Most powerlifters chase success and fulfillment through PRs and competition, but there is success to be had in the process. Don’t forget that.
An excerpt from The Intermediate and Advanced Lifters Peaking Squat Cycle, don’t leave pounds on the platform due to improper planning.
Learn how to mitigate injury while under the bar and get the inside scoop on how Sam is peaking for his meet.
There’s a big misconception that to conquer the weights you need passion and anger. Research and personal experience disagree. If you’re prepping for a powerlifting meet, it’s time to train your mind.
Here’s what I’ve learned to become an elite lifter at 220: accumulate faults and then fix them over the course of an off-season. You’ll be surprised how it all aligns if you just stop, reflect, work, and listen.
Add these six weeks to the DSM 12-week template, and you have yourself an awesome 18 weeks of training!
Don’t be the lifter with headphones on all day in the warm-up room, super-hyped to the gills. Save your energy for the platform.
Aside from Santa’s elves personalizing your hand-made gifts. Oh, and Santa traveling from the North Pole to your residence to deliver your gifts with Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.
I’m betting that in the 6-8 weeks after the quarantine ends, a lot of contests are going to happen. My advice: Resist the urge!
I’ve learned how to frame my meets so they are a positive and successful experience— no longer do I drink and cry (afterward). From goal setting to learning from mistakes to gaining some perspective, I hope a few of these tips help you.
How do you prepare for your next week? When do you start preparing? Jeff Guller likes to get started with conjugate powerlifting nine weeks before meet time.
Peaking technically is reeling in your training from general to specific as a meet approaches while changing and removing variations and setting yourself up to be at your best technically. This is important when transitioning to a conjugate approach.
Looking at dieting as one big picture can be incredibly stressful. Let’s break that big picture up into three more manageable pieces. We’ll call them phases: the post-show phase, the reverse dieting phase, and the meet prep phase.
You’ve spent months preparing and training, and you’ve made a significant financial investment in entry fees, lodging, food, and so on. All this of stress for just 9 lifts sucks up a lot of your energy. You can’t afford to waste your energy, so manage it instead.
Nobody wants to watch their favorite athletes practice what they do best. But if you want to be the Michael Jordan or Reggie Jackson of powerlifting, you’ve got to work on the eccentric.
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing and training with Heidi, and I can say with absolute certainty that she is the real deal, an ATWR-holding meathead who’s willing to do what it takes to become, and in her case, stay the best.
Packing the basics is just half the battle. Meet sites can be cold, uncomfortable, and might be far from easy access to good food. All variables need to be taken into consideration while packing for meet day… and these 44 items will help you cover your bases.
The meet prep beast is going to rear its ugly heads at you sometimes, and its mugs come in many forms: injuries, stress, or a lousy no-show training partner. When one of them tries to bite, it’s best to have a flexible plan of action that helps you nimbly dodge from the monster’s jaws.
The 825 opener flew, and I told JP to call 881 on my second. This is when I knew I would “earn my regrets” because I actively prepared myself to become injured due to this decision.
Can you take a deep breath and remember that each set and rep in training is part of the greater year and not just that individual session?
Four weeks out is when I suffered a quad tear—I should have dropped out at that point. In fact, I talked to Dave Tate, and that’s exactly what he told me to do.
These seven mistakes are by far the most prevalent I see for powerlifters in their first meet. They’re also very easy to avoid if you know how.
Think about all the things you sucked at the first time you tried them: walking, talking, reading, writing. What if you’d given up on them after a failure or two?
You paid a coach for a program and don’t like what they gave you? There’s a right way to handle this situation — and it’s not by deviating from the plan just because you want to.
This is the first meet I’ve done in three years that I didn’t win best overall lifter, and it was a huge—and much needed—kick in the ass.
After the inaugural 5th Set Black Meet on Saturday, I drove all night to Cincinnati for the Women’s Pro Am. My motivation for a weekend short on rest and long on PRs can be summed up in a single sentence: I love powerlifting.
Motivation doesn’t mean a thing if you haven’t done the work. Relying on the psych up didn’t work for me and this is why.
It can be hugely discouraging to feel that all the work you did in the offseason and during your meet prep was wasted because you had one bad day, Unfortunately, all that really counts is what you put up on the platform. Or is it?
Dave has responded to this question many times but, like the sport of powerlifting, the answer evolves. Based on the sport today, here are guidelines for expectations, performance, and how to design a program.
Something doesn’t feel right as the bar descends, like your left pec is cramping or something. You touch, hear “press,” and then POP! It all goes black.
Due to time constraints or an inability to recover optimally, many lifters seek an alternative to the traditional template. The question isn’t whether or not you can use a modified split, but whether or not your results will be optimal.
If you’re scared of a weight, you’re not going to be able to lift it, even if your body is strong enough. This can be a serious problem if you’re coming back from injury.
When the time rolls around to start prepping for your next competition, you’ll wish you’d used your off-season wisely. Here are the five things you should focus on to provide the most improvement, longevity, and resilience.
Killer mentality means doing whatever it takes to be your very best and being willing to put it all on the line when the time comes. You have to be able to block out all negativity and draw in all positivity.
Mental toughness and strength are no different than physical traits. They can be trained and improved, if you’re ready.
Team Nebobarbell and I went to Murfeesboro, Tennessee, where I took a crack at one of my competition bucket list lifts.
Raw classic or single-ply? 181 or 198? And what about my hand? There are still a lot of questions to be answered.
There may be some powerlifters out there that train by themselves and go to meets alone, but I would bet dollars to donuts that any successful powerlifter comes from a team of supporters.
The appeal of conjugate is the ability to build multiple performance traits at once, but this confuses a lot of lifters as they get closer to a meet. It doesn’t have to be so complicated.
You can’t just throw in extra workouts or recovery protocols and expect to get the most out of them. Like everything else in training, they need to be programmed strategically and used at the right times.
You would think this is all common sense, right?
This really shouldn’t be a debate. Mimic how you compete.
From the bar to 95 pounds, 135, and so on, you should get under the bar and treat it like it’s 400 pounds. How will you unrack that weight? How will you set it up? How will you pull air? How will you sit down?
Our powerlifting squad had six lifters compete in a meet that posed some specific challenges. Here’s how they did and a sample of the training that led to the meet.
I greatly enjoy training and competing in powerlifting. I plan to compete, train, and train others for as long as I am able — not, however, without having a life.
If I could go back in time to when I first started in this industry, I’d force myself to follow these five rules of training. Those of you starting now should listen.
At least, not at this point. As it stands, we are left with adding up our heaviest successful attempt for each of the three lifts and the sum of those is how a powerlifting total is born.
I don’t recommend this big of a cut for anyone. It is detrimental to many bodily processes and overall health. To be clear, this is not a how-to guide; it is a documentation of my process.
If you don’t start on the right path, you might spend years training hard and making no progress.
To be your best on the platform, you need your mind to be just as prepared as your body.
Training was so important to me. It covered my insecurity and kept me distracted from the ugliness that was brewing underneath.
There’s a very short list of things you can control and a very long list of things you can’t control. Choose to focus on the right one.
In this video, Maliek and Dave discuss the problems with percentage-based training and share alternative methods for strength programming.
From nursing student and collegiate soccer player to one of the 10 best 181-pound powerlifters in the world.
Three days before my heaviest deadlift of the meet training program and I couldn’t even bend down to grab the bar. Here are the techniques I used to mitigate my issues and make it to Boss of Bosses 3.
Here is one tip I use in the gym and on the platform to make the entire movement smooth as possible.
This is a time when your mind will start to play tricks on you. Are you mentally committing to the time off?
If you train smart and put in the work, your nagging pains will not stop you from hitting a PR.
If I don’t want to punch you in the face during my wrap, it’s not tight enough. Here’s how to do it right.