The headbutting ritual that got me under the bar for years was never about strength, and one line from a friend finally made me see it.

"I'm a poly athlete, I do everything, not all year round. Usually, I layer things seasonally, in the right time period, and I periodize them correctly in blocks."

Elite strength is built in the margins. This article breaks down how elite powerlifters evolve over time through smarter programming, better fatigue management, refined technique, harder accessory work, stronger training environments, and strategic weight-class decisions.

"The void" is described as a transformative mental state of freedom and peace where an athlete sheds their daily stressors to become a different, often more aggressive, version of themselves, pushing past physical limits into a space of absolute nothingness.

 "You could work on your T-spine mobility, and you probably add 25 lbs to your bench—you don't even have to add any muscle, you just have to add mobility."

"I didn't think I would ever get there, but I committed to it, and if you really go all in and you just commit to something and you really believe in yourself, you can absolutely do it."

 The Zercher squat is an accessible anterior-loaded variation that builds the quads and upper back without requiring the wrist and shoulder mobility often necessary for a traditional front rack position. By placing the barbell in the crook of the elbows just in front of the bicep tendon, lifters can enforce a more upright squatting pattern that strengthens the core and balances out posterior-chain dominant training.

The SS Yoke Bar is not just a squat bar replacement. Here is how to get everything out of the most important specialty bar in any serious gym.

"What you always want to do when you are spotting a squat from the back is you never want to be over the bar with your hands, you always want to be under the lifter".

Most lifters hire a coach and then immediately get in their own way. Here's the framework that will make every session count.

Drew Donaldson brings 20 years of coaching experience to the S5 and lays out a glycolytic upper body session that merges research with what's been working in gyms for decades.

A neurologist draws a map to purpose, balance, and fulfillment using Homer's Odyssey. Turns out, powerlifting drew the same map decades ago.

The sport of powerlifting changed forever in January 1980. With the official adoption of the USPF name and Joseph "Doc" Rhodes revealing his world-championship peaking program, this issue is a masterclass in old-school strength and political drama.

Dr. Dwayne Jackson returns to Table Talk with six science-backed lessons on RPE calibration, auto-regulation, the gym as medicine, and what actually separates lifters who keep progressing from those who plateau and break down.

Gen X didn't have YouTube, apps, or on-demand coaches. We had a bar, a rack, and the stubborn refusal to quit, and that built something most lifters today never find.

The all-in mentality of elite powerlifting demands a high price, often including personal health, marriages, and the complete absorption of one’s identity. Looking back after decades in the sport, veterans must reconcile the brutal physical toll of multiple surgeries and prosthetics against the initial drive to prove others wrong for the sake of a plastic or sculpture trophy.

I've been competing in powerlifting long enough to know what the tricep actually does in this sport. It locks out the bench. It finishes the press. So when every strap on the market kept failing me at both ends of the pushdown, I stopped looking for a solution and started building one. This is the origin of the elitefts 3-Loop Tricep Strap, why I designed it the way I did, and why it has never left my cable machine.

Dave Tate and a current multi-ply competitor, Bob Merkh, go deep on fractured federations, band shirts, judging inconsistency, and the hidden cost of putting the bar before everything else.

The Rackable Cambered Spider Bar combines the shoulder-friendly design of the SS Yoke Bar with the brutal instability of the cambered bar into one piece of equipment that will expose every weakness you have.

Most lifters focus on what to add. The ones who get strong figure out what to cut.

"The overhead press is probably the single best exercise for ingraining your ability to root into the floor and maintain a neutral posture compared to any other exercise."

"Conjugate training is basically the coupling... it's combining different methods of training... taking the method of Max effort... the repetition method and the dynamic effort method and combining them all together."

The walkout costs you reps you should be making, and a monolift fixes it before the bar even leaves the hooks.

elitefts Rebuild Series: Tom Sheppard sits down with powerlifter, gym owner, and brain tumor survivor Holly Torrez on autoregulation, sobriety, and what real resilience looks like.