This was one of the greatest events I have been a part of for Elitefts. There was such an amazing group of lifters, coaches and attendees. One of the biggest highlights was having Clint Darden attend. He spoke at the end of the PLEX. 2 and if you had a dry eye, you didn't have a heart. I have spoken with Clint a lot through email but being able to hang out and talk with him was really fun.
Hanging out with Steve Goggins is always one of my favorite things as well. He is such an amazing coach and guy, I always learn something from him. He is doing great things with his online clients and I'm excited to see what his athletes do in the future.
With such an amazing group of people it was hard not to get excited about training. Friday night we had a UGSS before the attendees arrived for registration. I planned on pulling but didn't know what I was going to do. I just wanted to work up to something decent depending on how it felt. Well before it was over I did a fairly easy 750lb. pull. This is the most I've pulled in 10 years. I haven't touched that weight from the floor since 2004. To say I was excited is the understatement of the year. Being surrounded by so many talented lifters really pushes you to see where you are and I must say, I was really happy where I came out.
Saturday was a blur. I had Vincent Dizenzo and Matt Rhodes in my coaching group so this made the day even more fun. We had mostly novice powerlifters and it was a lot of fun to coach then through the ins and outs of doing a meet. There is so much to doing a meet and if you haven't done one, it can be intimidating. A lot of our group hadn't done a meet yet so they will now be prepared when they go to their first meet.
I honestly was amazed by how my coaches there were for each lifter in attendance. Half the time when I would go to talk to a lifter about fixing something, another coach would already be speaking to them about it. I really felt that attendees got so much value out of this experience. I really wish I could have done something like this when I first started out. There wasn't anything though and you just went and made a bunch of mistakes.
I love powerlifting and I love coaching so Saturday was just a great day to give back to the sport. I can't wait for the next one.
Today we had another UGSS. I showed up with a dozen of the best doughnuts that Columbus has to offer. They are from the "Lil' Doughnut Factory" in Hilliard Ohio. If you ever come to town, get some, you will thank me. I set them down and everyone eyed them like they were gold. Then people started asking who they were for, when I said anyone, they were gone very quickly.
I did Chest and arms today at the EliteFts compound and had a great training session. My pec bled out about a month ago and I've been babying it ever since. I worked up to 365lbs x 5 and then stopped cause I felt a little tug.
I moved onto Incline Db's, then incline Swiss bar and some flys.
Then I did some bi's and tri's. This is when David Allen decided to up the ante. I asked him what we should do. He decided on some occlusion bicep work. I have never done this before and it sucked! It burned like crazy and I felt like a puss. I could barely more the tiniest of weights by the end.
Overall it was such a great weekend and I saw so many old friends and met some new ones. I kept mispronouncing Meana's name all day. I'm pretty sure she hates me. She never corrected me but I heard her say something to someone else about it. Looking back it was pretty damn funny. Canadians are polite though, so that's probably why she didn't correct me.
My bodyweight is sitting at about 300lbs and I'm fairly lean. I've cleaned up my diet over the last 7 weeks. I want to get down to 10% body fat and then get my weight back up to around 310. I feel I'm on the right track and my strength is moving up with the improved body composition so I'm pretty happy with where I'm at and where I'm going.
