Any sense of how those who compete at high levels in power lifting fare compared to other high level competition sports?
And any sense of how much wear and tear the more typical non-elite but still advanced powerlifters have as they age? I can find articles claiming fewer acute injuries among lifters than in many other sports but that does not really answer the concern. And forums in which lifters bemoan their torn tendons and back backs but those don’t give us an n - and who knows, lifters may just whine more!
I didn’t vote because I’ve never really qualified as a fitness buff. In my younger days I both wrestled and power-lifted. As a matter of fact I took up lifting to increase my strength as a wrestler, and outside of school wrestling wasn’t really an option. In the end I would have rather developed the kind of strength that wrestlers and gymnasts display. Powerlifting gives you more strength mainly by increasing your size, increasing your strength through repitition seems to be a better model, it gets the muscles you have operating more efficiently, and has better cardio-vascular benefits as far as I can tell.
In the world of Professional Wrestling you’ll see that wrestlers prize flexibility and coordination above size and strength. Some will powerlift for the sake of appearance, but guys who want to make a career out of strenuous and dangerous activity like that know they need speed and efficiency from their muscles.
“Stress” is a key part of the “stress, adaptation, and recovery” cycle which is what causes our bodies to improve. And low reps, to me, sounds like you’re limiting the stress to what is important to drive strength gains, rather than beating your body up with hundreds of pushups or unloaded squats. Your body will be thanking you for that strength later when your buddies are in their “fall and break their hip” years and you’re still capable of doing manual labor around the house and yard. Stress, correctly applied, is like an investment. You put up with a lot today so that you’re well adapted to withstand the pressures of aging tomorrow.
A 2/3/4/5 plate press/bench/squat/dead is impressive though. I’m slowly getting there.
I picked “like a wrestler” because I started lifting to get stronger for judo, and still train that way (mostly). I trained like a powerlifter for a while, until tendinitis in my shoulder and bad discs in my back put an end to that.
At 58, I am trying mostly to maintain, and stave off age-related sarcopenia as long as possble.
FWIW - my current fitness goal is to bench 225 for ten. Touch and go, not paused, but strict - not bouncing off my chest or arching my butt off the bench. Currently I can bench 205 for ten consistently, but cannot get more than 7 with 225. I am 58, weigh about 200, have been lifting consistently for 35 years, and benched 225 for ten last when I was 32. The only things I take are creatine and naproxen.
Any suggestions? Currently I bench every other workout (I workout Tues-Thurs-Sat), once medium and once heavy. Medium is 10x135, 10X185, 2x10x205. Heavy is 5x135, 5x185, 5x205, 5x225, failure x 225 - usually 6-7). Opposite days I do bench assistance work - one or two of the following -
[ul][li] incline press 3x10x up to 155[/li][li] dumbbell BP 4x10 working up to 85-90s[/li][li]dips 2x12 bodyweight + 25 lbs[/li][li]close grip BP 3x10 working up to 175.[/ul][/li]The rest of my workout is on the other bodyparts - 8-10 sets for core/lower back/abdominals, 3x10 hack squats for legs, 3X12 for calves, 2x10 laterals or front raises for shoulders, 3x10-12 lat pulls and 2x10 one arm rows or supported rows, 2x10-15 each for biceps and triceps.
I would welcome any advice. I can find lots of programs to get my 1RM up, but I don’t want that - I want to bench 225 for ten. Just because.
Most of the stuff I’ve seen claiming that lifters have low injury rates is specifically regarding olympic weightlifting, which is a very different sport from powerlifting. I kinda doubt that anyone’s made a serious attempt to get the data for powerlifters, but just based on anecdotal evidence, my sense is that competing at a high level comes with a higher risk of very serious injuries than most other sports.
Can you overhead press safely? That’s one of the best assistance exercises for the bench press, but it’s a movement that a lot of people have trouble with.
Other than that, you probably should work on improving in the low rep range. The lower a percentage of your best lift 225 is, the easier it’ll be for you to lift for more reps.
Thanks for the advice. No, I can’t do standing presses and not be crippled. I can do very steep incline presses (85[sup]o[/sup] on the Smith machine), which hits mostly front delts, but I find I quickly overtrain my front delts and re-aggravate my tendinitis unless I am very, very careful and go light, at least with overhead movements.
Everyone gets the advice to [list=A][li]Descend only to parallel in the squat, [*]Go down slowly and don’t bounce[/list]And yet Olympic lifters bottom out on everything (I grant you, it’s a front squat) and do all squat cleans, and they have fewer injuries. Go figure.[/li]
Regards,
Shodan
FWIW, I agree with ultrafilter - generally people can lift 75ish% of their 1RM 10 times. That means you need to get your 1 RM up to 300ish, maybe a bit less, to hit your goal. This is not an endurance task.
From the fact you can do 10 reps of 205 your 1 RM is likely now near 275. But that means you are not pushing yourself on your “heavy” days - they should be 250 for sets of 5 and maybe a few times 260 for sets of three.
That’s funny… from my experience, squats at above or to parallel lead to my knees aching. Squats where I go as low as my body will allow with a tiny, little bounce at the bottom lead to no knee pain. I figure the amount of effort put on the knees to slow the weight down and reverse course is proportional to the stress put on the knees. When I drop my butt to the floor I think the effort to stop and then lift the weight is distributed across multiple parts of my body, lessening the stress on any one part, in particular the knees. But that’s just what works for me, YMMV.
The fact that it’s a front squat rather than a back squat makes a huge difference, and is probably the major factor in why they’re not getting hurt. And if you watch cleans in slow motion, it’s pretty clear that they’re not bouncing out of the bottom.
Note that there’s a significant amount of individual variation here, so your actual max will probably not be exactly what this figure predicts. It’s a good starting point, but I wouldn’t make that the first weight I tried, and for the bench I’d definitely have a spotter.
Two points make below-parallel squats safer than partials. 1) You use less weight. As a general rule, a weight you cannot squat below parallel is too heavy to put on your back. 2) Deeper squats force you to use your hips, which allows your hamstrings, glutes and adductors to contribute to the lift. This in turn balances the forces on your knee, rather than putting all the stress on your quads. Properly executed squats are not only safe, they are the best exercise you can do to promote knee health.
Too deep is counterproductive, though, because it usually requires relaxing something, which eliminates the stretch reflex at the bottom of the squat and makes it harder to get out of the hole. “Just below parallel” is the optimum depth.
Of course. The thought though is to estimate what his sets of five should be. If the estimate is significantly off he will know by the fact that his third rep is the last he can do with good form and rack it there.
Would you agree that his heavy days should be significantly heavier (practical version, the max he can do 5 of with good form)?
Hope it helps you meet your goal Shodan! Let us know in a few months.
Okay, going way off topic here now but ultrafilter, if he could handle it, what would you think of the heretical idea of including some body weight exercise to strengthen the scapular base - specifically the bakasana, also known as the crane or crow yoga position? (As discussed in the link starting off with a modified version of the plank.) Push-ups also engage scalpular stabilzers like the serratus anterior that benching often does not.
I’m not an expert on rehab, but I think those are both very reasonable ideas and worth a try. But at the same time it does depend on how they fit into an overall program–if someone’s doing a lot of pressing and not much pulling, then yoga and bodyweight exercises wouldn’t necessarily be my first recommendation.
I should mention I did a ton of rotator cuff rehab while recovering from my bout of tendinitis, as well as no benching for about a year.
But now the plan is, medium day, same as before - 10x135, 10x185, 2x10x205. Heavy day - 5X135, 5X185, 5x205, then 2x5x235 (to start) and try to push it to 5X255.
For reference, I did a max single last night for the first time in years, and got 265 with good form, so I am going to take that as my 1RM for now.
I concentrate on core strength, flexibility and to keeping my diabetes blood sugar level in check with cardio. Not really into having a six pack, big arms and a big chest, just want to be able to age gracefully.
