Resist The Temptation A common temptation lifters feel as they are preparing for a test day or competition is to do a test before the test. “I just want to see where I’m at.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that by lifters. To some extent this urge stems from a lack of...

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Stop Lifting The Same Weight Plateaus are a part of training. Your strength, skill, endurance, bodyweight (whether you are gaining or losing), none of it will progress in a straight line. There will be times of great improvement where everything feels great, but also times where you feel...

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Learning From Failure Last week I talked about how often you should compete. I had to learn my own lesson early in my career. I did my very first meet in December 2012. It didn’t go well, but that’s pretty normal and I’ll write about that in the future. I did my second meet in June 2014....

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You do not know your genetic potential. Nobody does! And the current research shows that where you start is not an accurate predictor of what you can hope to achieve. Despite this, too many people label themselves things like “skinny fat.” Implying that they can’t build muscle and can’t...

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Competing Too Often Over and over and over I have seen lifters get stuck in the trap of competing too often. It is an understandable urge: we compete in powerlifting because we like lifting heavy shit, and meets are the best place to do it. On top of that, very often when lifters come out of...

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The Benefit Of Low Rep Sets When people talk about the number of reps they are doing, they usually correlate this with the weight on the bar. Higher reps means lighter weight, and as the reps go down, the weight goes up. Once they get to 5s or 3s, they are doing some pretty high % work. While...

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Read This Before Your Next PR: Here we are talking about maxing out again. This is such a common question: how often should I test my max? And immediately after comes the question: how do I test my max? We could spend a week talking about these two things but we’ll give it a go in this...

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Recovering from your sessions is so very important, and when you feel like you aren’t recovering… well it sucks. We all want a single, simple answer. Whether it’s using a specific supplement, or taking ice baths after every session, we want one clear, easy thing we can do to fix all of...

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If You Fall Off Track, You’ll Be Okay Look, we are all human. There will always be temptations, and sometimes we’ll give in. Whether it’s a holiday, a birthday, or it’s just been a long week, there are going to be times that you overeat. Unfortunately, when this happens people will often...

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Training While Losing Weight: What You Should Expect We need to be real about expectations in the gym during a period of fat loss. For many people it will be difficult to build strength due to their decreased caloric intake. Expecting to see the same sort of progress when you are losing...

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