KarlM: It's all about the log.

[KarlM]

That is just awesome! He is definitely a powerlifter!

All sorts of warm fuzzies!!

[KarlM]

8/25/22

AMBW = 176.8 lbs

Squat (M)
260 X 6 X 3

CG Bench (L)
185 X 6 X 3

Deadlift (H)
325 X 6

RDL
240 X 10 X 3

Had to stop my workout short after bench to catch a work meeting. Wen back to the gym in the late afternoon to finish Deads/RDLs.

Here is set 2 of RDLs. How do they look? They are easy to cheat.

[KarlM]

Belated meet recap! On 4/30/22 I competed in The Rise of the Kilonator in Golden CO. I went 8/9, scratching my third deadlift. I totaled 500 kg at 78.8 kg body weight. My DOTS score was 347.78, which beat my previous best score by a couple of points. I was very pleased with this, as this was my primary goal for the competition. This is the lowest body weight I’ve competed at. When looking at the DOTS score for my individual lifts, however, both my squat and deadlift were below my prior best DOTS, while I made up the difference with my bench. This is somewhat surprising, as the conventional wisdom is that bench will take a larger proportional hit than either squat or deadlift. In retrospect, I think this had to do with the extra body building work I’ve been doing, which has been biased heavily towards my upper body.

Surprisingly I wound up setting the CO Masters 1b state records for the squat and deadlift and total for the 82.5 kg weight class (this time for real!). This was mostly due to the relatively young age of the new 82.5 kg weight class. I don’t expect these to stand for very long, but I’ll take it none the less. I also won best masters lifter at the meet by DOTS. I was quite pleased with that!

Below are my third attempts for squat and bench, and my final second attempt for deadlift. I squatted 172.5 kg, benched 125 kg and deadlifted 202.5 kg.

[cole]

Good meet Karl! I recognize Rachel crass in the video, I've done several meets with her being the director. Maybe we should coordinate a meet since we both live in colorado. That would be cool

[JohnHelton]

Congrats on the meet! You are looking like a young, fit man!

[JohnHelton]

@KarlM @cole @alek I'm going to pose this question on Karl's log, because it seems as good a place as any to discuss. I'm curious as to why none of you guys pull sumo. You are all competitive powerlifters. I know a number of guys that made the switch and now pull more sumo. My daughter started with sumo. Then she gave conventional a full 6 months (pulled conventional in her first meet), but she is now back to sumo. She is just stronger that way. The other advantage (in my mind) is that sumo is more technical. It is a skill that you can work on to perfect. That makes it interesting/fun. Plus, when you do it right, it is just so efficient and easier on the back. I pulled a heavy conventional pull recently (first time in about 4 years), and I thought, "Wow. This just feels hard."

[alek]

Hey @JohnHelton, I've just never given it a fair shot in terms of focusing on it for 1rm strength. When I started training, I didn't even know there was such a thing, and in the internet circles I followed, sumo was bad-mouthed, so I didn't try it. As I've continued training, and gotten less dumb, I've dabbled with it a few times, but never in a focused manner. I did some deficit sumo for hypertrophy purposes last year, and early this year I used comp sumo as a variation for my conventional deadlift. I wasn't very careful with progression, and I pulled something in my groin area; I abandoned it after that.

When I go back to doing my own programming again, I want to give it another shot and do it justice.

[JohnHelton]

@alek You definitely have to take it slow. The adductors have to work up to the point where they are as strong as everything else. There is also a flexibility requirement that you don't have with conventional.

[KarlM]

@JohnHelton, yeah, my story is similar to @alek's.

I can see you're smelling blood in the water regarding my current deadlift woes, lol.

I've thought about giving sumo a run, and think I'm probably actually well built for it. My hips naturally have quite a bit of external rotation, so I think I could get into a good starting position if I played with it. I haven't because of, well, I suppose it's the sunk cost fallacy. I've built up my conventional all these years and haven't wanted to change for fear of having a weak ass dealift, and having to thenbuild up what's largely a very different movement. I also think I'd run in to early problems with weak(er) adductors and weak(er) hip external rotators/abductors, so the starting weight would be pretty low. That's not necessarily a problem for me these days, however. I find that as I age in this activity it's easier to take more of a long view.

I do think, however, that sumo isn't as good a general strength builder, and doesn't test absolute bad-ass strength as well as conventional does. I suppose a lot of that has to do with some of the ridiculous sumo pulls out there, using whippy bars and extreme stances to limit ROM to maybe 5 inches or so. I'm not interested in that, but that's obviously not an issue since I compete on a stiff bar.

The building general strength argument isn't really all that important to me these days, especially now that I think the best way to train lower body strength is probably some sort of squat followed by higher rep RDLs. If you care about body building, tack on knee flexion and extension isolation work (i.e. leg extensions and hamstring curls) and you got most of it covered. I could imagine having a sumo day followed by lighter squats (or a squat variation like SSB) then on heavy squat day, following that up with RDLs. Run that for a while while gradually running the sumo up and seeing where it peters out.

[KarlM]

Good meet Karl! I recognize Rachel crass in the video, I've done several meets with her being the director. Maybe we should coordinate a meet since we both live in colorado. That would be cool

Thanks Cole! Yeah, I'm definitely in for doing a meet. And Rachael gives very good bench hand offs. It made a big difference on my third bench. She doesn't drop the weight into your hands.

[cole]

@JohnHelton ill add my real quick view on sumo in karls log....it doesnt feel as good and i dont like it as much

[JohnHelton]

@JohnHelton ill add my real quick view on sumo in karls log....it doesnt feel as good and i dont like it as much

Totally valid.

[JohnHelton]

@JohnHelton, yeah, my story is similar to @alek's.

I can see you're smelling blood in the water regarding my current deadlift woes, lol.

I've thought about giving sumo a run, and think I'm probably actually well built for it. My hips naturally have quite a bit of external rotation, so I think I could get into a good starting position if I played with it. I haven't because of, well, I suppose it's the sunk cost fallacy. I've built up my conventional all these years and haven't wanted to change for fear of having a weak ass dealift, and having to thenbuild up what's largely a very different movement. I also think I'd run in to early problems with weak(er) adductors and weak(er) hip external rotators/abductors, so the starting weight would be pretty low. That's not necessarily a problem for me these days, however. I find that as I age in this activity it's easier to take more of a long view.

I do think, however, that sumo isn't as good a general strength builder, and doesn't test absolute bad-ass strength as well as conventional does. I suppose a lot of that has to do with some of the ridiculous sumo pulls out there, using whippy bars and extreme stances to limit ROM to maybe 5 inches or so. I'm not interested in that, but that's obviously not an issue since I compete on a stiff bar.

The building general strength argument isn't really all that important to me these days, especially now that I think the best way to train lower body strength is probably some sort of squat followed by higher rep RDLs. If you care about body building, tack on knee flexion and extension isolation work (i.e. leg extensions and hamstring curls) and you got most of it covered. I could imagine having a sumo day followed by lighter squats (or a squat variation like SSB) then on heavy squat day, following that up with RDLs. Run that for a while while gradually running the sumo up and seeing where it peters out.

I agree that conventional plus squats is probably better for general strength. That said I pulled 485 the other week after not having pulled conventional for years. My conventional PR is 500, but my e1RM is 510-520 now. Thus, sumo can't be terrible for general strength. I don't even do RDLs very often. Squats also have more carry over to sumo via quad work. That creates efficiency in training. I basically do minimal deadlift work to get stronger. BTW, I really like the training split that you proposed with sumo, squats, RDLs, and SSB. You can also run sumo and conventional at the same time, as Austin does. If you use autoregulation and the same protocol for both, then you can let them fight it out to see which is the strongest. This is what I am doing with the various grip widths for bench.

[heidikay]

Congrats Karl -- to both you and your son!

[alek]

You can also run sumo and conventional at the same time, as Austin does. If you use autoregulation and the same protocol for both, then you can let them fight it out to see which is the strongest.

This is pretty much what I planned to do.

[JohnHelton]

BTW, @KarlM, I do think Ryan got away with a little bobble at the top of his 3rd deadlift, but I'm so happy they didn't call that on him. He had the strength and he pulled the weight. There was no hitching. They tend to be stricter at national meets, but it is good to see that type of judging at local meets in my opinion. Especially with kids. You want them to be fired up about the sport. Nothing will turn them off quicker than to be nitpicked.

[KarlM]

I agree that conventional plus squats is probably better for general strength. That said I pulled 485 the other week after not having pulled conventional for years. My conventional PR is 500, but my e1RM is 510-520 now. Thus, sumo can't be terrible for general strength. I don't even do RDLs very often. Squats also have more carry over to sumo via quad work. That creates efficiency in training. I basically do minimal deadlift work to get stronger. BTW, I really like the training split that you proposed with sumo, squats, RDLs, and SSB. You can also run sumo and conventional at the same time, as Austin does. If you use autoregulation and the same protocol for both, then you can let them fight it out to see which is the strongest. This is what I am doing with the various grip widths for bench.

The way you pull sumo is good for general strength. I feel like the extreme sumo stuff isn't really all that great. And maybe a more narrow sumo, similar to Eddie Coan's, is actually a better all around strength builder.

Congrats Karl -- to both you and your son!

Thanks Heidikay It's a trip watching this kid grow into an awesome young man.

[KarlM]

BTW, KarlM, I do think Ryan got away with a little bobble at the top of his 3rd deadlift, but I'm so happy they didn't call that on him. He had the strength and he pulled the weight. There was no hitching. They tend to be stricter at national meets, but it is good to see that type of judging at local meets in my opinion. Especially with kids. You want them to be fired up about the sport. Nothing will turn them off quicker than to be nitpicked.

Yeah, I agree! And yeah, he definitely pulled it quite easily. On his own accord he's switched to hook grip to minimize this tendency to bobble. He say's it's because his supinated hand drags along his thigh. Oh the joys of sumo, lol.

[KarlM]

8/26/22

Bodybuilding day.

Chinups
BW X 16
BW X 12
BW X 11

Cybex Side Lateral Raise
115 X 20 X 3

Facepulls
worked up to 55 X 20. Supersetted with band partial side lateral raises. I really liked the way this felt.

Seated Incline DB Curls
30 X 16
25 X 14
25 X 13

Paused the curls at the top. With the incline, those pauses really put a lot of tension right on the bicep. Huge pump and burn from these. My bicep training is heavy standing DB Curls on day 1, and Seated Incline DB Curls on day 2. Right now it's working.
******

8/27/22

Got this in late after spending the day helping a friend paint his condo. The poor guy is in the middle of a renovation and is having trouble hiring labor for things like painting. He's pretty overwhelmed.

Comp. Bench (H)
210 X 6 X 5

Dips
+45 X 12 X 2
+45 X 11

Just before my last set of dips, they turned out the lights at the Gold's gym I like to train at. Got that last set done in the dark!

[KarlM]

8/29/22

Another late session.

Squat (H)
295 X 5r X 4s

CG Bench (L)
200 X 5 X 3

Weight moved well. Still feeling pretty fresh. I’m flying out Wednesday to go sailing with my friend over the Labor Day weekend. We will train at a gym in Pensacola for two of the days I’m out there. I’ll miss one body building session.