EliteFTS Spotlight: Charles Bailey
with The Angry Coach
The subject of this week’s EliteFTS Spotlight is Q&A staff member and EFS
sponsored lifter Charles Bailey. Charles, a 45 year-old personal trainer
from Jacksonville, FL, is poised to make a major move in the powerlifting world
in 2009, and we thought it was about time we gave one of the world’s strongest
lifters a chance to introduce himself on the site. Charles trains, and runs his
training business, out of Sportsplex in Neptune Beach, FL.
You’ve been on the EliteFTS staff for a while, so I think it’s time we
introduce you to the readership a little more comprehensively. Tell us a little
about yourself.
I guess I can start back in high school. I played football up until 12th
grade, but I never really touched weights until I got out of high school. After
high school, I decided to go into the Navy. My first tour of duty was on the USS
Saratoga for four years, and that’s when I started lifting weights. I got into
bodybuilding at first. I did that for about nine and a half years.
I lifted basically two times a day. I had a twelve hour shift, so I’d work
out before I got on, and I’d work out when I got off, and then I’d go to bed.
Every six months we’d go out, and when we got back into port, I’d take maybe two
months off, and then I’d go back into that. But then I got into bodybuilding
once I got out. I always lifted heavy. I was never really into the twenty rep
deal, so the max I ever did was like eight reps. As I was bodybuilding, I got to
like 550 in the squat and 400 on the bench, and I did that from 1987 to 1995,
which was when I did my last bodybuilding contest.
After that, I played a little soccer, and some basketball, and then I hurt
both knees. I almost gave up lifting weights period, but I was in personal
training, so I had to stick with it. About two years after I was rehabbing my
second knee injury – by myself...I never went to a doctor or anything – my
buddy, who was in the gym, was reading a lot of magazines like Powerlifting USA
and he gave me like ten of them, and I started to read them. He told me about a
contest coming up in Daytona, and said we should go do it. I said, you know,
what the hell...I’m pretty strong, so I should be able to do something. So I
started training for that.
My first contest, I did a 683 squat, a 420 bench (in a crappy shirt), and a
677 deadlift. My bench actually went down in the shirt I was wearing, let’s put
it that way. It kind of mushroomed from there. I got the bug. It was something I
could do. I mean, you either did it or you didn’t. It wasn’t like bodybuilding
where it was someone else’s opinion on what you should look like. Then I went
and did the December Southern States, and my squat went from 683 to 755 in
between October and December. My bench went up 20 pounds to 440 – I was having
some issues with the shirt. My deadlift pretty much stayed the same. It didn’t
move.
I did the typical thing that most lifters do when they first get into
powerlifting. You know, you’ve got the bug and you think you can lift heavy all
the time. I did the AAPF Nationals – got a 783 squat and my bench went up to
457, and a 699.9 deadlift. My weight kind of mushroomed up. This was in the 242
pound class, and I couldn’t hold my weight back anymore, so I had to go to the
275’s, and that’s where I’ve been ever since. After I went to 275, my strength
levels just kind of went through the roof.
My next big meet was the Southern States, and I ended up squatting 970,
benching 571, and I bombed out. I couldn’t get my deadlift up. I was wiped. It
was one of those all day meets. It started at 9:30 in the morning, and we were
still pulling at like 7:30 or 8 at night, and the place was hot. After that, I
got invited up to the GPC Worlds. I placed second there and got my first 1000
pound squat, at 1003, with a 584 bench and a 683 deadlift. I changed my stance
from conventional to sumo because I was having trouble locking out at the top,
like my hips were too tight or something.
After that, I did the local Florida Southern States, and I won all of those
I’ve entered since then. I ran off a couple of nationals – two APF Nationals,
three APC Nationals, placed 6th at the Worlds (had a bad day there),
and currently I’m giving single-ply a shot to see how that feels, and then I
might go raw and see what that feels like, before I go back to my multi-ply
because it’s where I’m most comfortable.
What are your best equipped lifts right now?
1102 squat, 705 bench (but I’ve been hitting 745 like it’s nothing lately),
and 782 in the deadlift.
How do you train? What’s your philosophy?
I max out three weeks in a row. It’s sort of like Westside, but then it’s
not. It’s a bunch of systems mixed in together that works for me, and basically
what I do is I don’t really vary the exercises – I vary how I apply the weights
to the exercises. I always squat out of the rack with mono-arms, because I don’t
have a monolift, and what I do, is I’ll either go bands, bands and chains,
chains, reverse bands, reverse bands with chains, reverse bands without chains.
I’ll go box squats when I feel like my squat’s slowing down. My philosophy is
like, I’ll pyramid up for three weeks to a PR at any one of those given setups,
like with the chains or the bands, but I try to hit my last PR – I start out
with the easy raw weight, then I’ll put chains on and I’ll try to work past
whatever I did before. Let’s say I have 900 on the bar, and 200 something pounds
of chains – the next week I’ll try to have 920 on the bar. I’ll do three weeks
of chains, three weeks of bands, three weeks of reverse bands, just trying to
bring that up.
I try to end up with more on the bar for each three weeks that I’m doing it.
Let’s say I max out at 950 on the bar with chains. Then I’ll try to max out with
960 on the bar and get to the same top weight, and try to gradually get
stronger. I like to increase the amount of weight on the bar and keep the
stimulus – the outside stimulus as far as bands and chains – the same.
How many days a week do you train, and how do you break down the days?
When I first started, I tried 4-5 days a week and I burned out. I wasn’t
recovering fast enough. Right now, for heavy days, I do Wednesday and Saturday,
but seeing as how I’ve been doing the single ply thing, I’ve added two more days
into that. I’ll do a raw squat day on Monday, a heavy bench day on Wednesday –
and that follows the same plan as I just described for my squat with the chains
and the bands and all that stuff. Then I’ll have a raw max day with
accommodation. It’ll either be on the floor or off the bench or off the pins or
something like that. I don’t do speed. It never worked for me. I end up getting
more hurt than anything. I’m old. My joints just don’t take that kind of thing.
I’ve got bone spurs in my knees and ankles, and I can’t do those ballistic moves
with my legs like that.
What kind of assistance work do you do?
For my bench I do heavy bent-over rows, one arm dumbbell rows, shrugs, a lot
of lat pulldowns. For my deadlift, I do a lot of hamstring curls, Romanian
deadlift...I train at a fitness center, pretty much, so I don’t have a lot of
the powerlifting stuff like the Reverse Hyper and all that, so I have to make up
a lot of stuff. I do some kettlebell work. I do heavy abs. We have a Nautilus
crunch machine, and I do weighted heavy back extensions, and a lot of rear delt
work. I do those after I train. I just started doing this on assistance days,
because business is slow right now so I can afford to do it.
Do you do any sled work, GPP or recovery-type stuff?
No. I wish I could, but I don’t have a whole lot of that stuff available. I
live in, like, Jax Beach, and not a whole lot of, like, empty property to do
anything. People look at you funny when you do stuff like that or even have that
stuff in your backyard around here. I’d have to go at least 30 minutes out of my
way, up to Callahan, and the only time I get out there is when I need to use the
monolift to see where my squat is. I would love to do some of that stuff. I just
don’t have a sled or anything like that.
What are your diet and supplementation like?
Right now my diet’s pretty clean. I do about two cups of oatmeal a day mixed
in with two scoops of NitroTech per meal. I do, in a day, I’ll cook up about a
5-pound bag of rice or two pounds of pasta, and I’ll mix that with a pound of
90+ percent lean ground beef, which works out to 4 grams of fat per four ounces,
and I’ll do the same with the pasta, and I’ll eat that all day. That works out
to be 4400 grams of calories in a day, just on the rice and the ground beef
alone. The oatmeal is extra, so I’m close to 5000 on a good day. On an average
day it’s more like 3600.
For supplements, I keep it pretty simple. I don’t take a whole lot of them. I
do the Emergen-C packages of Vitamin C because they’re very easy to take, I’ll
do a multivitamin. If money was plentiful, I’d probably do a lot more. BCAA’s,
etc, but right now, that’s pretty much what my supplementation is like. I also
take stuff for my joints.
What’s coming up that you’re training for?
I’m venturing out into the crazy world of the USAPL. I just want to do it
once. I want to qualify for the Nationals, and then I’m done with it. That’s on
April 18th.
Any parting words? What can we expect to see from Charles Bailey this
year?
My goal this year was the USPF Nationals, APF Nationals, APC Nationals, and if
this meet works out and I’m comfortable with a 7 foot bar on my back, which
sucks, I’ll probably do the USAPL Nationals. I’ll try to do four of these this
year and see where I stand amongst all the 275’s in whatever category. That’s
always been my ultimate goal, because the only way to figure out where you’re at
is to actually go do it. Everybody says they’re better at one thing or another,
but nobody ever wants to go head to head and shut everybody up, so on a quiet
note, I’m gonna try and do that.
