The Beginning

I'm starting this as a way to keep an eye on myself. It's easy for anybody to make goals, and write them down somewhere, then forget about them or lose sight of them. I've wanted, more than once, a way to keep track of everything - past versions of myself, things I used to love, ideals I used to hold - and to be able to look back on all of that. It's a way to remember, and to hold myself accountable for who I have been and what I have done.

So before I post anything else, I have to post about who I am now. Some history. I am a beginning powerlifter. I'm 20 years old. When I was younger, I was never athletic. Throughout high-school, I tried to stay in shape by running and dieting, but generally failed at all of that. Summer after my senior year, I was lucky enough to inherit, from an injured friend, a squat rack, an olympic bar, and almost 400 lbs of plates. Combine that with my own shitty bench and an old easy curl bar, and I had an incredible garage gym. I trained all summer, doing a terrible bodybuilding program that I dreamed up. Maxed out lifts at the end of the summer:

Squat: 175
Bench: 145
Deadlift: 215

Those are rough approximations because, as I stated at the start of this post, I've never really had a way to keep track of everything that I wanted to.

In the fall, I went away to college, and kept training, adding some serious Crossfitting to the bad bodybuilding I was doing. I had been a fan of Crossfit for a while, and actually got pretty decent at it, considering I was an out of shape piece of shit for most of my life before this. I was doing two days of running, and strength training/WOD's four days a week. My mile time was sub - 6 minutes, I had a 104 400, and I was doing pretty alright at bodyweight WOD's. But my main problem, and the reason I stopped Crossfitting, is that I was still a weak, weak little man. Tested my lifts right before winter break of my freshman year:

Squat: 195
Bench: 175
Deadlift: 245
Strict Press: 125

So I decided to start powerlifting  (temporarily, I told myself), so that I could get strong enough to do the WOD's as prescribed, rather than scaling the weights and staying a weak little bitch. Over winter break, I got a horrible stomach bug, and although I normally hung out around 170 lbs (I'm 5' 10" by the way), I dropped down to 158 lbs. Then, when I came back to school at the end of January, I started my journey with 5 / 3 / 1. That was a fucking magical 4 months. I was high-bar back-squatting (crossfit ingrained it in me), but my lifts increased a shitload. Also, I went up to 195 - definitely not all muscle, but definitely not all fat either. I tested before summer:

Squat: 245
Bench: 205
Deadlift: 265
Strict Press: 145


Here is where I royally fucked up. I was a bit disappointed in my deadlift, but even so, I was making great gains on Jim's program. So I said to myself "Hey, you're doing great! But instead of keeping doing what you're doing, lets do something completely different and fuck up all your progress!" And I did. For whatever bizarre and fucked-up reason, I started running again, trying to take off weight, doing WOD's a few times a week, and doing some kind of dumbass interpretation of starting strength. It was horrible. By the end of the summer, I managed to force my deadlift up another ten pounds, but that was it. The only other good things that came out of last summer are that I switched to a low bar back squat, and I stopped Benching with a false grip (found out you can't do that in some competition, so I decided to stop). I even carried this moronic, fuck-head training bullshit over into the first month or so of my training back at school. Then, finally, I decided to stop - and started to mess around with Westside training.

Speed squats and max effort started to finally get my squat going, and speed deadlifts, without any really heavy deadlifting, actually worked MUCH better for improving my dead numbers than high-rep, heavy stuff ever did. However, my bench stayed stuck, no matter how much I did or didn't bench, no matter how heavy I went. Speed work didn't do shit either. I trained hard, through winter break, and ended up with these numbers at the start of this semester:

Squat: 275
Bench: 205
Deadlift: 335
Strict Press: 150

I started this semester doing the same sort of westside DE/ME work, in preparation for my first competition. However, the competition ended up being moved, and in the mean time my squat gains were starting to slow down, and my bench was still shit. So, I decided to start combining all the shit I've learned in my last year of experience - 5/3/1 worked great for my squat and bench. Westside worked great for my squat and dead. So lets combine that bullshit. Basically, I'm doing a Westside ME/DE split, but with 5/3/1 sets as my ME work. also, I threw in "boring but big" sets as my assistance work on ME days, and 5/3/1 Strict Press as assistance on DE bench day. Heres a typical training week.

mon: 5/3/1 squat, speed deads, 5 x 10 squat
tues: 5/3/1 bench, 5 x 10 bench, 5 x 10 bent over rows, pullups/lat pulldowns
wed: rest
thurs: Speed squats, Heavy double squat, 5 x 5 front squat OR good morning
fri: Speed Bench, 5/3/1 Press, 5 x 5 b.o. row, dumbell chest press ( 3 sets to failure), lat pulldown
sat and sun: rest

So far it's working incredibly for my squat - in the past few weeks, I squatted 245 for 8 with my belt, and yesterday I squatted 225 for an easy 12, without the belt. I have yet to see progress with my bench, but I think it might just take a few cycles for all the back work and the pressing to get heavy enough that it really forces my bench to start to go up. I've been watching as much Dave Tate as I can, trying to get my form perfect. I guess i just have to give it some more time, hopefully it has no choice but to grow soon.

So that's my introduction to this. There will probably never again be a post this long. From now on it will mostly be changes to my programming, PR's, me bitching about a shitty day in the gym, or the odd picture/video/oddity that I feel like sharing and remembering myself. And we will see where it goes.

-N.K.