Legitimacy first, then greatness. Adam Skillin is a competitive powerlifter.

[Adam Skillin]

Strong lifting Adam. Hell of a job on the deadlift. My deadlift is only a few pounds up on my squat, so I'm always amazed to see such a big gap.

Thanks for the kind words. I've always been able to pull significantly more weight off the floor than I could manage to squat. Not sure if it's an artifact of my anthropometry or what, but I just plan to keep trudging away at increasing both. Maybe now that I'm Texas-Methoding the squat, it will gain some ground.

[SpinyNorman]

I've been painfully forced to accept the fact that I can't open much of a gap between DL and squat (at least for now). I pushed the deadlift too hard a couple of times since I kept telling myself that it should be higher based on my squat. It's hard to make any progress with a back injury though. Now that I've finally quit fretting about the DL number in relation to the squat I've actually made some decent progress with it over the last few months without injury.

Texas method did wonders for my squat. It was brutal as hell, but it worked.

[Adam Skillin]

6/7/14

Light squats: 275 x 3 x 3 (Brutally heavy today)
Intensity Press: 145 x 5 (Hard. Time to microload)
Dips: 25, 8, 11 (rest-pause kinda)
Curls: 75 x some

[John Petrizzo]

Good to meet you yesterday, Adam.

[Keith]

nice meeting you at the camp, Adam. I dig your log. keep in touch, I will catch up with at the meet in August!

[Adam Skillin]

Dr. Petrizzo - Thanks for the excellent instruction. I hope we get to do it again. Press 2.0 and Squats would be my vote.
Keith - Cool meeting you yesterday, dude. We should definitely keep in touch and go out for a sick, disgusting meal after the USAPL meet!

So yesterday (6/8/14) was the excellent Pulls From The Floor in NJ camp with John Petrizzo and Nick D'Agostino at CrossFit GSP in Rochelle Park. I highly recommend it to lifters of all levels of training advancement. I learned some helpful things about the lift I'm ok at (deadlift) as well as the lift I'm pretty awful at (power clean). With some bonus learnins about the snatch, since Keith was kind enough to be unable to rack a clean.

In fact, I was convinced that for training, I'm going to pull in my olympic shoes, at least until a few weeks out from a meet. I actually feel significantly weaker there. My failure point on deadlifts is above the knee, but I still feel like even the tiny deficit will make me a stronger puller in the long run.

I didn't get to pull heavy, because Nick D wasn't sufficiently convinced by my first set of 5 @ 365 to let me go up for the final set. So I pulled 365 x 5 x 2.
On the power cleans, I learned that I jump early when the weight gets even remotely heavy. This was evident at 115 and vile at 135. I only think I pulled 2 cleans @ 135, then made 3 @ 125 out of 5 attempts (with one impressively horrible continental clean thrown in for good measure). I can muscle up about 165, but I'm going to deload these significantly and try to work back up with some better form now that I have identified at least the major issue.

6/9/14:
Had a social obligation this evening that I knew I'd have to be out the door quickly for this evening, so I did my volume presses at lunchtime. (I commute on foot and come home for lunch when work isn't too crazy):

Lunchtime Press: 132.5 x 5 x 5

Then I decided to give intensity squats a go despite the fact that I was actually feeling yesterday's work a bit in my hamstrings:
Regular workout time (after work):
Intensity Squat: 365 x 5 (New 5-rep PR).

That's a set of 5 at only 15 pounds below what I managed in the competition a few weeks ago. Texas Method is working wonders. I'm ecstatic about this. I think I've squatted this weight for a triple before, at 10-15 pounds heavier bodyweight. Definitely breaking the damn 400 barrier at August 2nd at USAPL, if not beforehand.

[Grinder]

Adam, how tall are you?

[Adam Skillin]

Adam, how tall are you?

5'7.

[Adam Skillin]

How big is the platform, and did you build it out of plywood/horse stall mats like the usual instructions?

8 x 8. I found particle board in 4 x 8 x 3/4" sheets, so I used 4 of those for the bottom 2 layers, with one piece of decent plywood down the center and cut my horse stall mat in half lengthwise to fill in the sides.

How do you deal with heavy deadlifts in a condo? I feel like we've covered all this before, but I'm just wondering since the wife and I have a goal of putting in a similar setup by the end of the year in our condo.

I have 1 set of bumpers that's probably getting chewed up by the iron plates (which are all, fortunately, slightly smaller in diameter), and we put them down a lot more gently than your average gym-goer. The fatigue definitely adds up throughout the set. It might not be optimal, but it beats joining a commercial gym and driving.

Bottom line is that with the platform (which weighs several hundred pounds and covers almost the entire loft area), no amount of weight I pick up would crash through the floor if I were just to drop it. Noise is probably the bigger issue.

[Adam Skillin]

Seriously don't think I got 3 total hours of sleep last night, and no more than 90 of that consecutive. Felt like shit. Knew it would be a grindy day at the B.I.L.

Squat Volume: 330 x 5 x 5
Bench Triples: 215 x 3 x 5
Chinups (AMRAP in 7): 78

I PR'ed the chin-ups because I did tons of singles and spared myself a lot of negative work. I did one set of 12, then one of 8, then a 5, then mostly singles with a few doubles/triples thrown in. I realized I'd been wasting a lot of energy going for 2nd and 3rd reps that I didn't complete. So it wasn't really a stronger effort, just a bit smarter.