The 54-year old man who looks back at me, complaining about the left quad strain and the bicep and elbow tendinitis, had an epiphany last night, and it’s not the first time. The problem is, my brain has its own ideas and is not necessarily my friend. It somehow refuses to accept how many times I’ve been hurt in my attempts to improve my performance in the powerlifts, and even refuses to acknowledge how little progress I’ve actually been able to make. It somehow thinks that the perpetual injury risk and the daily pain will all be worth it, even though my Powerlifting Total is below the average for competitors of my age and weight class.
As I hobble around trying to decide what I can do in the gym tomorrow, and whether following my revamped powerlifting training plan is a good idea, it occured to me–again–that if hypertrophy is really what I need, and it is, I should certainly stop training specifically for powerlifting as I was with Izzy’s PNP program, I should also probably stop trying to do both with a hybrid plan like Izzy’s PIP program and just do a hypertrophy specific training plan. I’ve probably written this so many times that I’d likely unsubscribe to my own blog if this post hit my inbox.
I’ve been lifting weights a long time, so I have a pretty good idea what I’m doing. Where I struggle is where I suppose most people do, and that’s with how to continue progressing when the body isn’t being cooperative. I know I have, or at least should have, the genetic ability to continue building new muscle tissue. I just need to figure out how to induce this adaptation from my the body I carry around that is well accustomed to resistance training. Short of hiring someone to do it for me, which I tried to do once with Menno Henselman only to be sticker shocked back to reality, I’ve decided my best bet is to follow the only person who has actually provided me a comprehensive plan and that is Eric Helms. I should probably jump right into his Advanced Bodybuilding program, but I will again attempt to use his intermediate plan first to milk whatever I can out of it before I move to the block periodization program that is his Advanced Program.
There’s really nothing wrong with training for bodybuilding, although as Chad Wesley Smith mentioned in his recent seminar, prepare to be bored. I remember when I did Eric’s intermediate program the first time, I enjoyed it for a few weeks (as I usually do) and sure enough, got bored. I recall the moment it happened to: I was doing the last training day in the weekly cycle, which is basically a “standard” back and bicep workout, and said to myself, “self,” I said, “I’ve got to figure out a better way to incorporate this day’s training into the rest of the week because this is beat.” I need to tell my brain to suck it up and enjoy the relatively pain-free style of lifting that is actually designed to get me what I need, which is gainz.
I’ll continue deloading to finish out this week and then begin anew. I will likely do SSB squats and belt squats for a while to help out with the tendinitis. Low bar squatting 3 times a week for months certainly did a number on me and I’d like to heal vs. living with it, which is what my brain has tried to do over the years I’ve suffered through my powerlifting pursuits.
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