As I write this, my first completely solo raw Powerlifting Meet is exactly one week out. Today was my final day of hard training, and all that’s left is the fun stuff. I’ve learned a lot in the past few weeks, some of that education coming with pain and anguish, but I’m used to that too. A little over a week ago, doing a 3rd or 4th set of Deadlifts, in a quite fatigued state, I felt a familiar pop in my low back. Ah, the SI Joint. Yes, it gave way once again under a load of only 349 lbs, but it isn’t the load that did it; it was the positioning. I’m a remarkably lazy lifter mentally. It’s difficult for me to force myself into full concentration, especially once I’m tired or bored of the workout. I don’t know for sure, but I think that in my fatigued state, after already doing a top single at 385 lbs and 2 or 3 back off sets with 349 lbs, I was clearly done concentrating and just tried to pull the damn weight and be done with it. My technique was less than optimal, presumably my hips rose and my back rounded and pop goes the SI.
My initial reaction was defeat, as one might expect. All this work and now, just weeks away, I am injured and must withdraw from the contest. But while I may be mentally lazy, I am not mentally weak. Determination and persistence are among my strong suits. So after relaxing a bit, I carefully continued my workout with the pain in my glute muscle and erector spinae beginning to sing their accustomed song of protest. I did my SI Joint PT movements and got the joint aligned, but I knew the pain in surrounding muscles would linger for a while. Fortunately, I document and track everything to an annoying degree, so it didn’t take long to find that the last time I did this precise thing, it took 10 days until I was Deadlifting pain free again. Checking the calendar, I regained some optimism that while I may limp into the competition, I would arrive nonetheless.
I spent a few days limping around, adding the low back pain to my bicep tendinitis and elbow tendinitis, which are both improving by the way, and continued to train the best I could. I still feel the residual pain today, but it is very slight and I managed some fairly heavy training this past week, so all systems are a go.
In terms of continued education, this most recent version of the SI injury got me thinking about volume and why exactly I’m doing the number of sets that I’m doing. At the time, I was running the Powerlifting to Win Intermediate 2 cycle, which is a nice program, but it ramps up volume from week to week and I’m very suspect of such an approach, as anyone who has read my critique of Mike Israetel’s volume ramping scheme for hypertrophy undoubtedly knows. The reason I chose that particular program is that only one week into my second go at an RTS Emerging Strategies template, Wolfhound they call it, I was already exhausted and dreading the next workout. That is not a good sign. Reflecting now on both the PTW program I just injured myself on, and the previous RTS template which I couldn’t even finish, it dawned on me that both had one common theme: random determination of set volume based on nothing in particular.
Mike Tuscherer is an established coach, a record holding lifter in his own right, and a respected tinkerer of programming ideas. One of my favorite ideas of his was the original RTS concept of Fatigue Stops, and I used them a lot in my programming years ago. Izzy used them as well in his early programs, but suddenly both RTS and Izzy (who is clearly influenced by RTS) stopped using them. Why? I don’t know. Izzy moved on to ramping up set volume over the weeks of his programs, and Mike invented a thing called Stress Index. I learned all about Stress Index in the expensive RTS Classroom, which I would regret paying for if I allowed myself to have regrets. While I understand trying to mathematically determine the amount of stress the training is producing, it’s quite speculative in nature, and RTS’s decision to just use 20 as the weekly stress index for upper and lower body appears randomly selected based on nothing in particular. My experience following one of their templates for the Garage Gym Competition led to regression in my 1 RM’s and thoroughly exhausted me, while producing the bicep tendinitis I am still recovering from.
I started looking at some of the other programs I have–and I have many–and narrowed it down to three candidates for potential selection as the means to prepare for my next competition in November. Yes, I realize I haven’t even done the July competition yet, but my brain likes to have plans in place, although they are always in flux. As I looked through the three candidates, I found a similar trend in terms of random volume selection. Why exactly are we to do 3 sets, or 4 sets, or 5 sets? How are these numbers chosen? I don’t know, and if I don’t know, then just doggedly following them seems a rather precarious submission to the arbitrary. What if I’m tired after 2 sets? What I feel great after 3? This brought me back to Fatigue Stops, the idea I thought was so clever that I stopped using just because Izzy and Mike did.
Let’s consider what they mean. As the training goes on, the body and mind begin to tire. Muscles stop firing as well as they did early on. Perhaps the brain and spinal cord have agreed that this foolish person is putting the body they’re caring for into harm’s way and have slowed their signalling to the nervous system as a means of getting me to cut it out. Whatever the reason, as one fatigues, the subsequent sets become more difficult to complete, resulting in cumulative levels of fatigue and perhaps to an unwelcome and undesired outcome: form breakdown and injury. Or perhaps just training beyond what was needed to produce the sought after adaptations and straining the recovery process for no good reason. The goal of the training session after all is to stimulate the body to produce adaptations to the stress, not to annihilate it and turn into a quivering mass of exhaustion.
I decided, as I have many times before over the years I’ve been doing this lifting thing, that only my own programming will suffice. I must use my lazy brain, which is trying to be efficient by not reinventing the wheel and just picking the best program among the many available to conserve energy, and create an intelligent, and well thought out program of training that will lead to continued progress without wrecking myself in the process. So I did.
There are only a couple of things I control in my pursuit of improved Powerlifting results: How well I perform the actual competitive lifts (technique), and how much muscle mass I have to produce force (hypertrophy). So my program should focus specifically on improving those things. Getting better at the lifts themselves should be of paramount importance, since the lifts are the actual sport. It’s the equivalent of a baseball swing, or pitching mechanics. These things must be worked on. Motor patterns must be created, reinforced, refined and repeated. Not once or twice, but always. Hypertrophy is a must. No matter how difficult it may be to add new muscle fiber at my chronological age and my training age, I need to try anyway. I may never add 15 pounds of new muscle tissue to my frame (which I would love to do) but every bit of new contractile tissue will aid in my goal of producing more force. So add to my muscle fibers I must do.
The other thing I learned over the last few weeks is knowledge I obtained from watching actual Powerlifting competitions. I’ve watched several in the USPA and USAPL and while it was a difficult concept to embrace, I am now convinced that the competition itself is not designed or meant for one to try to set new records or beat their personal bests, but to build the biggest total possible, and building the biggest total possible means not missing lifts. Allow me to provide an example of what I mean using mathematics:
Lifter A chooses an opening lift they know they can hit easily, and does so. They are on the board and in the competition with this intelligent choice. For their second attempt, they decide to lift something very close to their estimated maximum effort lift. Let’s call it 310 pounds in the Squat. They achieve it, so they now have 310 lbs recorded toward their eventual total. Full of adrenaline and arrogance, Lifter A decides to go for it on their third and final attempt, and rather than choose 320-lbs which they know they can do, they choose a personal record 335-lbs and are unable to complete the lift. They now have the previously mentioned 310-lbs as their first step in building their total, rather than the 320 lbs they could have had.
Lifter A repeats this pattern in the Bench Press, and rather than add 215-lbs to their total, which they know they could have done, they get only 208-lbs which was their second attempt, as they went for broke on the third and attempted 225-lbs only to fail.
Finally, the Deadlift. The big one, where Lifter A will lift the most weight in any of the three lifts and add the most to their total. They know they’re good for 400 lbs, so they open light, choose 380-lbs for their second, and then, feeling like a stud, they call for 420-lbs for their third to try to make up some ground for the missed third attempts in the Squat and Bench. They are unable to successfully complete the 420-lb attempt, and now have a 380-lb Deadlift in the books. Their Meet is complete.
Instead of a 935-lb total for the day, which they know they could have gotten, they end up with an 898-lb total, leaving 37 lbs on the chalky platform. Lifter A could be me, but I am determined not to let that happen. The whole point of training for this competition is to build as much strength as I can in each lift, and then display that strength in front of judges on the platform, not to see if I have more hidden strength somewhere that I was unaware of. This will be easier written than done, but since I will be there alone, with no one egging me on or trying to persuade me to YOLO, I hope I can discipline my brain and accomplish the task.
Lastly, to close out this lengthy post that I am writing just for a thing to do this afternoon, I’ll highlight the week ahead. While I am hovering at 1 lb below the weight limit for my class, I am going to practice a weight cut anyway for two reasons: A: Ensure that no difference in scales or an untimely bounce above 165 sabotages me, and B: to see how much weight I can lose with a simple cut so I know how heavy I can allow myself to get over the next few months as I train for November’s Meet.
Sure, everywhere you look, you’ll have coaches and other lifters telling you not to cut weight if it’s your first Meet, or if you’re not trying to set any records, etc. First of all, it’s not my first Meet, but more importantly, that’s dumb advice. Powerlifting is a weight class sport. Would you really compete in the next weight class up if you’re one or two pounds above the maximum for the lower class? If so, you’re a dope. Imagine I choose to not attempt any weight cut measures, even the simplest and least impactful like a water cut. I step on the scale at weigh-in’s and weigh 166 lbs. Am I now going to compete in the 181-lb class?! Give me a break. Instead of not creating stress by trying a simple weight cut, I have created massive amounts of stress by not making weight. Now, at literally the last moment, I have to take drastic measures to try to lose a pound and weigh in a second time, or compete in a class where I’m 15 or more lbs too light. So here’s the plan:
I will do a basic water load and cut starting Monday, and I will add a “gut cut” starting on Tuesday. I find the gut cut concept fascinating. Keep the calories the same, but eat only simple carbohydrate sources that are very low or absent in fiber, and use protein powder with water as the only protein source. Fats will come from salted almonds. The idea here is to have as little food in your gut as possible at weigh-in, while not depriving your body of any calories. You can easily have two to three pounds of food in your digestive system at any time, along with another four or five pounds of stored water. By eating only easily processed foods, you can have a relatively empty digestive tract when you wake up on weigh-in day, and by loading yourself with water for a few days, increasing urination substantially, then cutting back on that water the day before weigh-in, you can wake up with a lot less stored water than you normally would have as the increased urination from all that loading will continue for a while even after you’ve cut way back on the water intake. Because the USPA has a 24-hour weigh-in period, i.e. I will weigh in Friday morning but not compete until Saturday morning, I have all day Friday to eat my regular foods and drink as much water as I like, so that on Saturday I am nice and full of food and stored water so that I can perform at my best.
As far as lifting goes for next week, I will hit my opening attempts on Tuesday, do a light single Squat and Bench on Thursday, and then rock n roll on Saturday, hopefully with fatigue from all the trailing I’ve done dissipated, but the basic strength remaining intact and ready to be displayed.
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