Path to a 500 wilks

[Brandaddy]

Now that I have a lot of time and I'm mainly injury free, I decided to make another run at some good powerlifting gains. I stopped powerlifting for the most part in November after my last meet. I got up to a 545 sleeved squat, 385 paused bench, and 635 conventional deadlift on a stiff bar in the gym. I've since changed my squat and bench form and also switched to sumo deadlifts for various reasons. I've also dropped from a walking around weight of 205-210 down to 185ish. At this point I plan on probably competing at 181 because I feel I can maintain 185 easy enough and with 24 hour weigh-ins I don't even need to really cut to make weight.

Enough of the boring shit.. lol. As far as the stuff that actually matters. I am switching to competing in wraps and plan on hitting around 1750lbs in April at my next meet. I'll log my meals, workouts, supps, and weight. Currently on week 2 of getting back into it. So my weights are a bit light. I am more or less using autoregulation to adjust my weights as necessary seeing as the first 6-8 weeks I'll most likely make pretty fast strength gains just getting back to where I already was.

 

[Brandaddy]

Nutrition at the moment is

Meal 1. 360ml fairlife skim milk, whey protein,o bar

Meal 2. 8oz chicken, 2 cups of rice, mixed vegetables

Meal 3. 8oz chicken, 8oz potatoes, green beens

Meal 4. 8oz chicken, 8oz potatoes, green beens

Meal 5. 8oz beef, 90 grams rice, 2 eggs, spinach

Meal 6. 360ml fairlife milk, whey protein, outright bar

 

[Brandaddy]

Weight today was 185.2

Workout was,

3x3 sleeved squats @ 415lbs
4x8 paused bench @ 255lbs
3x6 split squats
3x12 weighted dips
3x12 skull crushers

Bench felt pretty easy. Guessing my max is probably about 365lbs atm. Squats feel a little slow and funky yet. This is only my third squat session since rehabbing my back. So I can't expect too much. Ha.

 

[MindlessWork]

Haven't seen you around in a NY minute...hope all's well with you. Good luck and here's to success on your journey!

 

[jaymaximus]

Sub'd

 

[Brandaddy]

Haven't seen you around in a NY minute...hope all's well with you. Good luck and here's to success on your journey!

Thanks! Yeah, everything's good. I have just been pretty busy lately between business, the woman, and the gym I haven't had much downtime until recently.

Hope all is well with you too

 

[MindlessWork]

Thanks! Yeah, everything's good. I have just been pretty busy lately between business, the woman, and the gym I haven't had much downtime until recently.

Hope all is well with you too

Great to hear that and I am doing pretty well especially after moving north to a new state.

 

[Perrin Aybara]

You still been lifting and running gear this last year?

 

[Brandaddy]

You still been lifting and running gear this last year?

I've been training, just haven't done a real cycle since my last meet and took quite awhile off heavy benching. Squats and deads I stopped entirely back in april until just a couple weeks ago. I was still benching though, just not for max strength.

I'm feeling pretty decently fresh now. A little tightness in my right shoulder and lower back yet. Training isn't negatively impacting them though. So I'm more or less hoping with some good mobility work and stretching it will keep getting better

 

[Perrin Aybara]

We've got some good logs going again, should get interesting around here.

 

[Brandaddy]

Weight today was 184.6

Workout was,

3x3 deadlifts @ 495lba
3x5 pendlay rows
3x8 weighted pullups
3x8 tbar rows
4x15 facepulls
3x10 hammer curls
4x10 db curls

Can't complain about deadlifts. Only my third time deadlifting since I've been back and third time ever doing sumo. Guessing I'm probably around 585 for a max atm. Hopefully I'll be back up to mid 600s before the november

 

[Perrin Aybara]

Switching to sumo I'd seriously recommend putting some effort into hip mobility to improve your starting position. Being able to go wider with knees more open helps a lot.

 

[Brandaddy]

Switching to sumo I'd seriously recommend putting some effort into hip mobility to improve your starting position. Being able to go wider with knees more open helps a lot.

Ha. It's funny you bring that up. That's actually one of the main reasons I switched to sumo. Between wrestling and bjj I think I've developed pretty good hip mobility. The first time I tried sumo it almost felt natural to me as silly as that sounds.

 

[Perrin Aybara]

Ha. It's funny you bring that up. That's actually one of the main reasons I switched to sumo. Between wrestling and bjj I think I've developed pretty good hip mobility. The first time I tried sumo it almost felt natural to me as silly as that sounds.

The better I get at sumo the more I realize what I used to think of as sumo was just wide stance conventional.

 

[Brandaddy]

The better I get at sumo the more I realize what I used to think of as sumo was just wide stance conventional.

Sumo definitely seems like more of a technical lift to me. This was actually the first session I had where I didn't almost fall on my face on any of the reps. Lol. If you get out of position even slightly you're just about fucked it seems where as conventional I've muscled through some pretty ugly reps.

 

[Perrin Aybara]

Sumo definitely seems like more of a technical lift to me. This was actually the first session I had where I didn't almost fall on my face on any of the reps. Lol. If you get out of position even slightly you're just about fucked it seems where as conventional I've muscled through some pretty ugly reps.

Absolutely. I've spent a ton of time analyzing my sumo deadlift videos from different angles, working on initial setup, figuring out what's causing form issues, and trying to fix them.

For me something that helps reinforce form is put 135lbs on a barbell in front of you. Then take a medium resistance band and loop it around your mid feet and stand in your sumo stance. You can orient yourself with the barbell in front of you for foot placement and how low to go. Grip the band with your normal deadlift grip and stand up. Then let it pull you down slowly to how low you need to be for your starting position. Concentrate on keeping your shins vertical along with hips as high as possible, knees open, and shoulders over the bar. Just go down slow, pause in your starting position and focus on being tight all over, then go up fast and repeat.

 

[Brandaddy]

Absolutely. I've spent a ton of time analyzing my sumo deadlift videos from different angles, working on initial setup, figuring out what's causing form issues, and trying to fix them.

For me something that helps reinforce form is put 135lbs on a barbell in front of you. Then take a medium resistance band and loop it around your mid feet and stand in your sumo stance. You can orient yourself with the barbell in front of you for foot placement and how low to go. Grip the band with your normal deadlift grip and stand up. Then let it pull you down slowly to how low you need to be for your starting position. Concentrate on keeping your shins vertical along with hips as high as possible, knees open, and shoulders over the bar. Just go down slow, pause in your starting position and focus on being tight all over, then go up fast and repeat.

I'll have to give that a shot, I always like trying new shit that could potentially help me deadlift more. Ha. I actually already did something that I believe is pretty similar. I will load up about 70% of my 1rm and lift it. Then set it down as slow as I can until the tension is 95% off the bar. Hold it there, then do another rep. Basically just repeat that for your normal 6-8 reps. I think it's basically what you're talking about? Reinforcing proper starting position?

 

[Perrin Aybara]

I'll have to give that a shot, I always like trying new shit that could potentially help me deadlift more. Ha. I actually already did something that I believe is pretty similar. I will load up about 70% of my 1rm and lift it. Then set it down as slow as I can until the tension is 95% off the bar. Hold it there, then do another rep. Basically just repeat that for your normal 6-8 reps. I think it's basically what you're talking about? Reinforcing proper starting position?

Yeah, pretty similar actually. After you do your first rep and come back down that'll typically be your ideal starting position. I've filmed myself from the side before and focused on what that looked like and tried to mimic it on my first rep.

I do the band thing as part of my deadlift warmup and part of my hip mobility routine. Another thing with that band thing I do it in front of a mirror and I'm looking for both hips to be warmed up evenly. If I'm not I'll be noticeably uneven, like one side lower when I'm in my starting position.

 

[Brandaddy]

Yeah, pretty similar actually. After you do your first rep and come back down that'll typically be your ideal starting position. I've filmed myself from the side before and focused on what that looked like and tried to mimic it on my first rep.

I do the band thing as part of my deadlift warmup and part of my hip mobility routine. Another thing with that band thing I do it in front of a mirror and I'm looking for both hips to be warmed up evenly. If I'm not I'll be noticeably uneven, like one side lower when I'm in my starting position.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to have to give it a shot on my next deadlift session. It sounds like it would be a pretty good warm-up before getting into the actual lift. I just started doing overhead squats with bands before squatting and I've been liking those quite a bit

 

[Perrin Aybara]

Yeah, I'm definitely going to have to give it a shot on my next deadlift session. It sounds like it would be a pretty good warm-up before getting into the actual lift. I just started doing overhead squats with bands before squatting and I've been liking those quite a bit

Where do you put the bands? Like around your knees or thighs?