Its the end of the month so lets get down to business and recap what’s been going on with Team Savage!
One to one client Paul has been smashing it this month hitting rep pbs of 78kg x4 in the Push Press and 100kg x4 in the Squat. He’s also smashed new 1RMs in the Bench Press of 115kg and 92.5kg on the Push Press. Paul is working hard in his training sessions and going from strength to strength.
Big Jo hit some big PB’s in the deadlift taking 210kg x5 and then the week after taking 220kg x5. He also came second at the Newcastles Strongest Qualifier in the Novice category after not having the best run in training. In honesty Jo thought about pulling out, but we talked it through and he competed and it paid off. There’s a lesson there and I might touch on that later.
Liam P has been our true high flyer this month (He’s a Basketball player but no pun intended). He hit a post lockdown Bench PB of 92.5kg and then followed it up a couple of weeks later with an all time PB of 105kg. He also hit a pretty comfortable Squat PB of 140kg and a seated OHP PB of 65kg. In the lesser tracked PBs he also PB’d his Bent Over Row taking 80kg x6 which bodes well for hit Deadlift when we switch focus from the squat and a Pull-up PB of 10 reps with an extra 7.5kg hanging from his waist. Liam is smashing it and is one of my most consistent guys online and its showing!
In the Weightlifting Club Lucy hit a PB triple in the Block Snatch of 39kg and a PB 3+1 in the Block C&J - 52kg (2kg). This is big for Lucy as they are movements she struggles with so to hit a PB in these shows progress and will start to cross over to her main lifts. As a general rule, if you focus on what you’re bad it, you’ll probably get better all round.
Xena’s been smashing her Squat recently hitting PB’s of 68kg x5 (+3kg) followed by 70kg x5 (+2kg). Not bad for somebody who couldn’t squat at all when she first started. I’m not doing anything special with Xena, just linear progression alternating between hitting a rep pb one week and building volume the other. We’ll ride that train until it stops.
George C has been doing great work in the Strongman Club hitting his first 200kg Deadlift (a 20kg PB) while also PB-ing his Squat at 130kg for a double. His overhead has been going from strength to strength too Taking PBs of 92.5kg in the Push Press from the Rack and Axle FTOH. Doing 92.5kg on Axle FTOG suggests there’s more there on the Push Press out the rack and we’ll take that at some point in the future.
George F has been making gains in his grip strength which is a current focus in the Strongman Club right now and has progressed his Double overhead Deadlift to 210kg.
Lastly, Sean W who is part of our Online Strongman Club took a deadlift rep PB of 230kg x4, this was meant to be for 5, but Sean over shot. Going forward this means we have to back track a little and his goal now is to hit 230kg x5 at the end of this block.
Lots of PB’s there and this feels like a pretty long blog but I am still going to talk about Jo and his run up to Newcastles… I’ll keep it short.
In the run up to Newcastles, around 7 weeks out, Jo got an irritation in his Biceps tendon that basically stopped him doing everything but SSB Squatting for around 5 weeks. This was the first phase of ‘should I pull out’ but I told Jo to hold off until closer to the time to see how it pans out.
We worked with a great Physio called Darren at Pro Health Physio, look him up and got Jo back to lifting basically at full capacity within 5 weeks (He still has problems with skull crushers). This was the point Jo hit his Deadlift PB’s…
So lesson 1: When you’re injured, still train what you can!
After that stint we were careful for the 2 weeks run up then Jo 3 days before competition got flu which killed his appetite and energy, he thought about pulling out again.
My thoughts are that strongman competitions are around 6 minutes of work across the day, grit in and deal with it.
Long and short of it, Jo competed and came second after not really training the events while ill. He even won the stones which he’d trained once in the 7 week run up.
Lesson 2: Compete anyway and don’t worry about placing, you might surprise yourself.
Jo showed a lot of mental strength in the run up to this competition, especially for an 18 year old and the experience will be something he can remember and use going forward for a long time.
Until next time
Adam
