Powerlifting Articles

“Checking Your max to often”

By Ian Smalley

I’m writing this article to address a common mistake many lifters seem to make in their powerlifting training that leads to plateaus in strength gains. The crux of the problem is that most lifters want to see how strong they are…all the time. This means doing singles on a consistent basis, and doing little to no repetition work and muscular overload.

Do you ever notice how after you do a max effort single, your pretty exhausted, your mind is shot, and usually your bones hurt the next day. This is because you  challenged your CNS and your skeletal system, and probably your tendons and ligaments. But what you didn’t even begin to touch is your muscles….and guess what, you can ramp up your CNS with singles all you want, and your neurons will be firing and recruiting all those muscle fibers that you haven’t developed. Then the weight will just stop moving for you. Your muscles just won’t be as strong as your tendons, ligaments, and CNS.

Bodybuilders of course have the opposite problem, a ton of muscular strength and endurance and poor CNS, tendon and ligament strength. So not wanting to be like there posing counter parts Powerlifters often go to the opposite extreme and do little muscular development in their powerlifting training.

The correct approach is a balanced approach. You know how back in the day all the old school guys would do 5x5, or Pyramid set routines and get ridiculously strong, and usually they didn’t find out how strong they were until meet day, when they would get some huge PR or other record. The reason is that they spent their time TRAINING, NOT TESTING.  I’m sorry but doing a 1RM isn’t work…not compared to a max set of 5, twice.

Below is a raw squat routine I’ve used to build a 455lb raw squat at 185lbs of body weight….in  5 months. No gear, no gimmicks, just training.—the following represents the primary movement done each week.

WEEK 1- RAW SQUAT x 1,

WEEK 2- RAW FRONT SQUAT  2 sets of 3

WEEK 3- RAW SQUAT  (rep out) choose a weight between  40% and 70% of your 1RM and do it as many  times as possible in one set.  Ex. 225x30, 300x15 – challenge yourself

WEEK 4 RAW SAFETY SQUAT   2 sets of 5

WEEK 5 RAW FRONT SQUAT 2 sets of 3

WEEK 6 RAW SQUAT x 2 sets of 3

WEEK 7 –off-

This represents one cycle of powerlifting training, and as you can see the only 1RM is at the beginning of each cycle. That’s 5 weeks of training to 1 week of testing. On subsequent cycles I will change the sets of 5 to 3, or 3 to 5 for the different exercises to keep from stagnating. In addition I will add 10 to 15 lbs per cycle to each lift. This routine causes plenty of muscular adaptation as well as CNS development.

I have never hit a single since I started doing this where the weight felt heavy on my back, therefore my CNS is just fine. It’s really when you put on 4 ply’s of gear and get under 300 more Lbs than you can squat raw where the weight will begin to feel crushing, but being strong in gear is not the same as being strong… and I’m not preaching here, it’s just a fact. I compete in a single ply fed so I’m not some raw purist or something.

The mark of a real lifter is the ability to put up great numbers in no gear, single ply, multi ply, whatever…it should still be proportional. For example, at my bodyweight, around 185-190, 500lbs is a great raw squat, just as 650 is a great walked out single ply squat,  just as 750-800 is a great multi ply squat out of a mono. If I can do one of those, then I should be able to do all of them. Period.  Be a balanced lifter and have the guts to train and not just test.