Every Monday 70’s Big features women who quite clearly show that lifting weights isn’t something that women should shy away from. Pretty Powerlifting is a powerlifting team started by Vanessa and Sara in New York. Their message is pretty much the same as what 70’s Big reverberates: women who strength train are healthy in body and mind.
The roommates fell in love with strength training and powerlifting and started the site and team to encourage women to train hard, get strong, and be healthy. Their mentors and role models in the sport are women such as Sioux-z Hartwig Gary, Jennifer Thompson, and Ellen Stein.
Here’s a video that features various Pretty Powerlifting team members.
These girls are pretty strong, but they will no doubt aim to continue getting stronger. Pretty Powerlifting fits with the 70’s Big mindset of not being an emaciated and weak female, but a strong, beautiful woman.
Getting strong and muscular isn’t something that happens easily. There are no shortcuts. You’ll learn a lot from getting under a bar, but you’ll learn more by being under that bar consistently. Don’t destroy your body and make sure to give it rest. Establish a solid strength base if you haven’t already. Don’t constantly switch programs. Avoid large amounts of volume. Read about programming, understand why the coach does that for his people, but understand how some of the principles can be generally applied. Don’t be a diet groupy. Don’t be or act like a zealot. Always get an informed opinion, but understand the difference between a blatant opinion and an educated guess based on the circumstances (you’ll find the latter here). Learn about basic anatomy and physiology. Keep an open mind. Always learn. And for fuck’s sake, have a good time doing it.
This podcast begin as a basic podcast on how JP would progress the deadlift and turned into a very interesting and useful programming podcast. You know someone is a good programmer when they are asked about a program, they ask an avalanche of questions like
How old, tall, and heavy are you?
What are your lifts at?
What program have you been doing?
How many times a week do you train?
What is the set/rep scheme?
Programming is an organic art. Listen to this podcast to learn how to do it effectively.
LINK (right click and “save target as”)
30:32 long. Also available on iTunes.
Note: 70sBig.com has gotten too 70’s Big for it’s current server and will be switching to a new server in the next few days. If the site is down, it will be back up in a few hours.
Observe this public service announcement from Spencer at California Strength:
(this was supposed to be a PR set of five)
I want to point out that the red and black NWO has been dead for years, but Spencer doesn’t give any shits; Wolfpack 4 Life. Secondly, Spencer was all set to squat 235kg (517 lbs. for you uncultured Americans) for a set of five. And then he went insane AND FUCKING DOUBLED IT UP. He’s the type of guy who says, “Ma’am, that’s not nearly enough pancakes.” He’s the type of guy who lays down six aces in a friendly poker game. He’s the type of guy who is still shredding the air guitar after the song is over. He doesn’t give a shit.
It’s not like he doesn’t care about getting better or getting stronger; he clearly cares about that. But he’s not worrying about the minutiae in the moment and when it’s go time, he fucking brings it. Trying to hit a weight, and then summoning all your energy to fucking annihilate it are two very different things. When you’re hitting a set, get reckless.
Did you watch the ending of that video? Spencer isn’t allowed to take dbol, so he makes his own…by being a fucking man.
I’m sure everyone has seen him: the guy whose bench PR is 225×5, and has been for five years. He comes in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to knock out his flat, incline, and decline bench, along with some curls. He sometimes stares off into space when not flexing his “abs” in the mirror and wonders why his bench is “stuck”. Where this individual failed was in measuring his progress, or perhaps being ignorant that it’s been some time since he made any. I have been there myself, and that’s why I want to discuss several mistakes I made.
I’ve sucked at the bench press for years, and honestly, will probably never be amazing on the bench. Nevertheless, I continue to try and get better. While spending 4 years in England, I tried numerous ways to improve it. I bought boards, bands, and Westside Barbell seminars. I was determined to not suck…as much. For a while I did get better. Without ever being coached, and without knowing what the word “programming” meant, I increased my bench from a paltry 190 in 2005 to a less-than-respectable-for-powerlifters-but-OK-for-casual-gym-goers 295 when I left in 2009. I was still irritated, but at least it was going up.
Since moving to Texas I have managed to compete in 3 competitions, spaced out over the course of a year. In my first meet I hit 281, 292 in the second meet, and 303 in the third (all paused, obviously). Are these fantastic numbers for a guy my size? Absolutely not. However, they are indeed measurable gains. They mean that something I did between meets 1, 2, and 3 worked. By using the meets as a guide, I could at least tell that I was making progress. The four years I spent training in England was not in vain, but I think they would have been accelerated if I had started competing. Had I not competed in the past year, would I have known I was getting better? Personally, I think a powerlifting meet is the perfect opportunity to do so. If you leave your ego at the door, and just worry about performing as well as you possibly can that day, I don’t think there’s a more legitimate way of seeing how far you’ve come.
Nah, I don't need a spot.
It’s also important to be brutally honest when measuring any type of progress. In the past six years, I’ve spent numerous months having to lose weight in order to pass my PT test. I always pass and then go right back to doing what I love to do: lifting heavy shit. Recently, this has become more difficult for me, particularly because the military has come down so hard on the PT program. Personally, my issue is the waist measurement. I’ll always be in decent enough shape to pass the sit-ups, push-ups, and run, but the waist circumference kills me. My belief is that I was built incorrectly in the factory (long arms/legs, short and wide torso), but that’s something I’ve learned to live with.
The challenge this past year has been to try and make sure that I don’t become too weak, but that my waist is still kept in check. When I started dieting back in November, I was convinced two months would be long enough for me to diet down and get my waist to a 37. I was wrong. During the months of November and December, I dieted (cut carbs significantly) and increased my cardio (moderately paced walking) dramatically, and looking in the mirror, I thought I was good. A week out from my test, I measured my waist. It was still a 39…fuck. Knowing that failure was not an option, I pulled out all the stops. I performed over an hour of cardio a day, decreased my calories once again, and within a week, was at a 37.5. Where did I go wrong? I failed to measure my progress. Instead of measuring my waist weekly, like I knew I should have been doing, I waited until the last minute. I was worried that if I measured too often, my methods of losing weight might become too drastic. This was a big mistake, and something I encourage you not to try.
In both cases I didn’t measure my progress correctly and was unaware of my gains. Logging your training is necessary to gauge progress in a training program, but you also have to take measurements that are relevant to your goal. I didn’t measure my waist and put myself in a shitty situation to have to lose an inch and half on my waist circumference in a week. I aimed to get stronger on the bench years ago but never really saw precise progress until I started competing. Again, I highly suggest competing in something to see where you’re at, no matter how “weak” you think your numbers are. Real vs. relative, right Brent?
