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I must apologize for being so absent. I haven’t entered a blog since mid April and here is why. Early in May, some of you may have heard about it, Nashville and the surrounding areas got what the experts called a 500 year or even 1,000 year flood. My house wasn’t damaged too much but, water did get in to my gym and I had to do some cleaning, drylock a wall and paint then, lots of mopping. The volume of water forced me to get my drainage around my house fixed and replace some down spouts and bigger, replace a retaining wall that fell into my driveway. That being said, I was basically spared in comparison to my neighbors just a mile away that had homes and vehicles devastated. Worse, the place I work, the building had two floors completely under water. It was just over a week ago that I was able to go to those areas without a hazmat suit on. So, thankfully, my home appears to be ok, gym is stable and we are working on mending the building at work. That being said, it left little time to write but, now that I’m in a groove again, I’m back and I hope that what I’m writing provides you with some useful and helpful information.
I have a column ready and working on another that I’ll wait to post this week hopefully. We pull on Fridays and I want to get some video footage to help you understand what we are doing. Until then, lift heavy, train smart & eat more pizza.
Anyone that knows me knows how I have struggled with the deadlift. I have coached lifters to big numbers in the pull, I know the mechanics, etc. but, have still struggled. I have tried training more, training less, every other week and so forth. Chains, bands, bars...you name it, I have done it. Last year at the SPF worlds, I finally pulled my lifetime goal of 700. No, that is not the biggest pull you’ll ever see even at a local meet but, when I started competing, I made a goal of 700. What I’d like to share with you, is the not only the training but, the things that I went through and how I had to adapt to different things to finally reach my goal.
I will do a weekly blog covering the different aspects and successes and failure of my training in an effort to hopefully steer you from the pitfalls and perhaps guide you to a better route in achieving your own personal goal. What I will be doing is outlining what I was doing at the current time and how I trained and the changes I made. Some of this will leave you shaking your head as to what I was thinking at the time. Trust me; I do the same looking back. However, the foundation that was laid taught me what I know today and helped me with my style of coaching and training method we currently use.
To give you an idea of my struggles, I competed in a push/pull meet in 1998 where I pulled 500 for the first time. I use a belt only as I had no experience with a suit at the time. December of 1999, I pulled 584 with seemingly room to spare and from there, progress pretty much halted. It was 2000 before I pulled 590 and 2001 before I finally broke 600. It took from August of 2001 to October of 2009 to get to 700. Again, my hope is to share with you what has worked and to hopefully steer you clear of what was not successful for me.
I have started shooting video in my gym. This will be several installments about things I see from the judges chair. My hope is that this will help lifters think about the little things needed to get those extra pounds on lifts and more so, on that total.
I hope you find something from them and enjoy them.
The title to this blog could be a little misleading. I'll explain. This morning, my session is a prime example of when you should back off a little. For several weeks, I've been flirting with 545-585 for reps in the close grip decline we do for our bench training. Some weeks it would go ok and some weeks I wasn't close. I had become a bit inconsistent. This goes back to my last blog as well. Consistency is everything. But, I'll go back even further. Roughly 4 years ago, I hit 500x6 for the first time. For a few weeks after, I simply couldn't get it done again. So, I backed down to 455. I did 3 sets of 6 and then a drop set for 8. I never swayed from the weight for 8 weeks. After that time, I went back to 500 and pounded 6 reps out like clock work and I've had some of the other lifters do the same thing.While this approach may seem a little elementery, it has proven to be successful many times. Here and there, it's not that we need a break, we just need to back it off a hair and regroup.
My hope is that I can do this for 8 weeks and come back strong and pound out 545 for 6 with just a good and strong effort. I'm 5 weeks past a meet, have lost weight and of late, have added 3-4 cardio sessions a week. I have also been doing an addition to my house and gym and that has really hit me hard physically, no to mentoin financially. So, all those things cound but, i don't want to make exvuses. This is all for the effort of training smarter and not just harder.
I'll keep you posted and how this progresses. I'll post a link to my workouts and hopefully we'll even have some video. So, if you are alittle flat and that flatness is sticking around, maybe back off a little and make your way back up.
This is a little different than a typical article. I wanted to write about something that I have to deal with myself and hope that it helps you make adjustments in your training should you need it.
So many times we discount the effects that everyday life may have on us. We go into the gym and we are tired from our job, not feeling well or just don't have it on that given day. Then we feel bad, guilty and even frustrated and disappointed when the training doesn’t go as planned or we don't perform as expected. I hope to put your mind at ease a bit. Simply, training is like the race between the Tortoise and the Hare. We all seem content when it comes easy and the gains are coming in and the numbers keep going up. But what happens to us when there is a little bit of injury? What if you didn’t get to eat well due to schedule? What if your other half is really on your ass and it stresses you out? The point to all this is life counts when it effects training. This is not to say that you shouldn’t try hard, train hard and do your best. What this means is that all these things do have an effect on your training and the results of that training. It’s best to realize that and make adjustments.
I have been interviewed in the past and asked what I thought was the best training method out there. My answer is really simple. It’s the method that you will use consistently that will be most effective. Sure, you have to train smart and do the things necessary to progress but, all things aside, the training that keeps you going into the gym and training week to week is where you will really see progress.
An old pal of mine put it in perspective for me and I use this phrase all the time. “The only bad session is a missed session”. Truer words were never spoken. Take what the day and the session give you. ON the days you have it, knick it out. Then when there are days that you aren’t quite 100%, give 100% of whatever you have that day. If it’s only 80%, give 100% of that 80% for that day and take what you can from the session. A stairway is best climbed one step at a time. At the end of a training cycle, most times it’s the tortoise, who took his time and did all he could, that wins the race.
I have written articles about pulling and all the issues I have had over the years trying to make my pull respectable and, add to my total. The past 3-4 years, I have slowly adopted the use of a trap bar into my training for the deadlift.There are a few reasons for this. I’ll list them with a brief explanation.
1.Pulling from the floor with a straight bar every week was killing me and my lower back just did not recover.That being said, I have always seemed to respond to a decent amount of volume. So, I had to find a happy medium.
2.Because I have short arms, I was always dealing with hip issues. The handles being at my side seemed to ease this issue.
3.With the handles being raised, I wasn’t pulling the same range of motion or stroke as I would with a straight bar. This allowed me to train heavier and train heavy more often without the ill effects of pulling from the floor.
4.I walked away from the pull session feeling like I had put in a good deal of work without being so sore for the entire weekend from pulling form the floor. Simply, I was better able to recover from my pulling sessions.
My set and rep scheme are really simple. I typically have done something to warm-up prior to using the trap bar and will do a 2-3 sets before getting to a working weight.
For example:
My trap bars weigh roughly 55 lbs so we start with 100’s
255x3 455X3 545x1
And then we will do 1-3 sets of triples and about once a month, we will do singles in the mid 7’s. Rarely will I try to pull a max single. The idea is to help develop pulling power so that it transfers to my competition deadlift. So, I save my back for that.
After the trap bar pulling, I will generally do 3-5 singles heavy, to work on my competition form and stop there. This method allowed me to go from 672 last year to just recently finally pulling 700 for the first time in October.
So, give these a try. The bars are fairly inexpensive and easy to use.
I'm Wade Johnson. and I'm 44. I'm a lifter and coach based out of Mt. Juliet, TN. I have lifted weights in some fashion most of my life. I won't bore you with records and titles but, I have competed in powerlifting and strongman. I have managed to do pretty well and now as a master aged lifter, I continue to try and push my numbers up even though I'm over 40.
What I'll cover in my blogs are things we do as a training gorup in the gym that will coincide with some of the articles already published here and in other publications. We have a couple of spots for youtube videos and a website that I'll get into a little later.
Currently, most of my spare time has been consumed with the gym/house addition I've been building since late August. We just got out occupancy certification so, I'm now walling it up on the inside a week or two from moving equipment in. This additoin will add roughly 570 square feet to out roughly 1,000 we currently train in.
My current best meet lifts are 970-670-700 for a 2,340 total and I'm life time drug free. That's my choice and not a condemnatoin on what others choose.
So, thanks for reading and anytime you have questions, please feel free to contact me or post repsonses.
