My training History: I trained less than one year before competing in my first powerlifting meet as a teenager back in 1983. Before leaving the sport in 2005 I achieved my elitefts status in the 198,220,242,275 & 308 weight class. Throughout these years I did have a 3 year run in the bodybuilding world. Loved the training didn't like the competing aspect so I went back to my first love, powerlifting. Injuries have been a part of my life ever since I can remember and were the biggest reason for leaving the sport (I can no longer hold a squat bar on my back). I have degenerative joint disease, have had two shoulder surgeries (right shoulder now needs replaced), one full hip replacement, knee surgery, herniation's in all three regions of my spine, Bone spurs in places I didn't know you could get them, planter facetious, tendinitis and bursitis. I can't even begin to list the number of muscle tears I have had, surgical and non surgical. I am "The Mashed Up Meathead" and this is my story.
You can find my training log archives HERE and my most current training log posts HERE.
My best lifts are behind be but my best training is yet to come.
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* Unless otherwise noted the tempo of the work sets is about 1/2 of what most would consider normal. In most cases, if I did the set with normal temp what I fail at with 8-10 reps in training I could do for 20 reps with a normal tempo. This is to keep the joint stress down while increase the stress on the muscle. I have found this to work best for me provided the conditions listed in my training history above.
Remember when I posted that my training could change really fast?
Well here's another good example. I normally train back on Saturdays with John Meadows and yesterday John got ahold of me and asked me if I could move it to Friday because he had a prior commitment on Saturday, no problem moving it to Friday but it gives you an example of how my training is built around the ability to move things around pretty quick. It's one of the reasons why I try to keep Friday and Monday as off days all the time that way if I have to move something off of the weekend because of family commitments or anything else, I can always dump Saturday off to Friday and I can always dump Sunday off to Monday. That's already built into my training and has been built into my training that was for a very long time and this is exactly the reason why.
low rows with a wide double D handle, four warm-up sets of eight to ten reps, and then four work sets working up to a heavy set of six. The work sets followed a rep pattern of ten, eight, six, and six for the four work sets. The last work set was heavy, the last work set there might have only been about two more reps in both of us.
Wide grip pull downs using the mag grips. The mag grip that we used for this one is the wider superannuated version, it allows for a little different contraction in the lats. Three to four warm-up sets of ten to twelve repetitions and then four work sets of eight to ten repetitions, each set taken to failure.
Chins. We use a cheater chin machine, it's the chin machine that helps take some of the weight off of you. Two warm-up sets and then four work sets to failure, anywhere between six to ten repetitions.
Four inch grenade balls straight arm pull downs. Five sets, ten to fifteen repetitions, all sets taken to failure.
T-grip handle row. The way this was set up is we used the core-blaster with a barbell. The core-blaster basically sits on the floor and you can slide a barbell in it to be able to do torso work, rows, meta-rows, it's basically a swivel that holds barbells. It lets you do a thousand different exercises. We have a barbell attachment for the core-blaster that looks like motorcycle handles that you would find on a chopper so we use those handles and set up two inch risers to stand on and then proceeded to do four warm-up sets of five repetitions of dead-stop rows and then five repetitions of stiff leg dead lifts.
Some things to take into consideration here. During the work sets when we got to the heavy weight, we did four work sets of five repetitions of the rows and five repetitions of the dead-lifts. The contraction and the speed of movement is the most important thing here. We're not heaving this shit up so you're rowing it up, trying to pause at the top, and then putting it in a dead stop at the bottom, and then not heaving out of the bottom like you're trying to rip it off the floor, but pulling it out of the bottom.
Then going to the stiff leg dead lifts, pulling your hands into the handles to contract your lats like you're trying to pull the handles through the bar or push the bar with the handles through your legs as you're standing up. Then at the very top, actually leaning back into it a little bit to allow you to push your hands into the handles even harder to get a stronger contraction. The top of the stiff legs is probably a two-count contraction with a three-count centric. Four sets of that was a bitch, it was a lot harder than what it looks like and it was a lot harder than what I actually whine about.
Last exercise: two sets, thirty repetitions hyper-extensions. Something's telling me that I'm forgetting an exercise, I can't remember what it was but it does seem like I'm forgetting something that we did. Needless to say, this covers most of what we did.
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I think this is a sign of good luck coming