What’s new?

Same old, same old. Just training. I just did a meet about eight weeks ago, and I’m still feeling like hell. I’m actually getting back in the swing of things and feeling somewhat normal. I’m just kind of still doing the raw thing. I did my first raw meet in December, and had a good time doing it. It definitely makes things a lot simpler and less complicated, which is fun once in a while. Now, since I did my first one, I’m training for a second one right now, for sometime in May, and just basically going from there.

What’s your bodyweight at right now?

I’m around 270, unfortunately. I started hitting the treadmill three times a week, just trying to get in better shape now. I’m learning that all this raw stuff really beats the hell out of you, so I’m trying to incorporate more cardio to improve my recovery, because my hips feel like dogshit all the time. That’s just part of the territory, I guess.

My lifts feel pretty good. I’ve been doing Jim’s 5/3/1 thing. When you’ve been training in gear for so long, you forget how to really train. I’m so focused on hitting parallel with my squat suit on and trying to get a certain amount of pounds out of my bench shirt that I really kind of lost sight of how to get stronger. I was really being stupid, and really trying to pile weight on, and hit big numbers, and that really tore me up. I needed some direction, so me and a couple of other guys tried Jim’s 5/3/1. It gets everything on paper, and it’s one less thing you have to think about. Jim’s been giving us some direction, and it kind of takes the thinking out of it, so it’s so far, so good. Everything seems to be coming along.

How long have you been doing 5/3/1?

I started doing it the seven last weeks going into my meet cycle, because I got to the point where I hit all the numbers I wanted to hit, but my biggest fear was overtraining. This allowed me to train at much lower percentages, because I was doing 95% and up each week, and I knew that wasn’t going to lead anywhere. I mean, it got me to a point, but I wanted to stay there without getting weaker going into the meet. So I started doing it about seven weeks out, and that helped me deload properly. Now I’ve been doing it for about eight weeks since the meet.

Have you modified the assistance work for it as you’ve gone along?

Not really. A big thing I’ve actually done is to up my assistance work. Since I’m about three months out from a meet, I decided to really increase my assistance work, especially since I only train three days a week. I’ve been doing four, with two assistance days. I kind of do this double time, so that last month before the meet, I’ll feel completely comfortable without doing any assistance work, knowing that I already put the time in these first three or four months out.

Are you doing your cardio on the same days you lift?

I’ve been doing the cardio on the same days as my assistance days, just hitting the treadmill for about a half hour, then doing my assistance work to try to kind of feed off that by keeping my heart rate elevated.

How’s your daughter?

Oh, she’s going pretty good. She’s hanging in there. She’s got some head issues, and she’s getting a helmet put on her, so she’s going to have to wear that, and then we’re seeing a therapist, a cranial/cervical therapist for her head, to get that back in shape. She’s got some issues that we’re dealing with, but she’s a happy little baby, so it makes it easier. It’s just one more obstacle in life that you have to go through. I think nothing in life is going to be perfect, so you just have to learn to get by it, you know?

Has lifting raw influenced or changed your thoughts on leg drive for the bench press?

I’m actually kind of in the middle of what I think about leg drive. Before, with the way I benched, when you’ve got 800 pounds in your hands, I don’t really believe in the kind of benching on your toes. It just kind of never made sense. I mean, how can you have stability? Now that I’m going raw and I’m obviously doing a lot less weight, I’m experimenting with different stances, as far as tucking my feet behind me, and off my toes – I’m actually experimenting with that right now. I’ve definitely found that the way I’m benching now, after squatting raw, has definitely played with me on meet day. Whereas before, you know, when you squat with a suit on, your quads don’t get that much of a workout. Now I’m learning that, you know, squatting with a closed stance, after doing my three attempts in the squat, then going to my bench, I definitely felt like shit and didn’t feel like I had a lot of leg drive. I’ve never been in that situation with my legs, actually. My hips and my lower back were never worn out, which didn’t affect my leg drive. Now I’m learning that with benching after squatting in a meet, I have to experiment with that right now.

Everything’s different now. You know, even deadlifting. I don’t have that suit on, so I can’t really focus on my arch. Before, that didn’t really matter.