Category Archives: Women

Lady’s First Meet

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Last week’s posts were dominated by our experience from Raw Nationals. A lot of you have written in saying how much 70’s Big has inspired you to compete, and I enjoy every one of those e-mails. 70’s Big is an attitude, and part of that attitude is putting yourself to the test and risking failure along the way.

I’m going to periodically share some stories from people who have written to me about their competitions. Today I want to highlight Antoinette’s journey into her first powerlifting meet earlier this month. You may remember her from this post when she deadlifted 250lbs. Antoinette is coached by her boyfriend Eric, and he did a solid job on teaching her the barbell lifts and helping her develop a great strength base. On a side note, Antoinette told me that when she got into lifting, she dropped bodyfat and even though she was eating a lot more. I’ll let her comment on that, but typically when girls start getting stronger they have an improvement in body composition.

Eric and Antoinette having a rough time with the 70's Big Face


The first time Antoinette e-mailed me, she was asking about the best way to taper her “Texas Method” program into the meet. TM programming works really well with people shifting from novice programming to intermediate, and once the lifter has been on it for a few months, it can be transitioned pretty well into a short taper for a meet. I recommended she start doing 3 rep maxes (3RM) so it would paint a more accurate picture of what she could open with.

Antoinette kept in touch with me as she got ready for the meet, and unfortunately she was hit with various types of the black plague for the three weeks leading into the meet. In any case, she didn’t let it deter her from having a solid day. Eric wrote me a recap, and I’ll give it to you from the horse’s mouth:

So our plan was to open conservatively and make reasonable jumps for the second attempts on each lift so, worst case, she could go 6/9 and put up lifts in the neighborhood of her training PRs. Seeing how she was coming off being sick for most of the three weeks prior to the meet, and the fact that her Tuesday recovery day hadn’t gone very well, we definitely wanted to keep things on the low side. Add in the fact that she was on the verge of having an anxiety attack prior to her first lift (she can tell you more about that) and I was still a little worried going into the squats.

We decided to open at 105kg on squats, which was a weight she had tripled without too much struggle two weeks ago. You can see that it looked a little more difficult than it should have, which was mainly due to her nervousness preventing her from getting a good deep breath before starting the lift. So we only went with a 2.5kg jump for her second attempt, which put her about 9lbs short of her gym PR of 245lbs. 107.5kg went up without too much problem since she had calmed down a lot once she got the first lift out of the way. She had a slight knee turn-in and loss of back angle, so we knew she could handle quite a bit more weight if she fixed that. For her third attempt we jumped to 112.5kg, and even with a slight knee turn-in (looks like it was due to toes not being angled out enough in the stance) it went up without any problem.

Bench was definitely her weakest event–on her last intensity day she had put up 125lbs (which was a PR for her) but it didn’t go easy. We opened at 52.5kg which went up easy enough, but I was still hesitant about making a big jump on bench so we only went to 55kg for attempt #2. That went up easy enough that I felt comfortable calling for 60kg on the third attempt. By this time she had gotten over the nervousness and was able to channel the pressure in a productive way and get amped up for each lift. 60kg went up far easier than I had expected, giving her a 7lb PR on bench.

With deadlift we wanted to use the first attempt essentially as a final warmup lift so she would have something left for her second and third attempts. So we opened at 102.5kg, which she has done for a set of 5 before. That went up easy enough for us to feel comfortable jumping to 110kg on her second attempt…again short of her gym 1RM but something that would let her get a solid number on the board without too much trouble. After hitting that attempt easily we jumped to 115kg, 3lbs over her gym PR. She pulled 115kg like it was a warmup lift, and it looked far stronger than when she set her previous deadlift PR a few weeks ago.

So in the end, she went 9/9 and totaled 287.5kg, good for 2nd place in her weight class in the raw open. Tracee Patterson, the winner in her weight class, hold several national records in that class, so it was no shame to take second place to her. All three lifts were PRs and it looked like she could have handled about 5kg more on the bench and 7.5-10kg more on the squat and deadlift, but being her first meet we thought it was a better idea to leave something on the table rather than taking a chance bombing out or getting hurt.

That, my friends, is how you handle someone at their first meet. Antoinette had e-mailed me, and we went back and forth with strategy. I mentioned that they could take the last warm-up for deadlift on the platform, and that’s what they decided to do in order to help her go 9/9 in the meet. And really, PR’s on all the lifts and going 9/9? I can’t think of a better way to motivate anybody, especially a girl in her first competition. Nice job Antoinette, and nice job Eric.

Here is Antoinette’s last deadlift (you can see her other lifts here):


Ladies First

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That is a video of my friend Antoinette deadlifting 250 for a single. A couple of weeks ago she e-mailed me telling me that her deadlift PR was 230 for a double, so 250 ain’t too shabby (she did it after being sick for two weeks too). I think Antoinette’s video has good timing for two reasons; it dispels some myths about girls who lift and let’s us have a talk about lifting mechanics.

Girls and Lifting
I’ve written about this before, but it’s still difficult to convince girls that lifting is not going to make them “bulky” or “big”. On one hand, it sounds ridiculous to the informed, but on the other hand, the strongest women are also the biggest women. As with men, the strongest lifters get the most publicity, so it’s natural for the average gal to see the bigger gals lifting. What they don’t see are all of the other weight classes lifting either, and these girls are usually in great aesthetic shape (like the gals here).

Girls always want to be “toned”. I don’t know what the hell the definition for “toned” is, but it can be deciphered as “I want less body fat and although I don’t know it yet, I’ll need some muscle underneath it to look how I want to.” Even girls who participated in sports in high school grow soft after not doing anything athletic for a while, and thus they don’t have much decent muscle mass. That’s just how the body works

Enter barbell training. Squatting, pressing, and deadlifting helps girls get stronger (which is never a bad thing) as well as developing a nice, shapely body (i.e. the appropriately curvy body they are wanting anyway). Nobody wants to have a flat butt, right?

Olympian weightlifter Melanie Roach (center) is a good lookin' 53kg lifter



Aside from the aesthetic results of lifting, girls are usually thrilled with the improvement that they can make with their strength, enjoy the challenge, and a few will go onto compete. Competing isn’t just a man’s realm; anybody can benefit from preparing for a contest and performing in a structured and high adrenaline environment.

In this instance, Antoinette picked up lifting and has a Paleo-type diet, and she has leaned out, dropped bodyfat, and gained muscle. She told that me that her friends think that she has lost weight, and then she tells them, “No, I’ve gained about 15 pounds, but lost fat and inches and my pants are falling off.” Sounds like crazy talk, but hopefully we can make it sane. Nice job, Antoinette.

Pulling Mechanics
Ah, now that we got that out of the way, we can scrutinize her lift. It’s important to note that this is a max or near maximal attempt for Antoinette. Form is not only expected to break down, but it should if you’re doing a maximal rep. As Rippetoe always says, if you are able to do it with perfect form, then the weight isn’t heavy enough and it isn’t your max. With that being said, I’m not sure how Antoinette lifts on her training sets because I don’t coach her (so I don’t know if this form fault is habitual or appearing on the max).

You can see that she has a good starting position (chest squeezed up correctly, bar underneath the scapula, bar over midfoot, etc.), but the first thing that happens as she pulls the bar off the ground is she loses tightness by raising her butt a little bit. This angles her chest down which helps round her lower and upper back round as a result. If your butt raises as you pull off the floor, then your knees extend just a little bit. This is a problem for two reasons:

1.Your quadriceps are the muscles that extend the knees, and if the knees extend and the bar doesn’t move up, then the quads haven’t done any work on the bar. This means that you are removing them from helping, and lifting with less muscles isn’t as fun..
2. The hamstrings are the muscles that flex the knee and extend the hip. They attach up under the butt cheek, and when your knees do their job correctly (in this case, correct would mean not extending early like they are here to help lift the bar) then the hamstrings would stay tight, and that tightness helps hold the back angle in place. Antoinette’s butt raises because her hamstrings do not maintain tension, and then the quadriceps don’t help the bar off the floor. This means that the low back will carry the brunt of the load if the bar is going to be lifted in this mechanically disadvantageous angle. It’s important to note that if you’re in a meet situation, bad form is not a sign that you should just stop the lift, and she does a good job of continuing to pull the bar.

Now here’s how we can improve in the short-term.

A good concept to think in Antoinette’s situation is “push the bar away from the floor with your feet”. She’ll set her back angle by squeezing her chest up like normal, and then she’ll think about pushing the floor away with her legs to eliminate the butt raising first. The simple, short cue is “push the floor away” (which is what she could think about or told right before the lift). This cue does a good job of not getting into the minutia of mechanics (which confuses the majority of lifters — or at least confuses their body), and gives the lifter a vague concept to think about and their body will usually get it right. I don’t take credit for it, I learned it from observing Rip (who is good at creating conceptual based cues to not confuse the lifter with little details – a necessary skill for a good coach).

Alas! Not all cues will work with all lifters. People think differently, learn differently, conceptualize differently, and know how to move their body differently. I take all of these variables (and tons more) into account when I coach to figure out what I say next to a lifter. In Antoinette’s case, if we stick with cuing her knees, we could try another cue. The next cue could be “make your knees go back as the bar comes off the floor”. This would make the knees extend off the floor appropriately, and the short, simple version is “knees go back”. I like the first cue better for a few reasons, namely because it simplifies and doesn’t direct the lifter’s attention to one little detail.

If those cues didn’t work, there are plenty of other things to try. I was cuing her knees here, but I could also cue her butt or shoulders since they are different points in the system. As with all things, I use the method that works the highest percentage of the time, and then if it doesn’t work, I figure something else out. It’s like a little puzzle waiting to be solved, but it’s a puzzle that the lifter cannot solve on their own (only a few can). If you’re shitting your pants worrying about what you may be doing when you deadlift (or squat, or press, or snatch, or clean), then you should find a good coach to help you out. There is no substitute for a good coach.

Tidbits

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Well my friends, PR Friday is upon us once again. Sure, we’ll have all the same kind of stories where people rip their pants, lift something relatively heavy, or eat plenty of food, but I want to call out the ladies this weekend and have them post some PR’s. Hey, a PR is a PR, and it doesn’t matter if that weight is great or small, it still matters to me — I wanna hear about it. So c’mon ladies, let me hear your stories. Dudes, get your ladies postin’.
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Avi sent me an amusing rugby video that is a wonderful display of why you don’t want to be 90’s Small on the pitch. He tells me the larger player is 6’5″ and 135kg while the smaller player is 5’11” and 83kg. Click play to see what happens (sorry about the wide frame, but it’s HD, yo).


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Brian sent in this video of a Hooters waitress squatting some 90’s Small guy. Good for the waitress and shame on the not-a-man on her shoulders. What perturbs me more than anything is one of the comments on the video. It reads,

Wow, that has happened too me a few times. I had an Ex-Girlfriend who could pick me up on her shoulders like a feather…Just goes too show that Women are not the weaker gender, and us Guys better start getting used too that, or we will be getting picked up and spun around by Women too.

Uhh…

Look, ladies, if you can pick your boyfriend up “like a feather”, then you don’t have a boyfriend, you have a child-friend. It’s okay to lug him around once in a while, but it shouldn’t be that easy because he should be an adult male. I can’t tell you how many times I hear, “Man, I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed a guy who weighs over 200 pounds better than a skinny-pain-in-the-ass guy until I tried it out” (not a direct quote, but true story nonetheless).

This isn’t a discussion about women’s rights, or their roles in society. It is simply a statement that a ravishing woman deserves man, not a skinny little puke (not to be confused with Johnny Spuke, who is the exact opposite). And fellas, you owe it to your lady to become an Adult Male.

PR Friday

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Today is PR Friday, so post weight lifted, consumed, or gained to the comments. You still have time if you are trying to rip some jeans or hoist a female friend overhead. If you hoist a male friend overhead, regardless of your gender, this is not cool (for females it is not because your male friend is not heavy enough).
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I have trained Glennis, a 34 year old gal, here at the gym for about 7 weeks now. She came here a bit underweight, and was really gung-ho about getting stronger and gaining weight — she even made the comment that some increase in bodyfat was A-okay. I put her onthe linear progression with a mission to eat much more protein.

An average girl doesn’t eat enough protein in general, especially one that is training correctly. She didn’t have any restrictions on calories or carbohydrates, I just told her to include protein in every meal, drink more milk (which she likes), and get her protein intake to be a bit above her bodyweight if she wanted to increase muscle mass (measured in grams, of course).

Glennis’ progress is not profound by any means, but it is a bit interesting in that it dispels all of the silly shit that women think is going to happen to them when they train with barbells. They think that some how they are suddenly going to get supreme genetics and “bulk up”, as if it is gonna happen over night. Also, eating more is not the same thing as getting fat. We saw the other day that Zach gained almost 80 pounds of body weight with about 60% of it as muscle, and the same thing can happen with girls, but just on a different scale. In general, girls are weak, and whatever they are interested doing will be augmented by an increase in strength. Period.

In seven weeks Glennis lost a skosh of bodyfat, gained some good muscle, and got a good deal stronger. I have the data for those of you who are interested, since it’s fashionable to call bullshit on training progress on the internet. Oh, and it’s important to note that in the sixth week of training (which was last week), Glennis was pretty sick and didn’t train at all. She probably lost some weight because of that, but I went ahead and took her bodyfat today anyway.

34 years old, 5’5″
Weight is in pounds unless otherwise noted, and all lifts were done for three sets of five (deadlift is only one set).
Body weight
128 –> 133
Net: +5

Bodyfat
22.7% –> 19.8%
Net: -2.9%

Lean Body Mass
98.9 –> 106.6
Net: +7.7

Fat Mass
29.1 –> 26.4
Net: -2.7

Squat
45 –> 95
Net: 50

Press
25 –> 57
Net: 27

Bench
45 –> 63.5
Net: 18.5

Deadlift
30 kg –> 58 kg
Net: 28 kg

As you can see, Glennis lost fat, and gained muscle to have a net increase in body weight of five pounds. Obviously she was already skinny and not fat to begin with, but this is an example of a real life scenario where a girl gained almost 8 pounds of muscle in 7 weeks. Glennis also lost bodyfat without even trying to, which means two things; A) she probably could have eaten a bit more, but I’m not scolding her, and B) it goes to show that when a girl trains PROPERLY, results are inevitable. Full body, multi-joint strengthening exercises are going to be the most useful in any training program.

This last part is for the ladies:
Glennis also developed a rump — the kind that girls want to have. I say this objectively (since I have a lady friend and Glennis’ boyfriend is a friend of mine who trains at the gym — pretty strong dude); her muscle has increased in the region. Even though 7.7 pounds of muscle may not seem like a lot, I can see definition in Glennis that previously wasn’t there (in her arms, legs, etc.). More muscle with the same or less bodyfat is what makes a girl “toned”, and this is what you happens when you get stronger.

Seminar Hangover

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“Mmmm…can you smell it?”

It is the night after our barbell seminar in Wichita Falls, and we are all a bit burned out. 20 hours of material will do that to you. There were a lot of great people at the seminar, and I hope to see most of them again (I demanded that a few of them make a return soon). If any of you who attended are reading this, feel free to give your thoughts on the seminar.

On Friday, someone from JP’s gym posted a link from his website. It is written by one of his female trainees, and can not only give us dudes an insight on female training, but can also be an interesting read for the ladies. The article can be found here, and here is an excerpt:

Armed with the confidence that only strength can bring, I ate with reckless abandon. I immediately blew past my previous sticking points and hit PR, after PR, after PR… a 50-pound deadlift PR instills confidence in the milk like nothing else! About six weeks into this “gaining” cycle, I competed in my first powerlifting meet. With my first official lifts under my belt, I paused to take in the moment. I was in awe of the progress I””d made in such a relatively small period of time, and I recognized that without the simple dietary additions of milk and meat, this rate of strength gain would not have been possible. I had arrived at a much-awaited turning point. The realization that my new found strength was the result of a carefully executed strategy allowed me, for the first time in a long time, to believe I was capable of changing my body. I had successfully escaped my obsession with body image and in the process, managed to reverse the longstanding misconception that I””m stuck with my body as it is. Confident and inspired, I was ready to take my training to the next level. Or so I thought…

Discuss.

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Here is a video of my pal Brian who I have been training for a few months. Brian is on the weightlifting team, and will either lift in the 94 or 105 kg class (he was about 205 when he started, now he is accidentally 216, so we have to figure it out before the meet in January). I have Brian on a linear progression type program that includes the Olympic lifts, so he squats twice a week. Recently he started practicing football twice a week for a “semi-pro” football team (or whatever you call it, Brian). In other words, he is doing two strength workouts, two weightlifting workouts, and two practices a week, and still making progress. Friday he squatted 495x5x3, and here is a video of the third set: