Januarys a long old and busy month isn’t it.
I’m tired already and its currently only the 25th of January. That means this will be a short one, because as I say… I’m tired…
So, onto the PB’s.
Hannah obviously hasn’t hit any PB’s yet, but she is back and we’re creating consistency in training after 3 months away to have a baby, so lets celebrate that!
Jen has hit a rep PB in both the Front and Back squat taking her 90% for a set of 4 in the Front Squat (62kg) and a set of 3 in the Back Squat (81kg). Thats some awesome work and makes me optimistic for her Snatch and Clean & Jerk too as when the squat goes up, the classic lifts usually follow shortly after.
Paul has smashed it this month, he’s at the business end of this block and hit a huge 10kg Front Squat PB of 100kg along with a rep PB in the Back Squat of 100kg for a double. His strict press went up to 67.5kg for a single and the big win was we got on top of Pauls Push Press technique and took his 1RM to 85kg after struggling with 70kg at the beginning of the training cycle.
Jo competed at Kaos’ strongest teen coming away with an event win and an impressive second place hitting PB’s in the Log at 102.5 (+2.5kg) & 15in Deadlift at 235 x3 (+2 reps) along with taking an event win in the 80, 100, 120kg Sandbag Run. This was Jo’s first run out without me by his side and he did admirably looking after himself at 17.
Liam T also took a PB in training on the Log at 80kg (+5kg) in his prep for his first ever competition on the 20th February. Liam will hit more PB’s on the way to this competition in the next couple of weeks.
In the weightlifting club Lucy came away with a PB Clean of 71kg (+1kg). It was a small PB but sets us up well for the next block of training which starts with a conditioning mesocycle and lots of EMOMs and reps.
David W hit a 10kg Deadlift PB of 250kg, the big difference for Dave being that he spent a lot of time pulling on a stiff bar since he came to me, I literally wouldn’t let him stroke his ego with the Deadlift bar. This made him much stronger off the floor compared to when he used just the Deadlift bar exclusively and that translated into a PB.
Lastly Sean hit a Log PB of 125kg (+5kg). A nice finish to a training cycle that leads us into competition mode for BNSF Northern Qualifiers on the 26th of March.
A quick one on Dave’s PB and a bit of advice to finish.
If you spend all of your time on a Deadlift bar and want a different stimulus, hop onto a stiff bar for a training cycle.
Yes the deadlift bars nice, it bends allowing you to gradually pick up the full weight on the bar and also pick up the full weight higher up the shin, because of that, you can usually pull slightly more on it while it stroking the ego too.
A stiff bar like the Rogue Ohio doesn’t, you get the full weight pretty much straight away. I won’t lie, it’s not as nice to pull on, but it will build starting strength which often helps transfer the the rest of the lift. Its what helped dave put 10kg onto his Deadlift Bar PB without much more than basic linear progression.
He pulled the 250kg on a stiff bar so likelihood is theres more there on the Deadlift bar when we transition him back.
Give it a crack for some easy gains.
Until next time
Adam
