Quick notes about training

TBB is alive and well  (even if our main web page isn't).  I had an issue with our hosting provider and just haven't gotten around to updating to a new one yet.  Instead, I pointed to this blog.  

Here are the updates:

Everyone has pretty much swung back to full powerlifting training, gear included.   We made a few changes to accommodate the amount of lifters.

One:  we consolidated the Saturday squat groups into (3) single flight groups, 5 lifters a piece.  On the good side, people all get to train as soon as they come in, no waiting around.  The con of this is that the time between work sets is longer.    In addition,  slightly less work sets are done.  

Two:  this may be old news but we formed a second shirted group which trains 2 Sundays out of the month (and 1 of the Saturdays) in their shirts.   On the opposite day, they do speed and top-end.    We also have a second group which has this flipped,  and a 3rd group which does their own thing.     Many of the gym converted to the Super Duper Phenoms, in my opinion, a truly superior shirt.   I have one observation:  it is definitely easier to touch in the shirt,  but that is no excuse to stay on a 2 board.  The shirt will not press that extra 1.5 " for you come meet time.   I am contemplating hiding the 2 board for awhile.

One thing I decided to do for myself was to add a true dynamic day in for squats.   Personally, I felt like my lifts were starting to lose explosion even though I was developing the ability to muscle up bigger numbers.   So, Brandon, Trent, and I did some brainstorming around incorporating some of Donnie Thompson's ideas into our training.  The key was that I like our team never to lose our suit skills so instead of a lot of the massive accommodating-resistance via bands that Donnie was doing,  we kept in our descending-resistance, ascending-weight phase and put in a dynamic day.    The key really was moderating the dynamic day.   Westside calls for a 50-53-55% wave.   However,  we decided this was too heavy when that % was comprised only of the free weight,  so we decided to include the resistance as part of the percentage.     Here is a spreadsheet that indicates what the weight should be:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AiSQ4xsumlgacE5Oemtocy0yUUtvcjRabFc3WDRnQ0E&hl=en#gid=56

We have completed one wave of the program.   Personally, I feel better, and 3 of us hit pretty significant PRs.  On the con-side,  my hip has been acting up.   It is a lot of squatting.    I am debating further refinement to the program.    My feeling is that the rest of the gym should continue on the current program that has undoubtably been working for everyone while we tweak this thing.   


On the deadlift side of things:  the team continues to move up in this lift.   We have a new dark-horse candidate for a 700 pull in December.   Here is a recent vid from a Max Effort tuesday.