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. 

* 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.

Audible Ready & Squats

I was actually expecting this to be that day, but forgot that John Meadows was going to be out of town with Ken Jackson and Mark Dugdale both competing this weekend in Phoenix. I took the opportunity to switch my back day and made it a leg day, because I knew there was going to be quite a few people in the gym today, so I would have spotters to be able to do some type of squatting.

If you've been following my log, you will know I haven't been doing a lot of squatting for a couple reasons. One is I follow a lot of John's stuff, so we have taken the squatting out of the program because of his back issues that he had and trying to tighten his waist up a little bit, make his waist smaller. My back started to flare up a little bit, so we took it out because of that. When he's not around, I love to fucking squat. Any chance I get when he's not around, I'm fucking squatting. That was on the agenda today, so I kind of threw the training together in my head while driving into the gym.

Started with seated leg curls and did probably 8-10 warm-up sets, 10 reps, not a lot of weight, maybe 1 plate, 45 pounds, then slowly worked up progressively using plates and quarters until we had plates and a quarter, I believe, for a set of 8, then did one last set with one plate for 100 reps. The first 40 or 50 reps were full reps, the last 50 were partials.

I moved onto spider bar, box squats. I always use a box. I used the box for a number of different reasons, the number one reason I use it is it is the most comfortable for my hip replacement. The hip that was replaced feels great; I have no issues with that. My other hip is the hip that we're trying to keep from having to get replaced.  I use the box to make sure that I'm not going below parallel or below 90 degrees. I'll stay a couple inches high. The box also enables me to be able to stay tighter in the bottom, and it takes away any kind of rebound that I would typically have, which I don't want to have with my hips. Plus, I generally like box squatting more than I like free squatting.

Spider bar, multiple warm-up sets with one plate per side. The bars, 80 - 95 pounds. I don't know. It's a heavy ass bar. It's the heaviest bar we have in the gym, but I just say it's 45 pounds. Makes everything fucking easier that way. Starting with one plate per side, 4 or 5 warm-up sets of 10, then work 185 for a plate and a quarter per side. At that point, I started doing sets of 5, 2 or 3 sets per weight. We used 185 for 2 or 3 sets, 225 for 2 plates for 2 or 3 sets, 3 plates for 2 sets of 3, then I did 3 plates and a quarter for a single, just to kind of get used to the weight. I wanted my last set to be a challenge set.

The challenge set was 4 plates per side. What I wanted to try to do with this set was to do a strip set of 10 reps per plate, 10 reps with 4 plates, 10 reps with 3 plates, 10 reps with 2 plates, 10 reps with 1 plate. I got up to 10, I got 4 plates for 10 reps, I got 3 plates for 10 reps. When I got to 2 plates, I got about 5 reps and thought I was going to die. I couldn't breathe. Seeing stars, world spinning, I was in the place that if you've watched my videos before, that I call the void. I wrapped it because I was going to pass out and had one of the squatters get my belt off. Once they got my belt off, we went to 1 plate and I did 10 - 15 reps really can't remember. When I was done, I was D-O-N-E.

Leg presses were next. I used 5, 6 plates per side and did 5 sets of 20. Probably had 5 reps left at the end of each one of the sets, so I did use a very slow tempo on both the eccentric and the concentric. I did not want to go real heavy, I wanted to work the muscle hard. I wanted to get close to failure, but I didn't want to go all the way to failure. I just wanted to get as much blood in my legs as I possibly can and used short rest intervals: no more than 1 minute.

Leg extensions followed, 5 sets of 15 reps and 15 partials. The way I do these is I did 15 full reps, then I do 15 partial reps out of the bottom. The partial reps are not even a half rep, it's about a quarter rep. It's just going from the stretch position to a slight contraction and just kind of keeping it moving until I can't move it anymore.

Sissy squats were the next exercise. With that, there's just a bench that we use. Kind of strap your feet in, lock your calves back, and just squat. I just use body weight and did 5 sets to failure. At this point, I was pretty shot, so failure was between 4 and 6 reps.

Hip abduction and abduction, I do both. I did 3 sets of 15, can't remember exactly, don't really care. Just slow, moderate tempo. Trying to fail somewhere between 12 and 15 repetitions.

Standing leg curls, I kept these light. 25 pounds per side, obviously it's a standing leg curl, so it's one leg at a time. 3 sets 15. At that point in the training, I realized that my body was done. There was no glycogen, there was nothing left. I couldn't contract; I couldn't focus, that was pretty much it.

Training session was over.

The guys that came down to train all looked great. Everybody looks ready for the meets that they have coming up. One of the guys is training for the USAPL Nationals. We've got another one training for an RPS meet, and another one training for an SPF meet. Everybody looked on point, everybody looked really good. There were really no flaws, there was nothing to fix, which is always a great thing. Everybody's right on target, which is good.

They should all have a great meets.