Do you think you’re slacking off? Where do you sandbag? Aren’t your main lifts preplanned and you just go in and do the work?
1 Like
I don’t mean I’m slacking off or sandbagging. That’s something I can easily notice and fix (like I did with the goblet squats, for example).
What I mean is something more insidious. Ok, that sounds too dramatic.
What was happening without me realising until I was prompted to think about it is that any time I look around at Ultra I see two things: people smaller and/or weaker than I am by a fair stretch and people who know less about training than I do by a similar stretch. The only exception is Jake, and I only see him coaching once a week. What I don’t see is anyone I look at and go, shit, dude is ahead of me. Knows more than I do, is doing better than I am so I need to beat this guy.
So I slip into a subtly different mindset, where I’m not being challenged at any time. I’ve got Greg’s Facebook group, where I see all the other dudes ahead of me but it’s different. The Facebook group I only see when I’m looking at it. The people in the gym I see every time I train, and all that does is show me I’m ahead of them. So instead of looking and seeing what I should be aiming for, I see someone who, at best, I think they’ve improved a bit. I’m not getting reminded that I need to be better.
I got back to E/Lime first time in over a year, within 30 minutes I see my buddy who sits around 270 and whose total is 100+ pounds ahead of me, I see another big guy in the 308s with a 700 pound squat and a total well over 100 pounds above mine and I see Jeremy who’s got the Australian all time squat at 275 lbs and a 500+ pound bench. Then in comes young Tom who doesn’t compete but has a mid 600 pull and benches 315 for 15+ at sub-242 lbs.
That was a sharp reminder of my place and I need to be somewhere I get that every time I walk in.
Yes, Jake is good man and he genuinely cares about his clients. They just aren’t of any respectable calibre. The only one even close is Matt, and if you take out his squat he’s mediocre as fuck just like me and he has no idea how train or compete.
6 Likes
Extra workout
Changed it up some to reflect the fact that I’m peaking
Two rounds of 25 each of
Pull aparts
Hammer curls
Table reverse hyper
Prisoner squat
Crunches
1 Like
I think you have the right mindset. Wanna get better? Train with people better than you.
Also, god damn that deadlift looked smooth. The bench was fast too, borderline speed work, haha.
3 Likes
Thanks man. My main focus this week was being explosive. Set the right tone for next week.
Also yes, people better than I is something I’ve been missing and I didn’t know it until I went back.
2 Likes
This is why I make the almost hour drive twice a week when im home.
Only problem with all the guys stronger than me, they seem to be plagued with injuries lol
1 Like
I totally get this. Given I don’t train at a powerlifting gym, for a while I was the only person doing specific strength or powerlifting training. So other than the odd strong bodybuilder type there wasn’t much going on. Now there is a number of other lifters who compete in powerlifting or Strongman and they are stronger than me. Just training next to the guys when they hit squat triples at 220kg or bench 170kg is really motivating. Add to that, they are a really nice bunch of guys and positive and supportive, and it creates a great environment for progression.
5 Likes
This is an interesting point, and worth looking at. Don’t worry, I don’t think it’ll take that long but I do think it’s worth looking at because it’s something I’ve noticed as well.
First of, a simple and pretty effective way to look at injuries in powerlifting is acute vs chronic.
Acute injuries come out of nowhere, kind of, like what happened to my back early this month. My back was fine, then I did a stupid thing and suddenly it wasn’t. Took a week or so to fix, no big deal. Then you get the bigger shit like tears, herniations, etc. Much bigger deal, but still often just happen for no apparent reason with little or no buildup.
The chronic ones are like tenditis, achy shoulders, sore hips, etc. They creep up and get worse over time and if you don’t deal with them can sideline you for a long time, or at least force you to work around them.
We often see the bigger, stronger guys dealing with both, and I think the general idea is that it’s par for the course to deal with both if you want to big and strong. To an extent, sure, it’s unlikely you’ll get through the years without a couple of dings but what should be happening is that you learn as you go and aren’t dealing with the same things over and over.
So your chronic shit shouldn’t be something you see all the time at all, and by the time you’ve put in a few years you should be smart enough to have figured out how to keep shit in check. That’s your extra workouts, warmups that make sure you’re primed and ready, whatever prehab you need to do, making sure your bracing and position is spot on, etc. You apply all those to make sure you don’t GET chronic injuries any more. If you feel something staying to deteriorate, you address it before it sets in. So your big, strong dudes who are carrying chronic injuries are big and strong, sure, but not so smart and possibly lazy because they don’t take care of their business. Quite often they end up sidelined because when it’s time to peak, things start to fall apart and either they cant complete the peak or they go into their meet beat to shit. You’ll notice the top guys don’t do this. They handle their shit.
Then come the acute injuries. When you’re bigger and stronger, the weights you handle are greater and that alone increases the risks. Two hundred pounds can fuck you up plenty, but seven hundred pounds will destroy you if you’re unlucky. Good position, bracing and technique will mitigate the risk significantly; combined with intelligent training and fatgiue management makes it even safer, but there’s still a risk. If you train like a retard and are guided by your ego, you can get in trouble pretty quickly. There are plenty of big strong dudes who fit that description. They’re tough, but they aren’t smart. If they’re surrounded by nut huggers it gets worse because no one is calling them out. Still happens plenty though. When they can hold themselves together, they kill it at meets, but quite often they don’t make it to the meet let alone past their openers. You can tell a lot about a gym by looking at it’s big dogs. If they’re always beat to hell, perform in the gym but don’t deliver on the platform it’s a pretty poor gym with poor culture and coaching.
The other factor with acute injuries is PED use. No matter how smart you are, steroids make your muscles grow faster than your connective tissue can keep up with; and I understand they can even inhibit connective tissue growth. So if you’re using PEDs your acute injury risk increases significantly. You can mitigate it like you do the chronic shit: extra workouts, prehab, fatigue management, etc. That’s what the top guys do, you can tell who because they don’t tend to get hurt that often. They still get unlucky periodically, but it isn’t a common occurrence. They’re good gamblers.
Long story short, if a big strong dude is always hurt in some way, he’s doing several things wrong. If a gym is populated with multiple of these dudes, it’s a gym avoid trying to emulate.
6 Likes
Another knowledge bomb, but I feel personally attacked lol.
The gym I frequent has all strong guys but get caught up in the weights. Not to throw anyone under the bus they have all helped me in their own way and are part of a family to me.
But when I first joined and started going, no one showed me any technique apart from wide knees and look up.
Week after week kept adding weight until finally I suffered from my own first injury in my hip after squat 430 x 2 ( first one was better than I expected a max effort to go, the second one I failed and needed the spotters to return to position after almost collapsing) after previously the heaviest I ever squatted was like 370 for 1.
A guy called me over the week after because instead of trying to recover and work towards getting better, they offered me to use a extra pair of briefs to mitigate the pain.
now its funny because the same guys make fun of me for being flexible but im injury free since, and all my lifts are continuously improving for the most part.
1 Like
You’re a pretty smart guy.
You have enough sense to see what’s going on in your gym so there’s less risk of you getting caught up in the bullshit. You’ll just need to keep yourself separate from it. That’s not saying your guys are bad guys, they just do dumb shit and have bad habits. They most likely want you to succeed as much as you do.
As long as you don’t rely on them for feedback you should be fine.
1 Like
Maybe you can ask Jake if you can just pop in from time to time and help teach some beginners in the gym? Would be a little nice way of giving back. You can learn new things when you teach too
2 Likes
Thanks, I appreciate that a lot from you. I’m still striving on being a better lifter, the gym is completed this week at work finally so my routine will be more concrete.
all the hassle I have been through trying to find a coach I might just pick up matt wennings plan and try it for a few months and see how that goes.
1 Like
Winning should be a good option
1 Like
Woke at 265.9 lbs, looking similar to yesterday.
2 Likes
@whang I actually had to think a bit about this one. It’s a nice thought, and I do want to help people get better.
There are, at least as I see it, a couple of hurdles in what you suggested. First of, I don’t hold any of the qualifications that would let Jake’s insurance cover me and I’m not about to get them. So he’d be on iffy ground letting me do it.
Secondly, it’s HIS gym. The way I’ve learned to cue the lifts from Greg is different to how Jake does it, so anyone I did help out would be getting two sets of instructions and that’s confusing as fuck for someone who’s learning. I wouldn’t be comfortable teaching Jake’s cues because I don’t think they are particularly good, and he leaves important stuff out. Case in point, I was working in with John on the bench a while back. He’s no beginner, potential to be a very good PLer too, just an overall reasonably strong guy with a good head on his shoulders. Benches a little more than I do I think, too. I noticed his leg drive was shooting his hips up, so I suggested the heels to traps cue and explained what leg drive is meant to do. He tried it, it worked. He told me all Jake ever said was to push with his feet. Similar issue was Matt and his bench, his butt kept lifting. He seems to have gotten it under control but it took a while and I’m fairly sure it was something he worked on himself rather than at Jake’s prompting. Matt also squats high a lot of the time. I’m not sure if Jake pings him on it, but it definitely costs him in meets. Since he does it consistently I can only assume Jake lets it slide.
So it could be awkward, which is why I’m already generally pretty reluctant to offer technical advice at Ultra. E/Lime, very different because most people there don’t have a coach, let alone a coach who works there.
I know I come across as arrogant saying this, and I guess to an extent I am. I’m not saying anything different to what I know and do is wrong, because that’s ridiculous, but I’m pretty sure I know enough to see when something is missing. There are plenty or different cues that give the same results, and plenty of different systems that work - I just only use the ones I’m familiar with because I know how to implement them.
The other issue is that from what I can see at Ultra, there aren’t really any people apart from Jake who genuinely want to get better at powerlifting. They like working in their comfort zone and cheering each other on. So I’m not the kind of person you want teaching them, because it would make them unhappy. That’s bad for business.
I know my limitations. I know enough to know I don’t know much, and I can help within that narrow band of knowledge. The way I know to lift and train is what I’ve learned from Greg, and that’s how I explain it to others because I know it works.
I mean, what am I going to do with someone who’s never really trained and doesn’t know what they want to do? I’m a powerlifter, that’s what I know how to do.
If Jake or anyone said, here’s someone who wants to do their first meet, it’s in six months and I haven’t got time to help them can you do it of course I would. Because I know how to do that.
Someone who just wants to get a bit better doesn’t need some arsehole like me on their case.
8 Likes
No, it seems well thought of actually. Very good points to be honest.
1 Like
Cool. Arrogance isn’t the best trait to have and it’s one I tend towards if I’m not careful. I try to be my own auriga.
’ In ancient Rome, the auriga was a slave with gladiator status, whose duty it was to drive a biga , the light vehicle powered by two horses, to transport some important Romans, mainly duces (military commanders). An auriga was a sort of “chauffeur” for important men and was carefully selected from among trustworthy slaves only.
It has been supposed also that this name was given to the slave who held a laurel crown, during Roman Triumphs, over the head of the dux , standing at his back but continuously whispering in his ears " Memento Mori " (“remember you are mortal”) to prevent the celebrated commander from losing his sense of proportion in the excesses of the celebrations’
It’s a silly way to put it, but that’s the image I have in my head of someone at my shoulder reminding me I’m not as good as I might think.
4 Likes
It’s nice that you keep reminding yourself to stay away from arrogance. But at the same time, I hope it doesn’t stop you from helping people like how much you’ve helped a lot of people here in the forums, and thanks for that btw!
Anyway, I think the choice of gym is clear!
Oh shit no, it just means I run through most things I write it say before I actually write or say them. If I genuinely think I have the knowledge to give someone useful advice I’ll give it.
Yes, gym choice is clear. I need to be around people stronger and better than I. The 24/7 access and cheaper price is a big factor too, but not the clincher.
4 Likes
Woke at 267.6 lbs, looking similar than yesterday. I’m going with salt, and it will be interesting to see if I can hold this for more than a couple of days
3 Likes