Peter and Noel or DoctorPat or anyone who knows.
We finished my second maxing cycle for deadlift last night. Do I care that my deadlift went up only five pounds in the three months since the last one? It felt smooth and easy, though.
posted by Megan at 9:52 AM
8 Comments:
I can't tell you if you care or not :-) However, I'm a bit surprised. I would expect about 5lbs a month for where I think you are. However, I don't know about being a chick; that might slow things down.
That the DL was smooth and easy suggests it wasn't a true 1RM. Mine certainly aren't easy!
What does your trainer say?
How hard were you training before you maxed? Was there sufficient rest to supercompensate?
Were you lifting heavy (80%+ of 1RM) in your training? Did you attack your DL weaknesses?
The whole evening was for the 1RM.
Light 6 reps, slightly heavier 6 rep.
Noticeable 3 reps, more noticeable 2 reps.
5 singles to get me up to my max. My previous max felt smooth. Five more pounds felt smooth. We tried 5 more and there was no way that was going up. But, I'd already done five singles. Five minute rests (with stretching and dancing around).
Trainer says I am a baby powerlifter and am still learning to fire all at once. She accepts me however I am. But I wanted big gains.
Hmmm...
I'm sure your trainer has much more experience than me, so don't take anything I say too seriously.
In my experience there are rookies, who gain really really fast, and non-rookies, who gain slowly. However, I don't know about people who start lifting with a good strength base. Learning to coordinate muscle firing is certainly a skill that takes time to acquire.
Sounds like a good setup on the day for a max. What about the week before? I need about a week of light lifting before I'm ready to attempt a new max. The heavy lifting required to get a new max doesn't leave the required physical and mental strength to get a max without some rest. Recently I've been working in 4 week cycles -- 3 heavy, and 1 light, with a max in the light week. It has been working well.
Also, could you get the bar off the floor? If you could, but couldn't hold it, or couldn't hold it with good form, you need to attack your back. If you couldn't get it off the floor, attack your hammies and glutes.
I'm sure monster gains are just around the corner.
Couldn't begin to get it off the ground. But, it was the end of a long evening.
I've not a lot of experience in 1RM work. (Except for one arm chin-ups. That's definitely not repetition work for me.)
But I'd have expected more than that for someone who has just started training a lift.
BUT, I'll say that a 1 RM is tricky. There is all sorts of neurological/psychological stuff going on at that level. You might turn around and do another 15 lb next week. (You shouldn't try it, this is where your coach knows best, but I'm just saying, it isn't very predictable.)
And your trainer's comment seems to be along this line. ie. You have the muscle, you just can't co-ordinate the nerve firings just yet.
This sort of thing often moves in fits and starts. 20 lb next cycle!
Have you heard the line about biking? "It never gets easier, you just get faster." Perhaps the nature of lifting, with its discrete work periods, makes it not like that.
Really? I thought biking got easier. That's what made it fun, falling into that trance turning the cranks, and letting the miles disappear. Just nice smooth pedal strokes for several hours.
Justin
I'll go with doctorpat's very last sentence. 1PM gains rarely if ever increase at a steady rate. Weeks or even months of stagnation can be followed by very rapid increases.
It's also more useful to think of increases in relative terms. To use some strictly hypothetical numbers, increasing one's 1RM from 225 to 230 pounds is probably more significant than going from 400 to 415 pounds even though the latter is a bigger increase whether measured in raw poundage or as a percentage. I don't know if there's some formula which expresses this point in a more coherent way.
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