I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. I’ve been training a little over 2 years seriously. I’m a college senior who originally started training because I was a walk on for our football team (D-1, or ‘fbs’ now). That didn’t quite work out so I made the switch to powerlifting. I don’t train exclusively for powerlifting all the time, but focus on it when I am approaching a meet.
I screwed around with weights in high school while playing football and then went 2 years without training before I decided I wanted to try and walk on. Here are my stats:
Best gym lifts:
Squat: 425
Bench: 305
Deadlift: 565
My current goals are centered around a meet coming up on 2/28. I’m in the process of trying to lose some weight so that I can cut down to 181. Right now I’m around 201 and I hope to get down to about 195 before I do a Kroc style weight cut to 181 (24hr weigh in). I cut from 193 to 181 very easily for my last meet. I’m looking to total at least 1300 and finally get a 300 bench in a meet. I’ll detail my plan in my next post.
My current plan is a 4 day split based on Wendler’s 5/3/1 (ya ya I know, me and everyone else). His plan actually works perfect for me because I work about 30 hrs a week, volunteer in a research lab on campus for 10 hrs a week, and am currently taking 16 credit hours while applying to grad schools. Needless to say, my sleep isn’t optimal and my recovery abilities aren’t the best. It’s going to look like this:
Sunday - Military Press
Monday - Squat
Tuesday - off
Wednesday - Bench
Thursday - off
Friday - Deadlift
Saturday - off
For those who aren’t familiar with 5/3/1, it works like this:
Pick a main lift for each day and follow this cycle:
Week 1
warmup then
75% x 5
80% x 5
85% x 5 (or max reps)
Week 2
warmup then
80% x 3
85% x 3
90% x 3 (or max reps)
Week 3
warmup then
75% x 5
85% x 3
95% x 1 (or max reps)
Week 4 (deload)
warmup then
60% x 5
65% x 5
70% x 5
Assistance work is up to you.
If the weights feel light on a particular lift, increase the max the weights are based off for the next cycle by 5 lbs on lighter lifts (bench, military) or 10 lbs on heavier lifts (squat, deadlift). The idea is for the first cycle to be based off a weight that’s less than your true max and then go for broke on the last set each day. If you get more than the prescribed reps each week on a particular lift it means you should increase it on the next cycle.
I’ve used 5/3/1 before but it’s been a while so I’m considering this my first cycle. I suffered a knee sprain during a football game a few weeks ago and just started squatting again this week so the weight my squat is based off is pretty low. Here’s the maxes I’m basing all my weights off of:
Military - 170 (I really suck at this, hence why I’ve included it as a main lift)
Squat - 400
Bench - 285
Deadlift - 550
The meet will be at the end of my deload week (I’ll probably skip the last 2 workouts). For those that are interested, I’m good at deadlifting and suck at pressing movements because I have long arms (6’2 wingspan 5’11 height). I’ve planned out all my assistance work but won’t include that here because I always play that by ear and change it depending on how I feel that day. I’m also playing intramural softball and flag football on off days and consider that my cardio.
As for my diet, I’m trying to lose about 6-7 more lbs before the meet so I’m watching it pretty closely right now. Normally I’m not that strict and just like to make sure I get plenty of protein. Right now I’m shooting for about 2500 calories, at LEAST 200g protein, about 100g carbs, and the rest come from healthy fats. The biggest difference for me during this time is cutting back on the carbs. Here’s my meals from yesterday as an example:
Meal 1 7:30am -
Shake containing:
1 cup whole milk
1 raw egg
1 scoop whey
1 tblspn peanut butter
5g metamucil
3g fish oil
Meal 2 10:00am -
1/4 cup mixed nuts
2 scoops Muscle Milk
3g fish oil
Meal 3 1:00pm -
6oz steak
about 75 cal worth of brown rice
1 cup asparagus
1/4 oz olive oil
Post Workout 3:00pm -
1 scoop whey
30g dextrose
Meal 4 4:30pm -
6oz lean burger (93/7)
1 bun
1 cup spinach
1 slice natural cheese
3g fish oil
Meal 5 7:30pm -
5 whole eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 tblspn salsa on eggs
Meal 6 10:30pm -
1/2 cup cottage cheese
I think I’ve included any relevant info in these first 3 posts. Ask away if you want to know anything else I may have left out.
Now on to the good stuff, I started this cycle 4 days ago so I’ll post the workouts I’ve done so far.
My knee that I sprained a few weeks ago was really bothering me today so I opted to pull conventional instead of sumo. I’m not quite as strong conventional so I based these weights off a 520 max.
My roommate dragged me out to play some football today with a bunch of guys. I only knew a few of them and the ones that didn’t know me kept telling me I should be playing college ball. If they only knew the amount of time and effort I put into trying to walk on.
Weighed myself this morning after pissing and before eating or drinking anything… 201.6. Not exactly showing the weight loss I’ve been hoping for (probably the drinking I did on Thur, Fri, Sat of last week, but that’s a different story) so I decided to throw in some conditioning work.
There’s a huge mound of dirt behind campus that is steep as hell so I decided to do some hill sprints. Yea, I know, I’m copying Wendler again. I’d guess it’s close to a 45 degree slope and the distance is maybe 80 ft. The hardest part is that it’s all soft sand like you would find on a beach.
I sprinted up and back down 3 times before resting. Repeated this 5 times and called it a day when I almost lost my lunch. Reminded me of the sled we had to pull as punishment at my high school football practices.
I do the farmer walks on the handicap access ramp outside my gym. I go up the ramp and then back down for a total distance of around 100ft on each trip. The ramp turns twice so the turns really slow me down and makes it feel more like 200ft.
Also gonna run some hill sprints again later. I plan on doing the same 5 sets of 3 sprints.
I forgot my chucks and belt at home today so I raw dogged the deadlifts in sneakers with no belt.
Conventional Deadlift
415x3
440x3
470x4
Pull Throughs - 3x12
Land Mines - 4x16
DB Cleans - 4x10-12
I submitted the entry form for my meet today. I entered the raw category and it’s an APF meet so no wraps are allowed. My knee has been hurting bad enough that I almost didn’t enter the meet, so I’m thinking about wrapping them.
It would technically move me to the equipped category but who cares? The only thing that would change is I won’t get listed on the PowerliftingWatch rankings. My last meet was APA where wraps are allowed so it would allow me to better compare how my strength has increased. If I do decide to wrap them I’m thinking about making a run at a 500 squat.
Since I’m going to be using knee wraps and getting placed in the equipped division, I decided it’s pointless to cut weight at this point.
My lifts won’t officially be raw so I’m just gonna do this meet for fun at 198 and try to hit some huge PRs. I think I’ll be able to compare this meet to my last and see if cutting 15lbs of water weight affected my performance at all.
Since the meet is in less than two weeks, I’m going to simply work up to a heavy single in each lift over the next three workouts to help determine what my openers should be. Next week I am going to be taking a complete deload. I may do some light squatting and benching next Monday just to keep my muscle memory fresh.
I closed the #2 for 2 reps in each hand so I think I’m going to order the #2.5 and #3 soon. I’ve had all the CoC’s up to #2 for about a year now but up until 2 months ago I’d only screwed around with them. I’ve made some good progress recently now that I’ve been working on them consistently. Previously I was only able to close the #2 for one rep with my right hand. Closing the #3 is a goal of mine so I’m going to be training it hard after this meet.
As for the squat opener, I think I’m going to go with 430. The 435 I did today was walked out and with a crappy bar at my school gym and wasn’t too tough. At the meet there will be a monolift and mastadon bar so with those and my adrenaline pumping it will be a smoke show. I’ll probably go with 460 on my 2nd attempt and pick my 3rd based on how easy my 2nd is. 500 may be a little bit of a stretch but if I smoke 460 I’m gonna go for it.
The single at 295 was pretty tough today. I wasn’t feeling very strong to begin with but I think I’ll open at 285 just to be safe. I’ll probably go 300 on my 2nd so that I can finally get a 300+ bench in a meet.
This was my last real workout before the meet and I planned on taking a heavy deadlift single to determine my opener.
This was the first time I’ve pulled sumo in over 2 months because of my knee injury. My PR deadlift is 565, but I haven’t attempted anything over 525 in over 9 months. I also went out drinking last night and went in to work on only 5 hours sleep.
Considering all these factors, I was expecting the worst, but here’s how it went…