This was something that did not just happen. I have, in fact, taken 3 shots at 1000 in competition, the first dating back to 2007 at the team meet in Georgia. The lift was turned down with 2 reds.
I took another shot at it at the 2010 Tampa Barbell invitational right after a 940. I did not complete the lift. There were various injuries, surgeries, and a random bout with pericarditis that caused me to shed 50 lbs in the hospital within a 3 week period, but finally on October 29, 2011, I hit the magic number at an APF meet in Orlando, FL.
I do not take a lot of fully geared max free squats in the gym. Meet conditions and adrenaline can make up for a lot. I was not, and am still not a big fan of maxing out in the gym on the competition lifts. In my mind, a few things happen when you do this:
You will invariably work up to something that is heavy and you either fail or come close to failing. Because you did not have meet adrenaline and preparation, the weight probably felt heavy. You have now just taught your mind that something off your theoretical max was heavy and it becomes a limiter. 1000 has been a mental barrier in my mind for a long time. And I played a large part in creating that barrier.
As an example: I felt very strong this past Februrary, so one day about 3-4 weeks before a meet, I decide I am going to come in and work up to 950, which was 101% of my PR of 940. I thought to myself: "If I am a 1000 lb squatter this should be easy". Well, I missed it. Not only did this destroy my entire training cycle, but I aggravated my groin to the point where it set my training back for months. In reality, I think that had I trained smart, I may have hit 960 that meet bumping up my PR nicely, but I wrecked the entire training cycle with a bad call because I needed 'to feel some weight'.
As an example: I felt very strong this past Februrary, so one day about 3-4 weeks before a meet, I decide I am going to come in and work up to 950, which was 101% of my PR of 940. I thought to myself: "If I am a 1000 lb squatter this should be easy". Well, I missed it. Not only did this destroy my entire training cycle, but I aggravated my groin to the point where it set my training back for months. In reality, I think that had I trained smart, I may have hit 960 that meet bumping up my PR nicely, but I wrecked the entire training cycle with a bad call because I needed 'to feel some weight'.
Let me give some perspective to let this sink in. If you are properly trained and rested, you usually complete a lift at a meet and feel like "wow, that was easy. it was like nothing was on my back that day". In fact, when I look back at a few of my meet lifts, such as my first 903 squat in Oregon in 2005, and a subsequent PR in New York of 920, they both looked crisp and relatively easy, like I could have put another 40-50 lbs on my back. Could I have? I won't know, but I can tell you I have never maxed out in the gym and felt that "Gee, I could add another 50 lbs to this". Again, you are conditioning your mind that the weight feels heavy and you are burning out your nervous system.
So, does this mean I stopped training squats heavy? No. Not really. But heavy is all relative. I DID stop training squats above 93%. In fact, if you look at graphs in LiftTracker, the average intensity was probably in the 70s, and there were some spikes of 90% or so.
Without getting all mathematical on you: here is a formula that has worked for me. Go heavy with some degree of frequency, but stay around 90+% and try and do multiple sets. Two weeks before this meet, I performed 5 lifts @ 90%, all pretty easy. The heaviest I went was 935. I rarely make predictions because I think nothing good comes from them, but after that weekend, I told my wife: "I feel like this is the one." I had not said that about a 1000 lb attempt, ever. I had hoped for it before, but this was the first time I felt I had programmed myself correctly and was not relying on a meet miracle or a gift to get it.
One of the reasons I could predict this was because when I went to New York and hit 920, the heaviest I went in the gym was 865, but I performed multiple sets at this range. Back then, I knew nothing about percentages, but somehow I had stumbled onto my personal magic formula. I just hadn't realized it yet.
I hear this a lot from lifters: "I need to put the weight on my back to teach me what it feels like or condition myself to the weight". I don't really buy this. Let me tell you something: everything over 800 lbs feels heavy to me. It did when I was an 800 lb squatter and it still does as a 1000 lb squatter. The human body has limits and the supporting structures all acclimate to heavy weight at different paces, but at a certain point it will always feel heavy, no matter how strong you get. The best thing you can do is train yourself to perform consistently. Being able to do this and seeing how at meet time this translate to PRs will lead your mind to stop equating heavy load with freakout and failure.
If you perform lifts at a certain percentage, IN YOUR MEET GEAR, and with the same form you do in meets, you will be able to perform the heavier weights in a meet without form breaking down, and you will not need heavy bands, overloads, or absolute maxes to achieve this. Not that these aren't all nice tools, but don't tell yourself you have to 'feel' the weight before you can do it in a meet. This is a fallacy which leads to overtraining.
Practice and Coaching
If you look at how major leaguers practice (and this has started trickling down to the junior levels), you will see one thing in common. Repetitive drills. By taking thousands of fly balls, ground balls practicing turning the double play, etc, these things will come naturally in a game. Your body is a computer. You program the computer through repetition. This is a principle behind many eastern-block training programs. I am not going to get all Sheiko on you, because I don't understand that, and I find a lot of that type of training mind-numbing, but the takeaway is you can program yourself to perform without maxing all the time.
Clearly, we can't spend the same amount of time under a weight as we can fielding grounders, but some of the principles are the same. You will do in a meet what you do most often in practice. If you clown around on your warmups, drop your head, grip the bar half-assed and only ratchet up your form on a few max effort sets, come meet day: you are highly likely to revert back to what you did the most in the gym. At meet day, my mind enters a different place. I forget shit, I get tunnel vision. I rely on my mind reverting somewhat to autopilot to complete things. This is why it is important during your warmups to pay attention, have your teammates give you proper queues and constantly make adjustments.
Here is a maxim I heard long ago: "Treat your warmups like you are preparing for a max and your max will go like a warmup".
Sometimes, I feel like the gym turns into cocktail hour before people buckle down and get serious. I try not to cramp people's style and fun in the gym, but in reality I'd like to throw a plate at your head if I see you joking around during warmups.
I experienced the hard way (several times in fact) that what you do in training carries over to a meet. In preparing for Georgia a few months ago, I did not have Sara, one of our lifters and my depth caller, in the gym. Her voice has a pleasant, harmonious ring, so when she wasn't there, I decided I didn't feel like listening to anyone else. I basically 'winged it' every heavy day. Because I did a combination of free squats and squats to a box where I was at or below parallel, I figured I had my bases covered. I could get that extra inch or two in the meet no problem. Well, when I went to Georgia, I performed exactly how I trained my free squats: that is I squatted high and got my ass red-lighted by my good friend Adam Driggers. I was disappointed as the weight felt light. When I went and looked at the video, I was annoyed with myself. The 950 was easy but clearly high, and it's because I got lazy in the gym.
The takeaway. Perform how you need to in a meet. Again, you don't have to max out to parallel, but you better be performing your 70-85% at parallel. Now to be perfectly honest with myself, as I ratchet up my training again, I will highly likely not hit every rep to parallel. In fact, when you are far out of a meet, I don't think this is as critical as long as you rely on also building strength through secondary movements, repetition, box squats, etc. But when I enter into meet mode again. I expect to go 50% as far as hitting depth.
If you are truly going between 80-90%, hitting depth will be fine and not an ego-killer because you are not maxing anyway. The nice thing about training at a lower percentage is when your partner says "you were high", you can just do it again. That doesn't happen when you max out. You get 1 or 2 and you are spent or risking injury to continue.
The aging body and the need for change
As I've gotten older, I have accumulated a laundry list of injuries. I have ruptured and repaired 3 tendons, had my right shoulder completely replaced with a titanium ball, and most recently had spurs removed from my neck which were impinging on a nerve. There is no doubt in my mind that my body is slower to heal than it used to be. Certain movements are more problematic for me. I also have been pursuing other interests which occupy some of my free time. I used to live for training 4-5 days a week, and getting the rest and nutrition needed to maintain this.
For the younger lifter, especially one who is new and likes to lift to look bigger in addition to just numbers, there is no problem putting in these extra workouts. Get the rest, eat right, and you will be able to do both powerlifting and pseudo-bodybuilding. In fact, do not confuse doing a lot of shit in the gym with practicality. One thing I still see is nowhere near enough attention paid the secondary lifts yet curls and tricep pressdowns are pretty consistently done even in my powerlifting-only gym. I just roll my eyes at the youngsters when I see this. But as Richie and Trent have said: "sometimes it's just about being thick" to which I can now reply: "1005 bitches" and stroll over to my chair and sit down and watch them curl.
Volume applied to the proper exercises is essential. I think the numbers and percentages are a topic for a different blog post.
I decided I really wanted to accomplish a few things (namely a 1000 lb squat and to get my bench back up to something decent just because I think it will be cool to say it can be done with fake parts) before I walked away from competition. I also have started pursuing some hobbies in a more serious form (the LiftTracker app has become an obsession which consumes a shitload of time). I have a limited amount of resources (namely time) so I need to spend them wisely. I started pairing down crap that was not directly benefiting my competition lifts. I went from doing 3 main lifts and 2 accessories per workout to 1 core lift, 1 core accessory, and lots of lats because I think a thick back carries to all lifts, and then sitting back and coaching. I do NOTHING that I feel does not carry over. I have noticed that I rarely have workouts anymore where I feel drained. My repetitive hip and groin injuries finally subsided, and my squat and bench press have moved nicely over last few training cycles.
I have also tweaked my rotation a bit which I have blogged about in the past. Personally, I was having some difficulties because I was following a weekly schedule:
1) when i squat on saturday, i go heavy. i am mentally incapable of deloads (in fact, in my mind a deload is a complete was of time. just stay home)
2) after squatting heavy saturday i was not able to come in tuesday and train another exercise which hit the low back. doing so led to low back and groin issues
3) i was not getting enough variety to maintain interest. i like the specialty exercises but was not getting enough recovery to perform them
Consequently, I moved onto the rotating schedule, which was probably the most effective tool that directly addressed my particular issues.
It was first blogged about here, and most of what is in here still applies. Have a read, especially if you are entertaining thoughts of trying this:
I do not think everyone 'NEEDS' a rotating schedule, and if you have a rigid mindset, this may cause you problems adapting to its dynamic nature. Also, younger lifters can recover faster and probably will make gains faster on the standard westside split. However, it can benefit everyone who commits to it. I will caution that missing days on a rotating schedule is much more problematic than missing on a weekly one as it takes awhile to come back around. So commit to it for real. If you know your schedule will require you to miss with any degree of regularity, just stay put.
I am going to end this post here as it is already information overload. A large percentage of my gym is now trying a rotating schedule. I also have added the ability in LiftTracker to track PR changes over time. What is going to be really neat is to see in 4-5 months how everyone's training has changed and hopefully how the PRs have moved to go along with it.
Squatting rules! By the way: Tampa Barbell now has (3) 1000 lb squatters, all still actively training. I know this puts it with the most 1000 lb squatters in a gym in this state. In this country I know of only two other gyms with this: Westside and SuperTraining. Fine company to be in.
I am going to end this post here as it is already information overload. A large percentage of my gym is now trying a rotating schedule. I also have added the ability in LiftTracker to track PR changes over time. What is going to be really neat is to see in 4-5 months how everyone's training has changed and hopefully how the PRs have moved to go along with it.
Squatting rules! By the way: Tampa Barbell now has (3) 1000 lb squatters, all still actively training. I know this puts it with the most 1000 lb squatters in a gym in this state. In this country I know of only two other gyms with this: Westside and SuperTraining. Fine company to be in.
As would be fitting of this post, squat day falls in 2 days. See you there!
-TF
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