Powerlifting Experiment, week 2 of 9
Ah, here we go again. Another week behind us…
Actually, it’s going surprisingly well. Obviously the Russians know something we in the West do not about training.
The first of the three workouts (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), involving Heavy Bench and Light Squats was intresting, to say the least.
First off, the bench pressing (6 x 4 @ 102,5kg / 225,5lbs) actually felt pretty cushiony compared to last weeks’ threes. Weird.
On the squats however, I landed the dubious honor of being to first to have to dish out a penalty charge for 1 rep of high squats (50 cents). Other than that, since going to just below parallel seems to be difficult to master, I went for the extreme approach: ass to the grass on every single rep. That ought to cover that problem. Now, if I can keep this up, I’ll have zero difficulty in breaking parallel. HA! 
The second workout, involving only Deadlifts, was a bit odd. I definitely mastered the art of exploding from bottom, at least compared to last week, and the newly acquired less wide stance also worked in not punishing my already sore hipjoints any further. I seem to have reduced my stance a bit further than I needed to, though, so after seeing a clip of my good morning-deadlift combo, taken by Kris, my feet went a bit wider and also angled out a bit more. That did the trick, although it still felt a bit heavy. No back trouble though, despite the pretty extreme 60-70 degree angle in the first couple of working sets…
The third workout was a miss completely, I’m sad to report.
Partly, my nephew’s birthday-party is to blame, as well as my intense tiredness thereafter. If you’re on a peaking program that requires you to be rested come workout day, stay away from parties where there are kids. You’ve been warned. Also, this results in some massive penalties on my part by way of missed workout.
On the up side, the silver lining and all that; this gives my rather tender hipjoints some extra rest, which should result in some rather impressive gains come next tuesday. Also, I’m pretty confindent I’ll be able to squat (gulp) 6 x 5 @ 130kgs on saturday…
Kris reported that he, too, got a penalty-rated squat on saturday, so we seem to be even in that department…
I’ll try to take some clips again next week, and probably post some too… 
December 10th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Does the 50 cent penalty also apply to touching on the bench press, or does failure to do that cost more?
December 11th, 2006 at 8:08 am
No, the bench has the “one-two”-count before you can lift. So, thursdays are by default penalty-free!
December 11th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Yeah, it would be a feat indeed to manage to flunk the touch on the bench press due to the count and, as such, there is no need for a penalty system. It would make a lot of sense for a shirted bench though since touching is not always trivial when you’re wrapped into a rubber band.
We applied it to the squat because, frankly, that’s where the challenge is. IPF depth is just that, deep.