So I finally took the plunge and participated in my first meet. It was long and cold, but it was definitely awesome. Great experience.
After about 2 years of general fitness center workout crap and almost 1 year of strength oriented training (except for my bench which only has about 3 months of experience) my lifts turned out to be… okay. Not fantastic, but certainly not bad.
Short term goals are to get my squat over 350lbs, deadlift 500lbs, and fix the crap out of my bench (I know it sucks). I hope to do this by March 2010. Any advice on getting my bench up just from watching the video?
As for what we can see on the bench… It doesn’t look like you’re using too much leg drive, and you should widen your grip a little bit to lessen the stroke length. Unless, of course you’ve tried that and you’re getting stronger with the narrow grip, shit, look how Konstantinov’s benches…
Also, we don’t see your set up, but someone your size could probably get a pretty big arch goin.
If you want help on your bench, your best bet is to video a bunch of sets from your next workout (including your setup, press, possibly some missed attempts) and let us tweak those.
[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
474 is a pretty damn good pull for a junior 165.[/quote]
Thanks. It’s the one movement along with the weighted pull-up that I’ve been training longer than a year. I probably have good levers for it though because it feels really natural.
[quote]As for what we can see on the bench… It doesn’t look like you’re using too much leg drive, and you should widen your grip a little bit to lessen the stroke length. Unless, of course you’ve tried that and you’re getting stronger with the narrow grip, shit, look how Konstantinov’s benches…
Also, we don’t see your set up, but someone your size could probably get a pretty big arch goin.
If you want help on your bench, your best bet is to video a bunch of sets from your next workout (including your setup, press, possibly some missed attempts) and let us tweak those. [/quote]
Sounds good. I’ll probably film my benches this or next week.
Already? Hehe…I’m still trying to get good raw
[/quote]
Agreed. I wasn’t going to even start contemplating gear until I was at 6/4/6 raw. Sadly it seems I will not be making that goal, as my only realistic opportunity to compete anywhere in the next year is about 9 weeks away. So I made the plunge into gear for this meet.
I got nothing at all against gear and I don’t really care who uses it, and I sure as hell enjoy watching the big boys lift at APF. I just feel like a lot of people are encouraged to jump into it really early when they could learn a lot more about themselves and how to organize training if they just stuck it out and trained raw for a while longer.
Of course, that goes out the window if you’re going to compete in a geared fed, but yeah.
I didnt get to watch the video when I first commented.
Great job, I have to say your squat was the most impressive to me, I cant go near that narrow when I squat, but you are barely outside of shoulder width. Well done.
Your deadlift was great, gotta say I didnt expect the ease with which you got those.
I second what has been said about your bench, get that arch and that leg drive, and explode up with the bar.
Great job, I have to say your squat was the most impressive to me, I cant go near that narrow when I squat, but you are barely outside of shoulder width. Well done.[/quote]
Thanks man. I actually only recently figured out that narrow stance thing. I’ve been working with a wider stance for most of the last year but found out about a month ago - just by chance - that I feel a lot stronger and more comfortable with the narrow stance.
I was actually approached by both an Olympic lifting guy and a kinesiologist doing research at the meet about whether I’ve been coached in Oly-style. Apparently my squat made it look like I had some training as a weightlifter. Hehe, I just got lucky through experimentation.
Already? Hehe…I’m still trying to get good raw
[/quote]
Agreed. I wasn’t going to even start contemplating gear until I was at 6/4/6 raw. Sadly it seems I will not be making that goal, as my only realistic opportunity to compete anywhere in the next year is about 9 weeks away. So I made the plunge into gear for this meet.[/quote]
I totally feel you dude. My goal is to get to a x2/x3/x3.5 before I start getting crazy with the expensive equipment.
Although with that in mind, I’m considering trying to make the 148lbs weight class for my next meet. I normally sit at around 160lbs, and if I can lose 8lbs of body fat in 3months I could probably just water weight the last 4-5lbs for a meet in March.
if you ever get the chance to use the monolift, use it to your advantage and widen your stance a bit, your very narrow. also dont go so far past parallel, that looks like a multiply fed by the mono lift and the forza bench. Everyone else said enough about the bench. great pull man!
[quote]rrjc5488 wrote:
The “get in gear” line was made in jest, as per some of the threads in this forum. I was just kidding. Lift raw for as long as you’d like.[/quote]
Yeah, I got ya. I got the jest, his response just seemed to echo my personal opinion so I wanted to throw my 2 cents in. The gear haters in the other threads can fuck off. I’ll probably return to training raw after the meet, but whatever. I love watching geared meets.
[quote]brauny96 wrote:
great job dude! solid lifts.
I just want to throw some suggestions in:
if you ever get the chance to use the monolift, use it to your advantage and widen your stance a bit, your very narrow. also dont go so far past parallel, that looks like a multiply fed by the mono lift and the forza bench. Everyone else said enough about the bench. great pull man![/quote]
Thanks for the suggestion. I will have to decline though simply because after having experimented with myself and having done a little bit of research, it seems that for myself, squatting raw is better served with a narrower stance. I could be wrong, but going from 285 to 320 in less than a month just by changing my stance indicates that for me narrow is better.
As far as going below parallel, I think as a not very large, raw guy I get more power out of dropping fast and low and trying to maximize the stretch-reflex instead of using the slow, controlled descent to just barely parallel of the suited guys. Anyone have anything to confirm this hypothesis?
