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Date: Fri, 8 Jul 94
From: Barry Merriman
Intro
References
Diet
Supplements
Drugs
Gear
Primary Lift Technique
Psyching Up
Assistance Movements
Warmups
Injuries
Routine Design
Choosing a Weights Class
Competition
What Constitutes Strong
Philosophy
World Records & Top Lifters
The fundamental goal of powerlifting is to get strong. This is different from
bodybuilding, where the goal is to develop large muscles and low bodyfat. Because
of this, different training techniques are required. Strong and big are different
things.
Strength is embodied by the three basic lifts: squat, bench press and deadlift.
These are lifts that the human body can move the most weight in, and have a
good chance of not breaking.
A real powerlifter does all three lifts, to develop overall strength. A huge
number of so called "powerlifters" only do the bench press, but bench
pressing is really just the tip of the power ice burg. The real challenges lie
in the other lifts. Not to mention that bench pressers generally have twigs
for legs, and a light bulb-like physique. If you are going to powerlift, do
all three lifts.
I don't know of any good books specifically devoted to powerlifting. I've seen
the books by Hatfield, and was unimpressed. If you go to a major powerlifting
meet, you will find a lot of manuals by various top lifters. They vary a lot
in quality. The magazine PowerLifting USA has many training and diet
articles, but these also vary a lot in quality. It is most useful for finding
out contest dates and results and ordering equipment. There are now some good
videos on powerlifting available. The series by Ed Coan is probably a worthwhile
purchase.
As for scientific references, I again prefer to rely on the book Weight
Training, A Scientific Approach by Stone and Obryant. This contains
a fair amount of material directly relevant to powerlifting, but at a very scholarly
level.
I wont cite any references below. This is just distilled knowledge. What I know
comes from 16 years of weightlifting, and 2 years of powerlifting as the training
partner of one of the best lifters in the world, and a couple years of training
at the Mecca, Golds/Venice, as part of the "in crowd" there. But,
I am a scientist, so I try and filter this against some general principles as
well.
Get you nutrients from normal food, and a good multi-vitamin. (over the counter,
3 centrum/day is good. The best vitamin I have ever encountered is Broad Spectrum,
From Nutriguard Research, in Encinitas, CA, mail order). Use protein powders
and weightgainers only if you need the convenience.
There are no legal supplements that are known to "work" at increasing
muscle mass. You can increase your strength and muscular endurance by using
stimulants, blood buffers and carbo drinks, though. I recommend UltraFuel, before
and during workouts, as it provides the carbs, needed co-nutrients, and blood
buffers in one. You can drink it after to recarb as well. As for stimulants,
caffeine is very effective, ephedrine less so. I usually use vivarin + ephedrin
+ aspirin as a stimulant stack, (the aspirin is to block pain and enhance blood
transport). Take these about an 1/2 hour before doing your powerlifts.
I have tried creatine, and didn't notice much from it. But other people I have
talked to think it makes them a bit stronger. I personally doen't recommend
it.
You can get plenty strong without drugs (steroids, clenbuterol, growth hormone
are the substances in use these days). And drugs are more effective for bodybuilders
than powerlifters, i.e. they seem to work better at increasing mass/reducing
fat than at actually increasing the strength of a muscle. In any case, I say
stay away from drugs until you can at least squat and deadlift 2.5 x bodyweight
and bench 1.75 x. Those are numbers that can certainly be achieved without drugs,
so there is no need for them up til that point. If at that stage you want to
use them, learn about them and then set some specific goals and timetables for
using them. Plan to limit your lifetime exposure to them to at most a year (since,
except for rare reactions, most harmful side effects don't set in til at least
one year of "on time").
It is futile to try and pass on technique via the written word, or even still
photos. You have to see live action and get running commentary. If at all possible,
find an experienced powerlifter to critique your style periodically. If a mentor
is not available (and even if they are) buy a training video out of PowerLifting
USA. I suggest the ones by Ed Coan (the alltime best powerlifter), as he is
known as a great technician who gets the most out of his lifts.
But, a few comments:
First, always do your powerlifting with good form---never cheat to get the lift
(bouncing in the bench, squating high, avoiding lockouts in bench and deadlift,
bouncing the bar on the floor during reps in the deadlift, etc). If you cheated,
you got nothing. Zero. Its that simple, because thats what you'd get in a contest.
It is important to mentally psyche up before attempting a heavy lift. Based
on my experience, I'd say the difference between psyched and unpsyched lifing
is about a 10-20% drop in strength, plus the weight feels ponderous and heavy
when there is no psyche. Proper psyching should put you in a state of extreme
rage or fear---the primitive emotions. By the time you start the lift, the conscious
mind should be completely shut down---there is no thought, and then even no
emotion. You want to completely lose your mind, and perform the lift using only
instinct. When you can reach this state (it takes a lot of practice), there
will be no physical sensation at all during the lift---your body is numb, you
are not aware of your limbs, you may lose your sense of hearing as well, and
for that brief time there is just a direct link between the mind and the muscles,
with out the normal conscious interface. Its a pretty weird mental state, one
that cant be reached any other way than by putting extreme demands on your body.
Many people try to psyche up by making a ruckus---they swear, stomp around,
have people slap them, bang their heads on the wall, yell at themselves, etc.
But, its really all in your mind. I advocate the silent psyche. Keep it in your
mind. I look totally calm on the outside while psyching up, but inside there
is a violent storm raging in the brain.
The training lifts are divided into the three primary power lifts, and all other
movements are classified as assistance lifts. The purpose of the assistance
movements is to develop and maintain muscle mass over the entire body, and to
be sure that muscles get worked through a full range of motions and angle. This
will assist with the stability during the primary lifts, and helps prevent weak
links from developing. (The older style was to train weak parts of a primary
lift directly, e.g. work on the sticking point in the benchpress. The modern
approach is just to do assistance work to build a good foundation of strength
and mass).
Thorough warmup is important prior to the power lifts, since you are going to
stress the body severely. I suggest the following warmup sequences: (sets x
reps)
1 x 8, 1 x 5, 1 x 3, 1 x 1, work set(s)
where the work set(s) are the actual sets you want to do that day. The weight
jumps should be roughly equal between each set above: i.e. the first set is
with 20% of the target weight, then 40%, etc til you reach 100% for your work
set. If you are using more than 5 plates on the bar, insert more 1 x 1 warmup
sets. For example, I usually warm up by adding plates (45 lb plates), so that
my sequence is (reps x weight) 8 x 135, 5 x 225, 3 x 315, 1 x 405, 1 x 495,
1 x 585 in the squat if I am squating > 600. For bench, I stop at 1 x 315,
though.
Gear for warmups & sets:
Minor injuries are a part of power lifting. You will always have cuts, bruise,
aching joints and sore muscles when you start taxing the body. It requires skill
to decide which injuries to ignore and which to pay attention to. Here are some
simple rules of thumb (but don't blame me if you end up in the hospital :-)
The bottom line is usually: if an injury makes you get weaker, do something
about it. Otherwise, ignore it. Its not unusual to train with fairly (even extremely)
painful injuries, as long as you stay strong.
Here's a tip: ibuprofin helps a lot with the pain (at least you can get to sleep
at night :-)
Similarly, you can train through most minor illnesses. But don't train with
a viral chest infection and a fever---it can damage the heart, according to
what my doc told me.
The powerlifting routines I present are periodized routines, in which you hit
all three lifts roughly once a week, an progress in poundage---with fixed reps---from
week to week. The reason for the fixed number of reps is (a) to build strength
you need low rep sets with heavy weights, plus (b) when using heavy weights,
a one rep change is a huge change, so varying reps is not a very gradual way
to vary the intensity. Instead, the reps are kept about the same and small changes
are made to the poundages. this allows for a gradual increase in intensity.
A good way to structure the individual workouts is as follows:
squat quads,hams,calves
bench chest,delts,abs
dead back,traps
<none> bis, tris, forearms
This gives you a total of four different workouts. If you would rather just
have 3 workouts (they get a bit long tho) add the tri's to chest day and bis
and fores to dead day.
As for the assistance work, here are rules of thumb for selection and performance:
Here are good exercises from which to select the assistance:
Here are three common and reasonable ways to arrange the basic workouts into
a micro-cycle: If you have an arm day, it can go on any empty day except before
bench day (since you need fresh arms to bench)
I.
day workout
------------
M bench
T squat
W -
Th -
F dead
S -
II.
day workout
------------
M squat
T -
W bench
Th -
F dead
S -
III.
day workout
-----------
squat
-
bench
-
dead
-
bench
-
The latter (III) is an 8 day cycle, in which you bench twice in 8 days. This
allows for somewhat faster bench progress, taking advantage of the fact that
upper body generally recovers faster than lower body.
Now these weekly cycles need to be arranged into larger training cycles. I present
two basic ways: the former is better for people who are starting out, and who
are not training for a contest. It is more open ended and lets you develop your
strength in a less planned way.
Progression on the power lifts:
start the cycle for each lift with a weight you can handle fro 5 sets of 5 reps.
Every week for the lift, you increase the weight (by 20 lbs in the squat and
deadlift, 10 lbs in the bench; cut those in half if they seem like big jumps
for the weight you are using). Whenever you can't get 5 reps on a set, you throw
that set out in the future. Continue this way, until you are left doing just
one set of 5. At that point, if 8 or more weeks have gone by, stop the cycle
(for that lift). If not, and you want to keep going longer, continue increasing
the weight, and drop at least 1 rep each workout: i.e do no more than 4 reps
the next time (its ok if you can't get that many though), and continue, planning
to drop one rep each time. You will reach a single in at most 4 weeks (proabbly
less) and stop the cycle after that (you can stop any time before the single
as well).
Apply this procedure to each of the powerlifts. You can stop them at different
times as they peter out. When you stop for one lift, just go into a holding
pattern for it by doing one set of 5 with a fairly light weight, until you terminate
all the others. Make the cycle run at least 8 weeks, but no more than 12. 8--10
is best. Starting with 5 sets of five, and assuming you drop one set per workout
and then one rep per workout at the end would result in a 9 week cycle.
Progression on the assistance: *unlike* the power lifts, there is no projected
steady increase in the weights used for assistance. These sets are done more
instinctively, and you should just look at them as little contests: your goal
is to pick a weight for your hard set that you can barely get 8 with. If you
get 8 easy, you were a wimp. Use more weight next time. If you miss 8, you lose,
it was too heavy. Be more conservative next time. Never do more than 8; if you
have something left, save it for next time. There is no need to take these sets
to failure all the time. Also, if you feel a little weak, there is no harm in
dropping down, and vice versa. Just use instinct to select the weights, and
have fun with it. The rigid progression is for the power lifts.
Also, towards the end of the cycle (the last couple weeks), start to go easy
on the assistance, and you can even cut back on the number of sets some. The
power lists will be pretty draining by then.
if you are training for a contest, you cant afford an open ended cycle like
the above. You have to know you will peak on a certain day. So, you have to
plan a cycle of a known length and plan the weight jumps you will need to reach
your target lifts. You may not quite reach your goals, but that is ok.
You may also want a planned length cycle to coincide with the quarter system
at school, or any other time marks in your life.
Again, use all sets of 5 reps. For each power lift, you will do one hard set,
and one backoff set. The backoff set is there as a gauge and to practice the
movement: your hard set may degenerate into a single double or triple, which
can make it hard to judge your performance (e.g. if you miss a single, how strong
are you?). Use how you feel on the backoff to gauge status in that case.
For the backoff set, use about 90% of what you use on your hard set.
Here is a reasonable schedule of planned jumps: Let W be the target weight you
want to lift for a set of 5 at the end. Assume there are 8 workouts during the
8 week cycle.
Then: for the squat and deadlift, start at W - 100lbs and take the following
weekly jumps:
20lbs, 20lbs, 20lbs, 10lbs, 10lbs, 10lbs, 10lbs
and for the bench, start at W - 50 lbs and take jumps half that size.
(You can of course reduce the jumps listed in proportion to the weights you
will be lifting).
Assistance progression: same free format as described in the other macro cycle
strategy.
The 8 week (roughly) macro cycles described above should in turn be strung together
to for a sequence of several cycles. At the start of each new cycle, set a reasonable
goal (e.g. add 20 lbs on your best set of 5 in squat and dead, 10 in bench)
and start the new cycle that much heavier (e.g. up by 20 in squat and dead,
up by 10 in bench). You can do as many as six of these cycles in a year, and
that gives you plenty of opportunity to increase you squat and dead by ~ 100
lbs and bench by 50 lbs, which would be plenty of gains for one year. Alternatively,
you could do two power cycles in a row, and then do two of the bodybuilding
cycles I described in previous posts, so that you alternate between strength
gains and mass gains. In this case it would probably be good to throw in a 4--6
week fat reduction cycle every year, too (i.e. use a maintainance workout, and
the sort of cyclical diet I described above for 4--6 weeks.)
If you compete, you need to decide what weight class to go into. It is a fact
that anyone can get stronger by getting fatter---but who wants to look like
a pig? I suggest you try to compete at 8--13% bodyfat, and try to squeeze in
the lower weight classes. It is a much more athletic thing to do. Also, you
can easily drop 3--5 lbs over the last three days before the contest and then
pop back to you final weight with a little recarbing and sodium loading. The
trick is to eat zero carbs the last three days before weigh in, and go on a
low sodium diet (no added sodium at all---keep intake to < 600 mg /day) and
drink a gallon of distilled water per day fro the last two weeks before the
show. use a sauna to drop any remaining weight if you have to, and dont eat
or drink anything within 18 hours before the weigh in. After the weight in,
recarb (complex day before, simple same day) and sodium and water load as much
as possible.
Contests are allows rushed and disorganized, and conditions usually rang from
bad to worse. You'd think they'd have it down by now, but they don't. Before
you compete, attend a show and try to sit in on the rules briefing as well,
if you can. It help to have someone with you at the show to help with your gear
as well.
There are three major organizations: ADFPA (for drug free), USPF (the largest,
most official (and officious) organization, currently drug free at the national
and international level) and the APF (formed by the lifters, for the lifters.
Drugs are ok, and they are more lenient on judging criteria and choice of gear).
USPF has the most shows.
When training for a contest, use the preplanned workout stlye. It is also helpful
to "bring up a single", I.e. take an additonal hard set which is just
a single rep, to practice technique on the single. This starts out easy. and
should be your first work set, and you junp it in weight each week similar to
the set of 5. By the end, it turns into a max or near max single done with good
singlke technique (whiuch differs subtly from rep technique).
Good strength---for anyone---is a 600 lb squat, 400 lbs bench, and 600 lbs deadlift.
These are the sort of lifts a good college level athlete is capable of, if they
trained for it.
Good powerlifter strength is those weights + 100 lbs, and the strength level
good high school level athletes are capable of is those weights - 100 lbs.
I ignore the weight of the lifter above, but I'm talking about someone weighing
at least 200 lbs.
More generally, squat and deadlift 3 x bodyweight and bench 2 x bodyweight is
good strength for a power lifter. That is nearly national level.
Powerlifting mottos to live by:
That which does not destroy you will make you strong.
Tired does not mean weak, injured does not mean weak, only weak means weak.
here are the top lifts and lifters for some representative weight classes:
Lift Wt Lifter
S 760 Perez
B 505 Perez
D 733 Inzer
Tot 1890 Alexander
S 843 Bell
B 562 Confessore
D 790 Coan
Tot 2110 Bell
S 870 Bell
B 600 Lee
D 860 Coan
Tot 2204 Coan
S 965 Coan
B 628 Confessore
D 865 Coan
Tot 2370 Coan (But I thought he hit 2430?)
S 1030 Passanella (275 lbs bodyweight)
B 705 Arcidi (308 lbs bdywt) (But Anthony Clark has hit 730 in unsanctioned
meets recently, weighing 330)
D 920 Heisey (> 308 lbs bdywt)
Tot 2460 Pasanella (308 lbs)
The all time best lifter overall, based on formual, is Ed Coan with his 2370
total at 220 lbs.
Here is a selection from the women, just to make the guys reading this feel
weak:
S 440 Jeffery
B 248 Jeffery
D 408 Jeffery
T 1100 Jeffery
S 567 Dodd
B 363 Harrell
D 534 Dodd
T 1317 Dodd
S 579 Reshel
B 352 Grimwood
D 589 Reshel
T 1483 Reshel
S 633 Reshel
B 385 Harrell
D 604 Reshel
T 1565 Reshel (Note: these records are close to my own best lifts at 198!)
(The latter are also the overall best for women).