Alex Recap

Squat
242.5/533.62
257.5/567.68
267.5/589.73

Bench
167.5/369.3
175/385.8
182.5/402.3

Deadlift
207.5/457.5
210/463
260/573.20

8/9 and 267.5/182.5/260 = 710kg Total
1565.27 lbs Total

This NAPF meet was Alex’s third meet, and he’s really starting to flourish as a lifter. He has a good base from playing DIII collegiate football for four years. He’s a great squatter, a fantastic bencher, and was relatively new to deadlift when he started powerlifting. At the end of last year Alex moved back up to the north east, so he’s been training on his own with a template we talked about last summer. Since nationals in August, he’s put a focus on only pausing on the bench (every single rep). He could double or triple 405, but was only able to hit around 381 at Nationals — it was a skill he needed to learn. As you can see, it paid off with a successful 402 on his third attempt.

Alex typically deadlifts better when he’s with me, and I think the primary reason is because I settle him down a bit and give him one thing to think about. I don’t recall having to really fix anything in the warm-up room, maybe the angle of his torso in the set up, but I cued “smooth” on his lockout because he had never locked out anything about 550, so I was concerned that he’d have the “tut-tut-tut” hitching lockout. He didn’t, and 573 turned out to be a pretty simple rep.

L to R: Alex, Mike, Chris, and Justin post meet

I did, however, kind of fuck up his second deadlift. I was taking a short break and was talking to someone in the crowd during the break between when the guys were done warming up and the start of deadlifts. Since Alex’s opener was so light (his last warm-up), he opened first, and when I was walking in the hallway I heard them call his name. I got to the curtain as he was finishing the rep, and in the midst of my apologizing forgot to put in his second attempt. That means that they gave an automatic increase of 2.5 kilos (so from about 455 to 460 lbs). After some confusion, Mike finally said, “Just wave the attempt.” Duh. So we waived the attempt, took the “real” second attempt in the warm-up room (thanks to Shawn, Mel, Jeremy, and Bijan for loading the bar pretty quickly) with 515. It was easy, so I ran out and put in 573 for his third. 573 was higher than we originally planned, but I felt he had a lot in the tank (his previous best was 551). Before he actually did the attempt, I was thinking he could do 581 or 586, but I didn’t want to push it given that I was still worried about the possible hitching lockout. It’s always better to be slightly conservative and get the rep compared to pulling the trigger and missing the rep (assuming the lift isn’t necessary for the win and it isn’t the lifter’s long-standing goal).

As for squat, Alex’s squats were a joke. He smoked his third at 589. I had been cuing him to “control” the descent through the warm-ups, and he actually did that pretty well on the first and second attempts. I didn’t cue it on the third attempt, because I wanted him to be crazy. In my “attempt prep” I mainly challenged him to go out and hit it. With Alex, I just cue “wait” so that he remembers to wait for the judge, other than that, I let him go weapons free on his squat and bench and instead just help to amp him up.

Alex is a lot of fun to coach, and he’s really friggin’ strong. The things he needs to work on are being more systematic with his training (which is partly my fault for not checking in on it regularly) and to develop his deadlift. By having a more direct focus on what he hits on his heavy squat and bench days, those lifts will continue to develop nicely. As for the deadlift, I think he should rack pull heavy twice a month to train the posterior chain lockout; he doesn’t have any issues off the floor due to his good base of squatting musculature. We’ll add them in within the context of our “advanced TM” method of programming. Lastly, he’ll include some fun junk-yard-style conditioning because he’s a certified fire fighter and is still applying for full time positions.

Overall, Alex had a solid meet and I think he’ll easily hit his goal of totaling over 1600 at the next meet. I see at least a 600 squat, some improvement on his 402 bench, and at least a 600 deadlift in the 120 class. Tuttles.