Balancing Strength and Body Weight
The Good News
My powerlifting raining is progressing slowly, but surely. At the end of week eight of dedicated training, my lifts currently stand somewhere around:
Squat: 170kg (based on a 7 rep max of 140kg)
Bench: 120kg (based on a 4 rep max of 110kg)
Deadlift: 215kg (based on a 7 rep max of 180kg)
Of course, I never trust these 1-rep max calculations. I’ll never claim a lift until I have, in fact, lifted it. However, when it comes to strength training, warming up for and performing a 1-rep max takes a lot of time and energy that could be spent training to get stronger. That was why I was hoping to use competitions to test myself.
Sadly, there don’t seem to be all that many powerlifting competitions out there…so it could be some time before I can actually test these numbers and practise my competition technique and lifts.
At this point, I don’t really know what to expect next from my progress. I suppose it will start to slow down as I reach the very limits of my strength and start to struggle to add 0.25% onto anything. Thinking positively (ambitiously hoping to improve by 5kg a month), I’d like to hit something like this by the new year (8 weeks) or my 30th birthday (10 weeks).
Squat: 180kg, Bench: 130kg, and Deadlift: 225kg.
A 225kg deadlift at 75kg bodyweight has always been my strength ambition, so I’ll be happy if I get there at any point – never mind within 10 weeks.
The Bad News
I currently weigh about 78.5kgs. To drop into my weight category (74kg), I’ll have to lose the best part of 5kg.
Shedding a few kilos doesn’t sound hard. However, my current body fat is about 9.6kg (12.2%). Assuming that most my weight loss will be fat loss (I don’t want to lose muscle at this point or…I dunno, bones??), it looks like I’m going to have to half my body fat and strip down to just 6%!
That doesn’t sound at all comfortable. Or achievable, given my lifestyle. I might have to start looking to weight loss techniques for competitions, but I don’t much fancy the classic dehydration and trauma. This is meant to be fun!
Who knows, I might have to POWER UP to the 84kg weight category instead.
We shall see!