The human body is capable of more than we give it credit for...

Once a year all us crazy kids get together for the Limbo push pull, this year, I had no massive plans for the meet, just front up, put on a show for the punters and have a bit of fun. Leading in to this meet I had been following the Ben-Eiko-5-3-1 template [That I have mention HERE, HERE & HERE] and ticking along quite nicely, until; 3 weeks out I pulled 237.5 at training. 

Let me explain the conundrum, I always pull more in competition than I do in training, this is because

•           A: I de-load for 14 days meaning I come in to a meet fresh like roses

•          B: Training beats you up; whereas, in a meet you run a simple, easy warm-up then go lift on the platform.  

•          C: Don’t ever underestimate the power of people watching, staring, just waiting for you to fail

Now, going back to the 237 pull, 237 in the gym represents about 255 on the platform. How do I come to this conclusion? 

Stay with me here, you might learn something, I use this thing called a ‘Simple Linear Regression’ to explain this, the Regression looks at your training weights ‘X’ and then your competition weights ‘Y’ based upon previous meets and draws a line to predict what you should be capable of lifting, it works particularly well with the Dead lift since there is minimal interference from equipment like knee wraps or bench shirts.  

Now just let me make a few points clear from the outset; to do this, you need to have competed a number of times. As such, this is for fairly advance lifters. Furthermore; just because the name is ‘Simple Linear Regression’ does not make it ‘Simple’ at all, don’t try and calculate it yourself, just use one of the many online calculators. 

So now the boring predictions are done, we can move on to the fun shit, lifting weights! 

I warmed up to about 225, I would have liked to gone a little bit higher but there was only stiff ABC Power Bars in the warm up area and the bar on the platform was a whippy Texas Deadlift bar, so I went out for a 250 opener, walking out after posting your training logs and videos all over Facebook I can’t begin to tell you how nervous I was for that lift. I have only competed once this year, so I guess you can say I am out-of-practice. But once I got my hands on the bar everything just fell in to place, drove through my heels, pushed my knees out and then without even thinking my hips fired through and my chin tucked. As I walked off the platform I said ‘Fuck that felt heavy’ not knowing just how fast the bar came off the floor! 

The second attempt was 257.5, the notion of putting your faith in a statistical formula that is notoriously unreliable, not to mention in attempting a raw personal best by 2.5kg made me nervous as hell, but I had to block all that shit out. I put my feet in place, contrary to the You Tube Trolls, I ran my set-up procedure, got my air, grabbed the bar, and got moving, as I drove my knees out I went in to the same epileptic style shaking I did exactly 12 months earlier at the CAPO Deadlift nationals, but somehow managed to pull through and lock out. Without doubt that was one of the toughest pulls of my life. 

 

 On the final I went out for 262.5, I got my air, grabbed the bar and instantly felt like my abdominals were not turned on like they normally are. As I began to pull it felt like something snapped in my abdominals and I had a massive stabbing pain in my lower back – Yes at that point my stress levels went through the roof, then just to rub salt in, as I stood up my foot cramped up like some kind of cruel joke from god. 

That night driving home I genuinely believed I had broken myself; the pain was well and truly present in a time where adrenaline is normally taking care of all that flap-trap. However, when I woke up the next day and felt FINE, hardly a sore muscle fiber in my body.

I guess the human body is capable of more than we give it credit for...