Variable Strength

Training Powerlifting
1

I’m curious among the people that post in this forum, i.e. people that lift specifically to get stronger, how much you’d estimate your strength varies from workout to workout.

For example, some days I come in and get X weight for 6 clean reps, other days I may come in and get the same X weight for only 4 shaky reps. I’ve found one big factor to be sleep (or lack thereof); when I lift after sleeping like crap my strength is severely compromised.

Another (for me) is stress/work. This time of year I am extremely busy and my WOs seem to suffer b/c of it.

So I’m wondering - does anyone else see noticeable swings in strength WO to WO?

2

I would say personally there can be upwards of a 10% swing between work outs depending on time of day and other variables from my experience.

3

[quote]doubleh wrote:
I’m curious among the people that post in this forum, i.e. people that lift specifically to get stronger, how much you’d estimate your strength varies from workout to workout.

For example, some days I come in and get X weight for 6 clean reps, other days I may come in and get the same X weight for only 4 shaky reps. I’ve found one big factor to be sleep (or lack thereof); when I lift after sleeping like crap my strength is severely compromised.

Another (for me) is stress/work. This time of year I am extremely busy and my WOs seem to suffer b/c of it.

So I’m wondering - does anyone else see noticeable swings in strength WO to WO? [/quote]

Hmm… Not really, everything’s constantly moving up more or less unless some aspect of my training has been lacking lately:
Took time off due to sickness or so,
too little sleep,
too little food overall or too little protein (food is the number 1 thing for me, really… Guess the protein part isn’t as important for powerlifters as it is for me though).

Finally, depending on the routine I occasionally need some scheduled deloading or else I’ll just stall on everything no matter how much I eat (Cruise periods in DC, deload week in 5/3/1, no deload when training with a normal bb routine though… 1 top set for 2-3 exercises per muscle-group once a week really doesn’t take that much out of the system in a way that would require deloading imo).

So whenever I have an “off day” or so, I can usually trace that back to one of the above things.

Now, I obviously don’t do max singles or doubles but I guess that’d be a little different from the moderate or higher rep training as far as performance goes week for week…

4

[quote]IrishMarc wrote:
I would say personally there can be upwards of a 10% swing between work outs depending on time of day and other variables from my experience. [/quote]

This is almost exactly what I experience. Was more or less wondering how prevalent this is, because it seems like a lot to me.

5

[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
doubleh wrote:
I’m curious among the people that post in this forum, i.e. people that lift specifically to get stronger, how much you’d estimate your strength varies from workout to workout.

For example, some days I come in and get X weight for 6 clean reps, other days I may come in and get the same X weight for only 4 shaky reps. I’ve found one big factor to be sleep (or lack thereof); when I lift after sleeping like crap my strength is severely compromised.

Another (for me) is stress/work. This time of year I am extremely busy and my WOs seem to suffer b/c of it.

So I’m wondering - does anyone else see noticeable swings in strength WO to WO?

Hmm… Not really, everything’s constantly moving up more or less unless some aspect of my training has been lacking lately:
Took time off due to sickness or so,
too little sleep,
too little food overall or too little protein (food is the number 1 thing for me, really… Guess the protein part isn’t as important for powerlifters as it is for me though).

Finally, depending on the routine I occasionally need some scheduled deloading or else I’ll just stall on everything no matter how much I eat (Cruise periods in DC, deload week in 5/3/1, no deload when training with a normal bb routine though… 1 top set for 2-3 exercises per muscle-group once a week really doesn’t take that much out of the system in a way that would require deloading imo).

So whenever I have an “off day” or so, I can usually trace that back to one of the above things.

Now, I obviously don’t do max singles or doubles but I guess that’d be a little different from the moderate or higher rep training as far as performance goes week for week…
[/quote]

I also think I can trace the source most of the time, but it just seems to happen so often I end up thinking every little thing is affecting me. I always try and move up every WO either in reps or weight even when I’m not doing DC. Too often I seem to get, not so much stagnation, as backsliding. If I hit X reps at X weight, I feel I should always be able to get that, everything else being relatively equal - and that’s not the case.

I would say a majority of the time I believe I can pinpoint the cause, but there’s still plenty of times I’m left wondering “why”.

Thanks for the input.

6

[quote]doubleh wrote:
I also think I can trace the source most of the time, but it just seems to happen so often I end up thinking every little thing is affecting me. I always try and move up every WO either in reps or weight even when I’m not doing DC. Too often I seem to get, not so much stagnation, as backsliding. If I hit X reps at X weight, I feel I should always be able to get that, everything else being relatively equal - and that’s not the case.

I would say a majority of the time I believe I can pinpoint the cause, but there’s still plenty of times I’m left wondering “why”.

Thanks for the input.[/quote]

Hmm. For me it’s easier to pinpoint stuff as I:
a) eat mostly the same every day, at the same times (and inconsistency of diet is one of those things that affect performance like nothing else, at least in my case)
b) go to bed at roughly the same time every day and so on

Most bodybuilders fall into patterns with almost everything, probably way more so than powerlifters etc, so a lot of the ever-changing influences on one’s performance do not necessarily apply…
Thus I’d say performance doesn’t vary as much over short-term and it’s easy to find the cause whenever a performance drop-off occurs.