Editor’s Note: In 2012, Justin spent a majority of Mondays discussing female-specific topics. Eventually, he pretty much ran out of material and lately, they’ve trickled down a bit, though I believe they are still very popular. I hope to bring these back with a vengeance. Not only do I really enjoy coaching female Powerlifters (remember this article?), I also love the positive message that we, as a community, try to put out there for our female lifting friends. Readers, especially females, please send me your Monday posts and let’s do this.Today’s article is the first guest post by Bert, who recently coached his lady friend to her first PL meet. This week he discusses some of the experiences and difficulties they went through in her early training, and next week, we’ll get a full recap from her first meet. – Jacob

In October 2012, I met my new girlfriend. Unexpectedly, when she first set foot in my home gym, she immediately fell in love with it: the rings, the weights, the medicine balls, the kettlebells. I introduced her to the squat, press, chinup and deadlift, showed her a few training videos (powerlifting, weightlifting and Crossfit-type conditioning) and she knew what she wanted to do: powerlift.

Bert’s Home Gym

She was built to lift: 5’1″, with thick joints and a broad athletic background that ranged from equestrian vaulting (gymnastics on a horse ) to judo.

However, she had a few challenges:
Lower Back: falling from a horse caused her to crack a few vertebrae and suffer from lower back pain that impeded her from standing for prolonged periods of time or participate in most sports. Her physicians had her doing plenty of balancing, exactly what a girl who is able to stand on one leg on a galloping horse needs to recover (sarcasm). This, of course, did nothing.
Neck: a whiplash that was caused by a car crash, caused her neck pain, even though this crash occured six months earlier.
Digestion: due to eosinophilic gastroenteritis, her private and professional life was disturbed. She often suffered from intestinal attacks that caused heavy sweating, fever and intestinal drama and gassiness. Endoscopy and other allergenic tests revealed no gluten or lactose-intolerance, nor adverse reactions to any other food. She was, however, unable to eat most fruit, meat and vegetables without trouble. Instead she relied on pasta, bread and candy. The saddest part, for me, was that she stated that “she simply didn’t like eating.”
Weight gain: she had gained 10 kilos (22 pounds) from cortisone injections meant to deal with the intestinal inflammation. She stopped the treatment and was able to lose 5 kilos on her own so far, by running. The PCOS possibly also caused her to be slightly insulin-resistant.
Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies: her gut didn’t produce ferritin (a protein that stores iron) and vitamin B12, forcing her to receive it intravenously via monthly visits to the hospital.

Diet Changes
After making sure that she was willing to go all out with this, I modified her diet by having her eat two to three meals a day. Since she didn’t like to eat breakfast, I had her skip it, conforming with the 16/8 intermittent fasting protocol. This reduced the bloating immensely. After some evaluation, it turned out that pasta (her former favourite food), first and foremost, caused the digestive attacks. Secondly, food that contained a high amount of gluten (most breads) and processed food were culprits.

After an adaptive period, she found out that she seldom suffered from the intestinal troubles and was even able to eat meat and fruits again, which she had missed dearly. Her skin also cleared up and some minor joint inflammation she had also disappeared, most likely due to reduced systemic inflammation.

Training Changes
I had her begin a simple routine, alternating A and B workouts three times a week. On the other days she ran with her dogs or went for a long walk. She used linear progression for the first two months with only minor modifications. I had her overhead pressing dumbbells at first, until she was strong enough to use a barbell.

A: Squat, OHP, RDL, Chins
B: Squat, Bench, Hip Thrust, Chins

Other assistance exercises included hyperextensions, (more) hip thrusts, rack pulls, and abdominal exercises.Since she had a very weak posterior chain (yet strong anterior chain), I had her do many lower back, glute and hamstring exercises. Deadlifting was at first impossible, as she was unable to hold the required back position throughout the movement, even with an empty bar. RDLs and Rack Pulls strengthened this back position. After two months she switched from conventional to sumo deadlifts, which suited her back and leverages (short arms and legs) much better.

Powerlifting Meet
After two months, she had made a radical physical transformation: she had lost weight, gained muscle, improved her lifestyle (by not having to go to the restroom so often) and had regained her love for food. In addition, her confidence was soaring.
She now had her mind set on doing a powerlifting meet. Her routine wasn’t a typical powerlifting routine as I felt she still had much room to improve things like overhead strength and other physical qualities that would assist her powerlifts regardless.
She was now doing the following:

Monday: Squat, Bench, Sumo DL, Chins
Wednesday: Squat, OHP, Kettlebell DL, Chins
Friday: Squat, Bench, Rack Pull, Chins

Assistance work remained the same. She did conditioning with sprints or circuits once a week, on Saturdays.

Strength Increases and the Future
After three months of training, she was able to do the following, at a bodyweight of 55kgs (121lbs), with only weightlifting shoes, no belt:
Squat: 67.5 kg (148.5 lbs)
Paused Bench Press: 40 kg (88 lbs)
Sumo Deadlift: 65 kg (143 lbs)

In addition, she can do four strict chinups, after starting out with zero. She’s also able to run faster and longer, while training less. After being told to “live with” her conditions by many a doctor or physician and dietician, she was able to improve her jest for life, her appearance and her confidence. I hope she continues to improve and that others will be able to find inspiration in her journey, and join in.

Tune in next Monday for a recap of her first meet! 

Today’s female post is written by Jacob Cloud. 

I’ve been following 70sBig since the beginning of time, and have tried to contribute in many ways. Sometimes that means writing guest posts, sending in silly videos, or meet recaps, but it also means being an ambassador in the real world, which is something I take pretty seriously. This site has grown into a community, and I’m damn happy to be a part of it.

Back Row: Caroyln, Jessica, April, Sarah. Front Row: Dana and her two trophies.

One thing I’ve been really proud of Justin for is his decision to make Mondays all about the ladies. I’m a huge fan of female lifters, and have a lot of fun coaching and helping many of them at Hyde Park Gym. My girlfriend has taken to competing this year, and the enthusiasm she shows is infectious. Between the two of us, we’ve successfully made a huge push to get more members of Hyde Park Gym in Austin competing. Remember, competing is one of the tenets of this site. Recently, we held a mock meet at the gym to introduce more people to the basics of a powerlifting meet, and on November 3rd we had about a dozen guys and gals from HPG compete (all raw) at the USAPL Longhorn Open in Austin. That group involved 5 awesome chicks which I’m going to brag about in this post. With their help, we were able to score a 2nd place combined team trophy in our first team competition.

Jessica showing off her bench arch

Let’s start with my special lady friend, Jessica. She’s relatively new to powerlifting, but already quite passionate about the sport. At Raw Nationals in August, she went 9/9 in the 60kg class, and was able to meet a bunch of legends, including sharing a platform with the famous Jennifer Thompson. For this meet, Jess cut down to 56kg, which had been a goal of hers for awhile. The cut was going great until the night before the meet, when a practice weigh-in at the equipment check proved that our home scale was a full kilo lighter than the meet scale. Drastic measures meant for a long Friday night and Saturday morning, and she ended up being the final morning lifter to make weight at exactly 56.0kg, with about a minute to go on the clock. This didn’t leave much time to re-hydrate before squats, and we made the easy decision to pass on her 3rd attempt to allow her to rest/feed/hydrate before benching. She ended up going 8/8 on the day, PRing her competition deadlift (125kg/275lbs), total (247.5kg), and Wilks, and then went on to help me handle several of the male lifters in the later flights. We learned some lessons for next time, for sure, but she made the best of her situation and came out smiling.

April in the warm-up room

We had two ladies in the 60kg class, both in their first official competition. April’s husband, Tanner, is a friend of mine who I really got to know at Raw Nats when I offered to help handle him, since I had another lifter in his 181 class (RoryT, who also posts on 70’s Big). I believe it was at that meet that Jessica convinced April she should also compete instead of watching from the stands. Since this was her first meet, April smartly stayed conservative with her lifts, and Tanner helped coach her to a very successful and confidence-inspiring 7/9 performance. The first meet is often the most memorable, but I have no doubt April will be setting lots of unforgettable PRs in the near future.

Dana says “gotta wear the granny glasses to see the smooth and knurling and get the weight balanced!”

Our second 60kg lifter, Dana, is a self-described soccer mom. Her daughter out-cuted everyone at the equipment check, bragging about how strong her Mom was, and even asking her to flex her guns for all of us (we were impressed). Dana didn’t disappoint on Meet day, winning 1st in her Master’s class with a 8/9 performance. Her trainer at the gym, John, is an experienced (and ox-strong) powerlifter, and he set her up with a nice spreadsheet beforehand, so she had all of her attempts and even warm-ups planned out ahead of time. He wasn’t able to attend the meet, so I helped her out in the warm-up room (when, inevitably, timing always seems to go wrong), did my best to help settle her nerves, and everyone cheered her on for her big lifts. She ended up with a very nice 262.5kg total and an impressive 297 Wilks.

Sarah will kill me for using this picture.

We also had 2 more female lifters, both in the 67.5kg class. Neither of them had to worry about making weight, and ended up on the lighter end of the class. Sarah has competed in one other USAPL meet, and is a helluva lifter, though you’d never know it based on her Master’s degree in being a Librarian, or something along those lines. She and Jessica tend to talk a lot of smack in the gym (In actuality, Jessica does 90% of the talking, and Sarah just smiles and squats), and they have a very friendly rivalry that helps push them in a positive direction. Sarah ended up going 8/9, and I believe she PR’d her bench and deadlift. When contemplating what to call on her third dead, Sarah asked if she should go for 275 or 281. Jessica’s response was something along the lines of “If you don’t get 281, I’m going to punch you.” Sarah did, and in doing so, ended up beating Jessica’s Wilks score by 0.3 points (291.51 to 291.21). This rivalry has just begun, and will be a lot of fun to watch in 2013.

Carolyn killing a 226lb squat.

Our final lifter, Carolyn, turned out to be the surprise of the group. She’s an awesome and strong gal for sure; we all knew that. What we didn’t expect was that she would show up and and deadlift 330 pounds in her first meet! Her special guy friend, Eric, also a national level lifter, has only been coaching her in powerlifting for a couple months, but she showed a lot of talent and poise, and destroyed some serious weights, resulting in a 9/9 performance for a 310kg total and a 331 Wilks. Very impressive!

Jess showing off her trophy, and her proud Coach.

The point of this post is not only to brag on my female friends at the gym, but to urge more of you to compete. The first thing I usually hear people say is “I’m not strong enough!” That’s bullshit. These ladies are all of various strength and experience levels and I can say without a doubt that every one of them had a great time, and I know most of them are already planning to compete again in the near future. It’s important to prepare for your first meet, but it’s even more important to sign up and do the damn thing. All of these ladies ignored potential excuses, signed up, showed up, and lifted their asses off, and now they have a ton of fans, friends, and even rivals who are eager to see what they’ll do in their next competition. The bottom line is that competition helps you set and achieve goals, so get out and do it.