Moving Heavy Stuff

Pretty disappointed that both the guys who were suppose to compete with me have now backed out.

Whatever, ive always been a loner so why change anything now. Im gonna push myself and try and really go for it at this comp. Sucks I wont have video to go back and review if something goes wrong or really good for that matter.
 
Last week of peaking, 2 weeks of taper and rest before comp day.

Yesterday was a heavy squat and I worked up to a smooth 405 raw and then did 430 and 455 with reverse bands. During warmup sets I got a weird twinge in my lower back that made me be very cautious with my weight selections over 405.

I know I am capable of more but there is no sense risking it if I tweaked my back a little. The me of before woulda said F it and went heavier but im trying to be smarter.

Heavy bench today, I did the smoothest/fastest 335 ive ever done with a comp pause. My comp best is 355, im thinking 365 might be doable for last attempt on meet day.

I have a ball park idea of what my opening attempts will be for squat and bench. We will figure deadlift opener out on friday with how my back is feeling but im thinking something around 500 with intent to pull 545 for 2nd attempt and shoot for 565+ for last attempt.

If everything goes to plan:
Goal #1 is to best my current state record deadlift.
Goal #2 is to take the 3 lift total to something over 1380.
 
Skittle34 said:
Having a time constraint for the gym helps with not scrolling IG in between sets. I'm sure I could/ should rest more between sets, buuut work waits for no man.

Gym related: I have been battling patellar tendonitis over the last few weeks, and today's squat session was the worst of it. Barely eeked out a single rep at 225, which has been frustrating because I've always loved squatting, and this has made the movement much less fun
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So I took a lot of time off from doing squats, but threw them back into rotation because I love squats.

This cycle was about focusing on form, really making sure I had good range of motion, and mentally keeping an eye on any knee abnormalities/ pain. So far, so good. I've kept the weight light the four weeks 5x5 ( 2wks at 135 and 2wks at 155) and took it to 185 5x3 this week. Hittin Ass to Calves with 185 on my back felt awesome. Will likely continue this trend of slowly working back into big weight and hoping to get back to 225 with better depth in the next couple months.
 
Skittle34 said:
mentally keeping an eye on any knee abnormalities/ pain.
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I have suffered severe knee trauma to both of my knees, multiple times. Knee cap dislocation x3 in my right leg with exploratory surgery to remove the sheered off bone and cartilage that was floating around in it giving me severe pain. Other knee suffered a crushing injury with nerve damage that ive never fully came back from.

All I can say is that as we age, get them adequately warmed up before going under load and some light compression knee sleeves work wonders for comfort.

I know you didnt ask for it, but the best knee saving advice I can give is to make sure your feet/toes are pointed in the same path/trajectory your knees travel when you squat. If you squat with knees going out wide to create space in your hips to descend, make sure those feet are pointed the same way!
 
Absolutely! I remember you recommending knee sleeves as well. Warming up has been a bigger component now that my gym is closer to the apartment. I don't know why I was so shocked that simple hip mobility stretches suddenly made the tightness go away
 
Stakem said:
We will figure deadlift opener out on friday with how my back is feeling but im thinking something around 500 with intent to pull 545 for 2nd attempt and shoot for 565+ for last attempt.

If everything goes to plan:
Goal #1 is to best my current state record deadlift.
Goal #2 is to take the 3 lift total to something over 1380.
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We are on target as planned. Today was the last of doing anything heavy until meet day.

I loaded 505 for deadlift and didnt take it seriously enough and lost my grip on it at my knees. Took a 5 minutes break and applied chalk to my hands and pulled it for a double.

No issues with the lower back but first time I ever got concerned with grip strength….
 
Excitement is building for this competition next weekend. Last couple of lifting days the volume is way low and ive just been practicing my opening attempts. Next week we drop down to only doing warmup weights and move my bodyweight around to stay loose, ready and completely recharged.

Im hovering at 243 bodyweight and the limit is 242 for my class- im gonna kick the cardio up this weekend and next week. I might do a little bit of water weight trickery by messing with my sodium/fluid intake and weigh in the day before my comp so that I can fully recharge my liquids and go hog wild on eating pizza and carbing up after weigh ins the night before the meet.

The roster for this meet has been released and im super pumped up to have someone in my age and weight class that looks to be attempting to take my deadlift record from me. Unfortunately he is doing deadlift only and not the full powerlifting meet so it is what it is.

In a really deranged way, I hope he pulls more than me- that should light a fire under me to pull even more at the meet or have another goal to work towards.
 
Stakem said:
Excitement is building for this competition next weekend. Last couple of lifting days the volume is way low and ive just been practicing my opening attempts. Next week we drop down to only doing warmup weights and move my bodyweight around to stay loose, ready and completely recharged.

Im hovering at 243 bodyweight and the limit is 242 for my class- im gonna kick the cardio up this weekend and next week. I might do a little bit of water weight trickery by messing with my sodium/fluid intake and weigh in the day before my comp so that I can fully recharge my liquids and go hog wild on eating pizza and carbing up after weigh ins the night before the meet.

The roster for this meet has been released and im super pumped up to have someone in my age and weight class that looks to be attempting to take my deadlift record from me. Unfortunately he is doing deadlift only and not the full powerlifting meet so it is what it is.

In a really deranged way, I hope he pulls more than me- that should light a fire under me to pull even more at the meet or have another goal to work towards.
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How do they decide the order of lifters? Is it just a random draw or will that person go before you? You may end up hurting yourself, but I can definitely see them beating your record giving you something direct to work towards versus just trying to beat a PR with no real pressure behind it.
 
Stakem said:
Excitement is building for this competition next weekend. Last couple of lifting days the volume is way low and ive just been practicing my opening attempts. Next week we drop down to only doing warmup weights and move my bodyweight around to stay loose, ready and completely recharged.

Im hovering at 243 bodyweight and the limit is 242 for my class- im gonna kick the cardio up this weekend and next week. I might do a little bit of water weight trickery by messing with my sodium/fluid intake and weigh in the day before my comp so that I can fully recharge my liquids and go hog wild on eating pizza and carbing up after weigh ins the night before the meet.

The roster for this meet has been released and im super pumped up to have someone in my age and weight class that looks to be attempting to take my deadlift record from me. Unfortunately he is doing deadlift only and not the full powerlifting meet so it is what it is.

In a really deranged way, I hope he pulls more than me- that should light a fire under me to pull even more at the meet or have another goal to work towards.
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Half a kilo water cut is nothing. If you just up your intake of water a few days leading up to then cut carbs and water the day before, you'll easily be under. You can find protocols online, just find one that is sensible and not what our Strongman that cut 10+ lbs do. I can usually do 2 kilos / 4 pounds easily.
 
shadowane said:
How do they decide the order of lifters? Is it just a random draw or will that person go before you? You may end up hurting yourself, but I can definitely see them beating your record giving you something direct to work towards versus just trying to beat a PR with no real pressure behind it.
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The order is based on weight selection for attempts.

If I open with a 500 pull and he selects more than that for his first attempt, I will go before him, etc.

The process is basically continual loading of the bar, not stripping weight off it.
 
TripleSixHoppia said:
Half a kilo water cut is nothing. If you just up your intake of water a few days leading up to then cut carbs and water the day before, you'll easily be under. You can find protocols online, just find one that is sensible and not what our Strongman that cut 10+ lbs do. I can usually do 2 kilos / 4 pounds easily.
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Yeah, a quick google search is what gave me the idea over the weekend. I found one that seems pretty simple to follow. All im doing right now is tracking how much liquid I take in on average per day this week and then next week I will implement the protocol for how much to increase it by each day leading up to the cut off and weigh in.

I know based off my own experimentation that dicking with sodium/carbs/salt I can make my bodyweight fluctuate 7 pounds, I just never did it with intent to have a certain number on a given day like this.
 
Stakem said:
The order is based on weight selection for attempts.

If I open with a 500 pull and he selects more than that for his first attempt, I will go before him, etc.

The process is basically continual loading of the bar, not stripping weight off it.
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oh okay that makes sense and also ensures you are actually competing with each other rather than just guessing what the top attempt would be.
 
shadowane said:
oh okay that makes sense and also ensures you are actually competing with each other rather than just guessing what the top attempt would be.
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well, where it gets tricky is that we are grouped into flights of about 10 lifters and there will be at least 2 flights. they try and match up people of similar strength so you dont have someone whos max deadlift is like 350 in the same flight as people doing 700+

We should be in the same flight but even if we are, I have no idea what his second/third attempts will be. I will only know his first attempt and where he is in relation to where im starting. After you complete your lift, you have 2 minutes to figure out how much weight you intend to go up for your next attempt.

My plan is to open at 505 then jump to 545 to beat my best pull last meet and then who knows how much more beyond that depending how it moves, what he does or what I need to set a 3 lift total PR.
 
TripleSixHoppia said:
Half a kilo water cut is nothing. If you just up your intake of water a few days leading up to then cut carbs and water the day before, you'll easily be under. You can find protocols online, just find one that is sensible and not what our Strongman that cut 10+ lbs do. I can usually do 2 kilos / 4 pounds easily.
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Half a kilo quickly became 2.5….. lol

I need to relax because I know its just sodium and carbs from our Easter dinner yesterday.

But today begins the water loading phase and while I dont think its a big deal, I looked closer at what im allowed to drink friday and thats gonna be a problem. I cannot recall ever going a day with only 4 cups of liquid. I usually consume that much fluid in the first hour of being awake ala black decafe coffee and a half liter of water with creatine.
 
Its 5:30 am and ive already consumed as much liquid as im allowed to have all day on friday… im gonna have to skip the morning coffee and just have 2 cups of water with each meal in order to help make it go down and then just have a bucket of gatorade in the back of my truck for Saturday morning immediately after weigh ins.

For a guy who use to regularly drink 1.5-2 gallons of water a day, yesterday was a challenge forcing myself to drink 2 gallons. I have lost my acclimation to drinking that much a couple months back when I was sick and tired of waking up in the middle of the night to piss multiple times so I cut my fluids down in order to sleep through the night.

Around noon yesterday was when I realized I was in trouble of not getting all the liquid in as I was only 12 cups deep and didnt want to be chugging everything before bed. My son had a baseball game so I took all the liquids I needed to finish for the day with me. It ended up being a half gallon of water, a shaker cup of water and a 12oz seltzer. I pissed every inning of the baseball game as well as 11pm, 1:30 am, 3 am and 5 am.

Got on the hume scale this morning and received a notification that I should not count my weigh in today as part of my progress because I am dehydrated.

2 gallons of water…. dehydrated

Its down to 1 gallon today so easy peasy.
 
Home stretch, 24 hours until weigh in and im down to 238 using water loading and reduction. I also went ahead and completely cut out carbs and sodium so I wasnt retaining any water from those as well.

Yesterday I was thirsty at night but was already at my water quota for the day. Im ok so far today but I definitely feel like its gonna get interesting by this evening with rationing my 4 cups of fluid for meal times.
 
Today was a fun but brutal session

5x3 Cleans 65kg for 2 sets, missed 2 of 3 reps on the 3rd, dropped to 60kg for last 2 sets
5x5 Front Squat 60kg
3x30 on 60 off Zercher Holds 60kg
3x8 IYTs 5lb DBs
6x45' KB Farmers Carries 24kg each hand

Throwing Zercher holds and squats (earlier in the week) in the mix has been fun so far. Why am I essentially doubling up on front squats this cycle? Because I can
 
Stakem said:
Home stretch, 24 hours until weigh in and im down to 238 using water loading and reduction. I also went ahead and completely cut out carbs and sodium so I wasnt retaining any water from those as well.

Yesterday I was thirsty at night but was already at my water quota for the day. Im ok so far today but I definitely feel like its gonna get interesting by this evening with rationing my 4 cups of fluid for meal times.
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Go get a PediaLyte, those work great after weigh in. Also try to eat too, that will help you absorb more of the liquids back instead of peeing it out.
 
TripleSixHoppia said:
Go get a PediaLyte, those work great after weigh in. Also try to eat too, that will help you absorb more of the liquids back instead of peeing it out.
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Im buying everything tonight to start refueling immediately after stepping off the scale tomorrow.

Pedialyte, gatorade, oatmeal with whey and some chicken and rice are gonna be with me to eat as I have to leave immediately after weighing in to go coach softball 2+ hours away.

I think pizza might even be on the docket for supper.

I intend to bloat back up and be over 242 on Sunday.
 
Stakem said:
Im buying everything tonight to start refueling immediately after stepping off the scale tomorrow.

Pedialyte, gatorade, oatmeal with whey and some chicken and rice are gonna be with me to eat as I have to leave immediately after weighing in to go coach softball 2+ hours away.

I think pizza might even be on the docket for supper.

I intend to bloat back up and be over 242 on Sunday.
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Why don't they do the weigh in then make you lift? Why separate it by a day?
 
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