Realizations of Success

Mark Brown

March 9, 2022

March 8, 2022 I went to the movie theater after work. That day was a Tuesday. Tuesday after work is normally when I do isolation based lifts that include curls, pushdowns and pulldowns on biceps, triceps and lats, respectively. I was at the movie theater because my middle and lower parts of my back were sore and stiff. On the drive home, I was talking to myself out loud and stuff just came to me. I’ve been going exceedingly hard at the gym over the last nine weeks experimenting with a different program than I’ve ever used before. Instead of focusing on reps and sets, I’ve been lifting for workload. The goal has been to gain more absolute strength.

Every lifter knows that injury is a matter of when, not if. I came quite close to that last week. The feeling in my back developed the week prior when I was on vacation from work. I woke up Friday about 11 am and decided to get my lifting done for the day early, but my back was already feeling stiff and achy even then. I pushed though a my normal Friday routine of high bar squats, sumo deadlifts, leg press and all the accessories I do. I could feel my back stiffening up even further as I completed my set of sumo deadlifts. Saturday I decided to pass lifting to Sunday. It went well enough, but I knew I couldn’t press too hard. Monday, March 7 I woke up quite stiff, a little sore and very achy. I packed my gym bag like normal, but as the day wore on I wondered if I was going to actually lift that day. Mondays are a big day. It is the day that sets the tone for the week. I’m mulled the decision to lift even after I got dressed in the locker room at work. I ended up going to the gym.

I knew I didn’t have my normal Monday lift in me because of the way my back was feeling. I was aiming for March 7 to be a de-volume kind of lifting session. I told myself to put my best 8 sets of squat and a deadlift together. As much as I tried to warm up, it was just so damn difficult to get my back to loosen up. I started my low bar squat with my normal warm-up sets at 135 and 225 pounds then moved to 345 pounds for my first real set. I lifted that weight 6 times, which is 2 sets done without rest in between, 365 and 385 pounds for 2 sets of 3. The latter weight is the highest intensity I usually do at the gym because of safety reasons. I lifted a set of 2 and 3 at 405 pounds, which I haven’t done since the end of November 2021 when I maxed out at 415 pounds in the garage. I could feel my back was starting to really stiffen up and bending over to pick stuff up off the ground was beginning to hurt. I pushed on with my sets of traditional deadlift anyways. I lifted 2 sets at 315 and 345 pounds before I stopped after doing 1 rep at 365 pounds because I knew something bad was going to happen if I kept lifting. I finished the accessory lifts, which were all isolation based, and left.

What I just described is something that everyone who is serious about strength training will experience in their lifetime at least once. This marks the fourth time this has happened since I started lifting in 2013. So the realization I had in my car on the way back home from the movie theater on March 8 was the conversation that every lifter has to have with themselves at some point. The fact that I went to a movie after work on a day that I’m normally lifting is evidence that I can, in fact, listen to my body when it’s telling me not to lift. That is an important lesson to learn for all lifters and quite relevant to the realization I had in the car.

Over the last nine weeks I have increased my workload at the gym a crazy amount. What started out as 8-10 sets each of squat and dead lift in January turned into 13 to 14 sets of squats and 12 of deadlift by the end of February. Understand that a set is 2 or 3 reps maximum with 2 minutes between sets in my current programming. Not just doing it once, but twice a week. First on Monday then on Friday. I have already stated up above what my normal intensity range is for my normal lifting days. The amount of lifting done clearly shot through the roof in February. I will be making a more detailed post about the math part of this soon. My mentality in the gym is to always keep pushing, even in the face of potential injury. Something has to be quite serious to actually get me to stop lifting, even for a set or 2, because that’s who I am. It’s my greatest strength as a lifter and my greatest weakness.

What I realized on the way home from the movie theater was just how insane my lifting program had become over the last four weeks. I knew I was lifting very heavy in terms of workload but I knew I could handle it so I kept going. The 405 pound squat is what I was really drawn to in my thoughts. At the end of November I did a max squat in the garage and successfully did 415 pounds with all out max effort and failed at 420 using the same amount of effort. Monday’s 405 pound squat was definitely not max effort. It showed me that my level of focus was so honed in on the goal of increased absolute strength that I kept pushing until I lost sight of the bigger picture. The stiff, achy back that I am currently experiencing is from losing track of where I am going. That’s why I wasn’t at the gym on Tuesday and why deadlifts will be out of the program for at least a week or two.

I realized when I told myself on Monday “I want my best 8 sets” that I was actually doing what I had intended on doing in January. I had found that focus that I lost by doing a seemingly endless number of sets. Moreover, the stated goal that I had been seeking has been met. I can feel it in the lifts and Pete, the guy whose garage has our combined equipment in, said he can see a physical change. I was planning on peaking in early April in correlation with a return to the garage where I could test a max squat and bench press inside the safety of my power rack. I’ve found over the last 2 months that while I mentally focusing on deadlifts, my decision making was putting the emphasis of development on squat.

The only conclusions I can make are that I either my decision to ramp up volume in February made me peak too early than intended on paper or I was physically on schedule with my previous program last fall. After the completion of that program and resting a week after, I started lifting the second full week of December under a different training structure. Either one means I missed my intended mark on the calendar of a programed designed to peak after 16 weeks, not 12. I’ll just have to be more disciplined in the future. I am likely to continue this program until I get back to the garage. Once I get there, my programming will be radically different in almost every conceivable way. I have no real idea how long that will be. The air temperature hasn’t been that low all things considered but the bars will still be frozen until April I’m sure. I just want to accumulate as much strength as I can in the meantime. It’s already been an unequivocal success, but right now it doesn’t feel that way.