An ongoing view of my athletic pursuit.
I am training to compete in a powerlifting competition in about 5 months. Providing a look and insights into my training will be a fun and informative weekly open journal. (I’m 48 years old and will compete in the Masters age category)
You can find the prelude to this update here:
Conditioning
My body needs to be ready to handle heavy weights and brutal stress in order to perform max lifting efforts for competition. The squat, the bench press, and the deadlift are tested for maximum effort. Three attempts at each of the 3 lifts will be performed in front of judges and an audience.
Often, there are 50 to 100 lifters in a powerlifting competition falling into many different weight categories and divided by female or male designations. A contest may go on for 6 hours getting through all the equipment changes, introductions, and attempts.
(Although I have been at a contest that lasted 12 hours of grueling waiting and energy balancing madness.)
Powerlifters are warming up before their attempts. Then there is the award ceremony at the end. It’s an all-day athletic event.
The highest weight or best lift in each category is kept as a lifter’s entry and held both individually as well as in a cumulative total for top performance rank to place in the competition. All out effort for attempts and total is the goal.
I will continue for the next 3 months to do basic and correctly performed lifting before going into a more intense powerlifting style training.
Here is my basic routine which lasts roughly 1 hour four days a week:
Overhead Presses: (done for overall body strength-not a powerlift)
1 set x 12 reps x 45 lbs bar
2 sets x progressively heavier weight warming up
2 sets x even heavier weight for 3 reps.
