Some of you may ask, how long do I plan on doing powerlifting training and competing in powerlifting? Well, I think I’ll keep doing it until I can’t do it anymore. Some people may think I’m a bit too old to get into powerlifting but just so you are aware, powerlifting is for everyone and for people of all ages. I’ve done three powerlifting meets and seen powerlifting meets live online. There are people who do powerlifting from ages 40 and up. Yes, you’ll even see 70 year old men competing in powerlifitng. I’m not too old to get into powerlifting at all ’cause I’m only 42 and technically, that age is pretty young still.

Ever since I started this powerlifting journey last summer in 2018, I’ve been feeling stronger and stronger week after week. Feels pretty amazing really. A lot of people want to knock powerlifting and make fun of the sport but I don’t know why. Powerlifting is amazing to get into. I got into it hoping to get stronger quicker and get bigger quicker and it’s working pretty much. I’m feeling great in powerlifting training so it’s all worth it.

Admittedly, I got into powerlifting to win and kick ass. I’ll confess it. I know I said I never got into powerlifting to win trophies and medals but I’ll take that back. I want to win. Kick ass, break records and hopefully win the “overall lifter” award in a powerlifting meet. I never got to play in any sports over the years of my life due to my scoliosis but since I can do powerlifting, I want to feel like a winner and feel like a champion, ya know? This is an opportunity for me to get into a professional sport.

Yeah, someday in the future, I’m going to start doing the bigger meets and hopefully do the national ones. That’s why I’m going to sign up for the USAPL sometime this year. I’m going to do my first USAPL powerlifting meet and hopefully I’ll do one this year. I’m hoping to do the Northeast IronBeast which is a USAPL meet in Latham this year.

I’m not gonna go too crazy with powerlifting meets. I’m only gonna do like 2 or 3 a year ’cause you don’t wanna do too many, ya know? I don’t wanna do too many.

I love powerlifting. There’s a lot of great benefits with it. I hope to be in the sport for a very long time and will probably do this ’til the day I die. I’m actually not too late to get into powerlifting at all. I’m at a great age to get started.

I had a real good squat session at the gym this morning. I’ve been doing 145 lbs. squat for triples lately so I’m predicting my estimated 1 rep max on squat could be about 165 lbs. or 170. I’m planning to test my 1 rep max pretty soon.

Kev

I look at powerlifting forums and debates online and most powerlifters believe you only gotta focus on heavy sets and few reps to get more strength. That’s what most of them told me in that Tnation forum during that heated debate. I agree and somewhat disagree. It’s important to do a lot of heavy sets and few reps, but you don’t want to train like that all the time. If you train like that all the time, week after week on a non-stop basis you could drain your body out. It could really fry out your cns (central nervous system) and training super-heavy all the time is also asking for injury too. Many powerlifters will never admit that they get injuries from training heavy all the time but they do.

How can you tell when your CNS is fried? Here’s a good little article about CNS when it comes to strength training:

http://www.warriorsciences.com/central-nervous-system-fatigue.html#.XMDP-ehKiUk

It’s not good to be lifting heavy in the gym all the time. It’s good to pick some light days too.

In the gym, I’m going to do another week of strength training and then the week after that, I will do nothing but hypertrophy style training on the big three for a long while.

To get more strength, many powerlifters just like to lift heavy all the time during their off-season training. Not me, though. There’s gotta be days where I got to lift lighter sets and high rep sets and I’m going to be doing that a lot more. To get super human strength and if you want to get the bigger PR’s, you gotta mix hypertrophy and strength training together. You gotta build muscle and size too ’cause that helps get you strength gains.

On my other exercises other than the big three, I train hypertrophy style on everything else but I know I’m getting stronger with all of my lifts. An example of this, on my bicep curls with dumbbells, I’m starting to do 40 lb. dumbbells for 8 – 10 reps for each set and I’ve never done that in the past. 25 lb. – 30 lb. dumbbells used to feel heavy for me but not anymore. Yeah, powerlifters will never admit that hypertrophy lifting will give you more strength too but it really works.

Sometimes you gotta leave your ego at the door and do some lighter lifting, ya know? Soon, I’m going to experiment with hypertrophy style training on squat, bench and deadlift later this Spring to see how that works. I’ll have to pick light days and heavy days which I will do from now on. In the past, I used to start off light and go heavier every set on the big three but I’m going to do things differently like train hypertrophy and strength training separately.

I will continue to train for heavy sets and few reps on squats and deadlift this week. I will continue to train like that for the big three next week. The week after that, I will train hypertrophy for a long while. Don’t wanna beat your body up too much.

Kev