s probably a decent result from a novice type of program.
When I started to write this, it was really just to say that today’s session wiped me out, hence the title, but I have nothing else to do so write on I did.
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