Quick Question. Do you have a deadlift number you are shooting for or nah?
Deadlifting 800 looking like that would be awesome(I bet you’re there already lol).
At present, no. Right now the focus is on losing fat and staying strong through the process, along with improving some health markers.
An 800 pull was a goal of mine for a long time, and that number is still in my mind, but I don’t foresee myself doing the things necessary to get it done. These days, I don’t care much for 1rms, and tend to work more in reps. It tends to make me bigger and stronger.
I may aim for an 800 on the high handle trap bar one day, but it’s a question of how much bodyweight I’m willing to put back on at this point.
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All of it!
What is the heaviest you’ve been?
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217lbs. Was going for 220 and ALMOST made it. That was back in 08. This most recent stint at 210 was the heaviest I had been in a LONG time.
If I could add it back and keep health in check, I would, but I don’t foresee that being possible. It’s honestly one of my few training “regrets”. In truth, I wouldn’t ever wanna give up time with the family, but a part of me always wonders how things woulda gone if I got myself up to 300+ and just chased strength. But such is life.
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What made you quit so close to the goal?
It’s laudable that you prioritise health, for the sake of your family, over personal goals, BUT, you are depriving Tnation of watching you get super fat and strong.
What the heaviest pull you’ve ever done? Did it correlate with being heavier? I know you’ve said you pull better lighter, but there has to point of diminishing returns to both heavier and lighter? I haven’t yet found the too heavy point but I might do one day!
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Had to move, and in the process I lost 10lbs and wasn’t terribly excited about trying to put it back on again.
No joke, if you want to see this, go look through the logs of @Uber_N3wb (Profile - Uber_N3wb - COMMUNITY - T NATION), because they were the logs of George Leeman when posted here as a 16 year old. Ballooned up huge and got silly strong.
Heaviest pull I ever hit was a 650 deadlift from the floor. I was 200lbs at the time, which tended to be the sweet spot for me regarding pulling strength. Heavier than that and I couldn’t get into a good starting position. I could do alright lighter than that, but top end strength wasn’t quite as good. Too heavy is basically when your belly prevents you from getting your feet where you like. Since you tend to stay on the leaner side when you gain, you may have quite a bit of room. I was definitely having issues with my pulls when I was 210 back in March: kept seeing them go down, but my press was just getting stupid.
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Thanks for the log I’ll take a look, love seeing the process people go through for strength sports!
Very respectable pull, your trap bar pulls have been very good as well recently considering you’re nearly 25lbs under the sweet spot (or does that not apply to TBDL?), Bet you’re dying to get back on the weight gain train! If you kept it slow and steady, with your nutritional compliance abilities I can’t see you doing huge amounts of damage to health markers.
I stay leaner and always pull sumo, which in my mind makes the belly less of an issue - after reading that foods log you posted in flame free I’m definitely lightly chastising myself for not having gained any weight! Time for some herring oil…
It was showing itself on the trap bar when I was at 210. I was actually moving backwards quite a bit on it. I think the trap bar really rewards leanness, as you can get your feet in close AND kinda collapse on yourself at the start to shorten the ROM.
Absolutely champing at the bit to gain. I don’t even care about the eating so much: I hate having to hold back in my training so much. I have a ton of ideas on intensity modifiers and ways to squeeze in volume and force growth to happen, but without the nutrition to do it all I will do is run myself into the ground and get adapted to the demand for no real benefit. Just gotta be able to open up the gates.
Man, you guys say “deadlift” and I assume we’re actually talking about deadlifting, haha. Sumo is something on it’s own: I have no idea how any of that works.
And that nutrition guy was big on the oil: I about cut it out just to emphasize the sheer volume of food. Said it was 7000 calories a day, and all clean stuff. I’m sure you’d develop jaw fatigue at one point, haha.
Haha I’d totally forgotten your distain for calling sumos a deadlift (in my mind if you start off with a bar on the floor and pick it up to a standing position and return it, then you’ve gone from deadstop and lifted it’s a deadlift, but I’m not game for a semantics debate haha).
Really looking forward to seeing the next phase of Pwn on the gain train, I’m sure there will be some more gold for the rest of us to steal!
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Appreciate having you along. The increased traffic in the log has been nice, especially now that my work firewall has allowed me to access t-nation again. I’m posting a lot more to pass the time: more than happy to use that to share, discuss and learn. I get a lot out of it too: sometime I re-discover something I used to know even, haha.
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Went for grippers today. Hands are a bit chewed up from Blackjack yesterday, so I focused on timed holds after closing the 2.5 for 2 reps per hand. Managed 40 seconds with the #2 and 45 seconds with the #1 after that, with some reps thrown in.
Hit 17 reps on the GHR this morning and 30 NG chins.
On another 12 hour shift. Mrs picked me up a Chik Fil A cobb salad with grilled chicken yesterday to bring to work. I tossed out the egg, split the salad in half, then took a canned of chunked chicken breasts and split it between the two halves. Put 1 tablespoon of avocado based cesear salad dressing on each half to add in some good fats. That’s going to be breakfast and lunch today, with another almond butter sandwich for dinner.
I’m pretty proud of my fast food manipulation. I did something similar with a Jimmy John’s tuna salad sub the other day: brought it home, broke out the keto friendly hamburger bun, put the tuna salad on that with some yellow mustard and a slice of fat free cheese. Had a side of quest protein chips and sauerkraut with it. Went from a high fat-high carb-low protein meal to high fat-high protein-low carb.
Been reading lots of old Elitefts articles on nutrition out of an abundance of time at work and I’ve discovered I’ve pretty much accidentally adopted the approach of Justin Harris as it relates to nutrition. Always cool when something like that happens. Leads me to believe I should read more of his work moving forward, although I’m still on that tightrope between health and performance.
EDIT: While I’m blathering on about what I’m eating these days, I tried out the no sugar/no salt added peanut flour (it’s literally just ground up peanuts) with my greek yogurt this morning. It was ok. The lack of salt was more noticeable than the lack of sugar: I actually added salt to my yogurt, since I’m fairly certain I’m not getting NEARLY enough sodium these days with how stupidly clean my diet has become and blood pressure isn’t an issue for me. I’m going to throw some monkfruit sweetener into it next time too and see how that goes. But ultimately I could live with it as is, AND it actually comes with a scooper to measure a serving accurately, which is cool. I have it in my head that I’m going to try some baking recipes this fall, and figure this will help with the peanut butter aspect.
We are offended but will accept your apologies, haha.
Also that full body shot of you looks crazy! Awesome work
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Thanks dude! It’s been fun seeing what’s underneath the surface. Like unwrapping a Christmas present, haha.
And man do I miss legit sausages. The chicken ones scratch the itch, but are never the same. Of course, I betray my own heritage by preferring the works of Poland, but at this point I’m about ready to eat my bodyweight in red meat.
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I definitely get that. Quite a few people have been trying to talk me into getting lean for the sake of seeing what’s underneath the fluff. Not sure why anyone would wonder about that on another human but them self but hey.
I didn’t know you had German heritage. Do you still have family over in Europe or heritage as in your family emigrated to the US a long time ago?
What are your B-vitamins sources at the moment? I recall reading you casting aside an egg and I imagine that’s quite a turn from how you ordinarily eat.
Long time ago. I’m primarily mongrel, haha. We have no idea what’s on my mom’s side, but I’m guessing it’s Scandinavian. My dad’s mom was 100% Swedish, the child of immigrants, while he’s dad was a combination of German and Scottish. My last name’s origin is very German. No family currently in Europe.
Supplements at this point. I imagine I’m fairly deficient in a lot of things with the choices I’ve made. I’m honestly just “cramming for the test” as far as my blood lipids go just to see if it’s something I CAN control via diet, and if I have that information, I plan to work back to some sense of moderation.
I do get some red meat still in the diet, but it’s trace. There’s some bacon in my salad today, sometimes we’ll mix ground turkey with grassfed beef to make a meatloaf or tacos, and on some of the occasions I go out I’ll order it, but it’s a massive reduction from where I was eating it everyday, typically 2-3 times a day. My meat consumption in general is down. On the days I don’t work, I pretty much only have one real meal a day at dinner, and the rest would more be classified and snacks.
Although speaking of snacks, I’ve been having zero carb beef jerky these past few days, so there’s a little bit of red meat, but the amount is so small it’s not really an adequate source of anything.
It’s still a VERY common name here, just spelled differently.
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Have you tried nutritional yeast? Cheesy flavour. Works great on popcorn.
I haven’t even tried popcorn in several years, haha. Just googled it though: looks pretty interesting. Lotta fiber. I remember reading something similar in some of the baking recipes in “The Complete Keys to Progress”. I might pick some up sometime.
Popcorn is one of my favvs post-workout.