"Also...a beard is sure to add weight to any lift"
I have been lifting weights (off and
on) for over 20 years, but for the most part I lifted to maintain my
weight and poured most of my energy into various other athletic
pursuits. It wasn’t until I moved to the Philippines that I shifted
gears to training with strength as the sole end. In some ways, I feel
like I wasted all of that time. But in reality, I spent that time
developing an endurance and mass base that serves me well today.
I rarely discuss my lifting numbers and
my goals, but here goes. I’m 41 years old and I’ll be in the
Philippines for 4 more years, and I plan to find a lifting team and
compete when I return to the United States. I don’t have any record
breaking dreams; I just want to total elite at some point. Even at my
age, I don’t consider that to be a very lofty goal, but when you
throw out the numbers that an elite total represents, it raises
eyebrows, so I just don’t bother. I just tell folks that I’m
trying to get stronger, and leave it at that.
I could compete here but it’d be a
hassle and it’s already hard as fuck to coordinate traveling for
necessary things. Telling the wife that I want to roll down to Manila
to lift some weights isn’t really going to fly. I’ll just keep
getting stronger and do that shit with a supportive team when I get
back to Hawaii. It’s not like I’m going to roll in and hit
anything big right now anyway.
The one thing I do know is that this
shit takes time. Once I knuckled down, I went to a 300 squat and 400
deadlift fairly quickly, but it took another 18 months to take those
numbers to 400 and 500. That sounds like a long time, but it’s
still pretty fast. The next hundred pound increase could very well
take 3 years, if I work hard. Granted, I did have a six month setback
with a partially torn rotator cuff, but I squatted the whole time. It
sucked, but it did help my squat quite a bit because I got a lot of
practice squatting every session back then.
That’s where I am now; I’m hitting
on the 400 squat and 500 deadlift 2 months ahead of my year end goal.
I haven’t actually taken the singles because I was saving it for
year end, but all of my training numbers indicate that it’s there
pretty easily. I’m just plugging away and I’ll try to hit those
numbers for doubles at year end. If it’s there it’s there, if
not, I’ll still be perfectly happy with the singles.
I’m just starting to reach a point where I’ve tried enough different shit that I have a pretty good idea of what works for me. I’m not really programming right now per se and it’s working, so I’m rolling with it. I seem to make the best progress with a mix of heavy singles, doubles, and triples (and) rep work in a heavy/light format. So on a heavy day, I might work up to something heavy and stay there and do a lot of sets and maybe try to set some kind of a PR if it’s there. On a light day, I’ll work up to something heavy and then drop down and do a bunch of high rep sets and maybe try to set a rep PR if it’s there. I don’t go in thinking “this is a light (or) heavy day”; I determine that when I get to my top set based on how it feels. This is nothing new and probably a Frankenstein version of a dozen programs, but fuck it…I’m getting stronger and it’s working for me.
