Rhino's "Competitive" "Powerlifting" log.

[Ryan Hartigan]

Basic Stats

Age: 24
Height 180cm / 5'11" (roughly, never measured accurately or before/after lifting heavy)
Weight: 82kgs / 180lbs
Diet: 3600kcals / 180g Pro tracked with MFP.

Current Strategy is to move to 86kgs / 190lbs for IPF meet in December, competing in 83 Class.

2017 Gym PRs @ U83kgs/U183lbs:

S: 210kgs / 463lbs
B: 120kgs / 265lbs
D: 240kgs / 530lbs

Total: 570kgs / 1256.63lbs

Training History

I spent a lot of time doing SBS, was introduced to Starting Strength method by a lifelong friend. Definitely DNDTP, but even with my poor understanding of technique and programming the method was effective in moving me from an underweight 60kg/135lb twenty something to a healthier (Read: Rip approved) 90kg/200lbs adult male.

The only movements I've trained are Squat, Bench, Press, Deadlift, Clean. I dabble with assistance work but never stuck with them more than a couple of days. I stopped doing cleans after Novice LP @ 100kgs/225lbs. Similarly, I stopped pressing @ 60kgs/135lbs 3x5 because I always get right wrist issues and I didn't bench or deadlift for a long time for no reason but continued to squat.

I didn't track my diet, keep a log of my lifting, body composition or any other important metrics. This is something for which, in hindsight, is extremely regrettable. I don't want this to happen as I leave intermediate programming

My most recent organised training block was v2.3 of akharon's stock 3 day Texas Method excel spreadsheet, slightly customized for my own preferences. I moved my 5RM squat from 170kgs/375lbs to 190kgs/419Lbs in 10 weeks. I wasn't recording diet or weight however, I rarely broke 83kgs/183lbs bodyweight on the inaccurate, inconsistent scales I was using.

Testimonial / Blog Post

Mark Rippetoe completely changed my life, the way I see myself and the way others see me. At under 60kgs/135lbs I had bad posture, was injury prone and was a terrible grass & ball athlete. The prescription given to fix these problems by multiple professionals was smelly, coloured resistance bands and a randomly selected range of isolation exercises. In spite of all of the professional advice I had received, this prescription did jack shit. After months of observing the results it was pretty clear that despite what everyone was telling me, the Emperor had no clothes.

After years of 3 day per week training, gaining +33% bodyweight and deadlifting triple my bodyweight I no longer have terrible postural deficiencies, I don't have any aches and pains, I've cured old injuries, I've never been injured lifting, and I'm still a terrible grass & ball athlete.

Before Creatine: http://i.imgur.com/utk5j96.jpg
After Creatine: http://i.imgur.com/9qoLSDb.jpg


TL;DR

I lift things up and put them back down again.


Planning

I'm going to milk out as much advanced intermediate progress as I can and not make the same mistakes I made earlier in my training by not recording important metrics and progression. The plan currently is to do the following:

1. Record and improve my nutrition.
2. Gain weight.
3. Move from 3-day to a 4-day TM split to shorten sessions and make accumulating enough volume more practical.
4. Record my training here with commentary.
5. Record more footage of lifts for optimizing form.
6. Record my training metrics from mystrengthbook.com. (Hopefully will be worth the money beyond TM)
7. Get as strong as possible.

Let's get to work.

[Ryan Hartigan]

Just a bit of catch up from my procrastinating.

The template is

M Upper Body Volume / Tu Lower Body Volume
Th Upper Body Intensity / Fr Lower Body Intensity

April 03 Mon

Bench: 5x5 94kg Intensity 81.7%
Dumbell Press: 2x10 40kg
LTE EZ-Curl: 3x10 40kg
Wide grip lat pull: 3x10 50kg
Barbell curl: 2x12 40kg. Hurt my forearms, decided to continue with dumbells.
Dumbbell curl 1x10 15kg ea.

April 04 Tue
Squat: 5x5 160kg 80%

One Set / Another Set - I plan on filming the last set or so, I can't remember which ones these were.

Bar Path: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
Velocity: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

I hypothesize what this velocity chart shows is the stretch reflex popping me out of the bottom of the hole represented by the first spike in speed.

Goodmornings: 3x10 60kg
Deadlift: 3x3 185kg 80.4%
Ab-Wheel 3x10

April 06 Thu

Bench 1x5 100kg 87%
Dumbell Press: 3x10 40kg
LTE EZ-Curl: 3x10 45kg
Wide grip lat pull: 3x10 54kg
Dumbbell curl 3x10 15kg ea.

April 07 Fri
Squat 1x5 170kg @85%
Goodmornings: 3x10 65kg
Deadlift 1x3 195.5kg @85%
Ab-Wheel 3x10

April 10 Mon
Bench: 5x5 96kg @83.5%
Dumbell Press: 3x10 40kg
LTE EZ-Curl: 3x10 50kg
Wide grip lat pull: 3x10 60kg
Barbell curl: 2x12 40kg. Hurt my forearms, decided to continue with dumbells.
Dumbbell curl 3x10 15kg ea.

April 11 Tue
Squat: 5x5 162kg @81% One set / Another set
Goodmornings: 2x10 70kg - Pretty uncomfortable, very tight hamstrings have to bend knees quite a bit to get any ROM. Not sure I'm getting very much out of these might sub them out for something else.
Deadlift 3x3 187kgs 81.3%
Forgot Ab work.

April 13 Thu

Bench 1x5 102kg 88.7%
Dumbell Press: 3x10 45kg
LTE EZ-Curl: 3x7 55kg
Wide grip lat pull: 3x10 62kg
Dumbbell curl 3x10 15kg ea. Done seated, eccentric only felt sore for about 2 weeks after these.

April 14 Fri
Squat 1x5 172kg @86%
Goodmornings: 3x10 65kg - dropped back 5kgs, still don't feel like I'm able to get very much out of this one.
Deadlift 1x3 199kg @86.5%
Ab-Wheel 3x10

April 17 Mon
Bench: 5x5 98kg @85.2%
Dumbell Press: 3x10 45kg
LTE EZ-Curl: 3x10 50kg - dropped back to keep volume high.
Wide grip lat pull: 3x10 68kg
Barbell curl: 2x12 40kg. Hurt my forearms, decided to continue with dumbells.
Dumbbell curl 3x10 17.5kg ea. standing curls this time.

April 18 Tue
Squat 5x5 164 @82%
Deadlift 3x3 189kg 82.2%
Leg Press 108kg 3x10 - decided to sub this in for good mornings. Get a bit more volume on legs without stressing back and hips too much.
Ab-Wheel 3x10.

April 20 Thu
Bench: 1x4 104kg @90.4% /// 1x2 104kg.

Failed 5th rep, may have been because I was using new SBD wrist wraps for the 1st time. Felt heavy though, I think 2kgs is fine for squat and deadlift currently but too much for bench. I will drop back to 103, only increase by 1kg next time and do an extra set on next volume day.

*Press: 1x5 60kg @100%*
I matched my old novice PB and pressed 1x5 60kg for the first time in years with stiff wrist wraps. No pain thus far so will continue to train barbell press with wraps and see how things go.

LTE 3x10 40kg - lower weight to focus on long descent and explosive return.
Lat Pull 3x10 50kg - again lower weight to get explosive pull and slow eccentric
Dumbbell curls 3x10 15kg seated on incline bench. - just trying to find ways of doing these without hurting forearms.

The weight increments I was taking on assistance exercises was too big. I will have to bring my fractional plates to do assistance work as well as main lifts in the future.

April 21 Fri
Squat 1x5 174kgs @87%
Deadlift 1x3 201kgs @87.4%
Ab-wheel 3x10
Leg Press 3x10 117kgs
Ab-wheel and leg press done supersetted to finish more quickly.

Here is an interactive visualization of the months training so far, I think these metrics really show what TM is all about.

BASELINE VOLUME & RELATIVE INTENSITY
https://app.mystrengthbook.com/share...d1e838ec93530e

VOLUME AND INTENSITY
https://app.mystrengthbook.com/share...d1e838ec93530f

If you use pounds you can also use the table below to see the above training PBs/Maxes in pounds and kgs and (maybe) see the workout they were done in. Not sure how far MSB has developed the sharing feature.

https://app.mystrengthbook.com/share...d1e838ec935311

Before I sound like an MSB shill, my current opinion is that I've spent $140USD for little more functionality than an 80c notebook. I wouldn't recommend buying it currently but I think there is a lot of potential and I want to support people developing this kind of software. Feel free to ask about it if interested.

I've been trying to hone down my squat form and would really appreciate other's opinions on what my squats currently looking like.

[Ryan Hartigan]

I should also add I've started tracking my nutrition this month which I hope will yield some consistent long term progress. I also purchased a precision set of scales to get some consistent, accurate data.

Calories / Protein / Weight can be viewed here: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

I had a bad flu at the end of march shown at the beginning of that graph and was sick again at the start of April where there is another dip which has made it difficult to gain weight. However, I've been on the up since the 10th at a good rate so we'll see how it goes into May.

[Ryan Hartigan]

April 17 Mon
Bench: 4x5, 2x4 99kgs @86.1% First 2 Sets: With Wraps / Without Wraps.

I'm undecided on wraps. Sometimes the pain puts me off, sometimes it feels more consistent. In theory having a cast straight wrist should equate to more consistent power transfer to the bar. I'll have to decide if I want to trade benching comfortably with benching more consistently.

• First two sets came up slowest of all.
• 3-4 were fast and felt good.
• 5th set I lost my set up and failed last rep.
• 6th set was probably the fastest of all but the last rep just did not want to go up.

I've added approx. 13% more volume at a heavy training zone: https://app.mystrengthbook.com/share...Span=1-month#_

I look forward to seeing if the small increase of another set at 86% will be enough stimuli to hit 103-104 in the next week or two or if I will stall hard earlier than expected.

OHP: 3x5 50kg - No wrist pain with stiff wrist wraps.
LTE EZ-Curl: 3x10 45kg
Supinated lat pull: 3x10 50kg - I tried supinated for 1 set last week and it was heavy, the same weight 3x10 was way too light today.
Dumbbell curl 3x10 17.5kg ea. standing curls this time.

[Ryan Hartigan]

April 25 Tue - Lower Volume
Squat 5x5 164kgs @83%
First Set: 166 5x5 1st - YouTube (forum refusing to hyperlink these ones properly)
Last Set: 166 5x5 5th - YouTube


Felt good, moved fast. Got a bit of crunching in my hips at the top of the squat if I came up too fast. Unsure if slowing down or just warming up stopped it in later sets.

Deadlift 3x3 189kg @83% First / Second / Third

Felt good, I've started switching my mixed grip every rep to stop any imbalances.
Started using deadlift slippers, felt a bit unstable at first but much better today.

Leg Press 135kg 3x10 - Probably wont be able to use this effectively for much longer as it bottoms out at 180kgs/405lbs
Ab-Wheel 1x10. - might stop doing these, feels like they're aggravating a back pain I get from sitting down too long.
Perhaps sub in cable rows or something else I like doing.

[Ryan Hartigan]

April 27 - Mon Lower Intensity

*Bench 104x5*@90.4% Stress, recovery, adaptation cycle complete, good to know that little bit of extra volume on Monday was enough to get a new 5RM. I added in a single @90kgs for some extra warmup. Wraps are growing on me.

Press 3x5 52kgs
LTE EZ-Curl: 3x10 42kg
Supinated lat pull: 3x10 54.4kg
Dumbbell curl 2x10 17.5kg, 1x10 20kg - just a bit too heavy.

[Ryan Hartigan]

April 21 Fri - Lower Intensity
YouTube refusing to upload in HD edition.

Squat 1x5 176kgs @88%.

Felt easy but probably because they weren't IPF depth. Really gotta focus on consistently hitting depth and not ego lifting.

Deadlift 1x3 203kgs @88.3%

Not happy at all with these. I used to have the hip rising before bar breaking the floor problem with standard plates. Now it's happening again with 3cm deficit plates making my start position different. Will have to experiment, perhaps starting with hips higher or keeping them low but focussing on making my legs break the bar off the floor instead of my back.

Leg Press 3x10 144kgs

[Ryan Hartigan]

May 1 - Mon Upper Volume

Bench: 4x5, 1x4 99kgs @86.1%, 1x5, 1x4 89kgs
Press: 1x4 54kgs
LTE: 1x2 54kgs (10kg misload)
Lat Pull: 3x10 56kgs

Bench was slow and felt very heavy. Slow sets across, but still managed to keep volume dropping weight ~10% for another 2 sets.

[Ryan Hartigan]

May 2 - Tue Lower Volume


Squat
Sets 5 - First Set: https://youtu.be/diIe2VutcwY Last Set: https://youtu.be/SRBs5p7UXFI
Reps 5
Load 168 kg
Intensity 84%

Lost my groove on 1st rep of 1st set which altered my shin angle and back angle. Other than that felt good, still struggling to hit depth, which never used to be the case. I've literally forgotten what below parallel feels like.

Deadlift
Sets 3 First, Second, Third.
Reps 3
Load 193 kg
Intensity 83.9%

Much better than last session. I tried keeping my hips higher and found that it messed up my timing on 1st set. Tried locking out my torso more quickly on 2nd and 3rd and was pretty happy with how they looked considering they're from a deficit.

Assistant (Leg press)
Sets 3
Reps 10
Load 153 kg
Assistant (Cable row)
Sets 3
Reps 20
Load 36 kg

[Ryan Hartigan]

May 4 - Thu Upper Intensity

Bench
Sets 1
Reps 5
Load 100.5 kg: 100.5 x5 - YouTube
Intensity 87.4%
Sets 1
Reps 3
Load 105.5 kg: https://youtu.be/d-lvy4ay66U
Intensity 91.7%

Testing wider grip on lower weight. Seeing as I only got a triple on 105.5 it seems prudent to drop back intensity %ages to be in line with squat and deadlift. Will do 101x5 next week and drop my volume day accordingly. Though, it is frustrating that my 5rm and 5x5rm are less than a couple of KGs apart.

Assistant (Press)
Sets 3
Reps 5
Load 54 kg

3x5 easy today, not sure what went wrong Monday with 1x4.

Assistant (Lte ez-curlbar)
Sets 3
Reps 10
Load 44 kg


Assistant (Lat pull)
Sets 5
Reps 10
Load 59 kg

Dropping curls and increasing volume on this lift.