Benching and Injury Prevention

- For non-enhanced men in their 50s, benching twice a week without injuring their rotator cuffs requires direct rotator work, periodic evaluations of internal/external rotation, and consideration of minimal effective volume.

• To preserve strength and mitigate injury, it's recommended to focus on total weekly volume rather than frequency, and consider adding upper body aerobic work and supplements like CoQ10, glycine, and N-acetyl cystine.
• Tapering for a meet involves reducing training volume by 30-70%, maintaining high intensity (80-90%), and stopping training 2-7 days before the meet, with individualized approaches based on experience and goals.
• The author emphasizes the importance of high-intensity training, grip strength, and conditioning for individuals over 60, as well as the benefits of creatine and increased protein intake for preserving muscle.

Training Methods

- The author discusses two types of training methods: high-volume with conservative intensity and high-intensity with fewer working sets, but believes that intensity should be high year-round, with volume and specificity fluctuating based on the lifter's goals.

Cardio and Strength Training

• The author praises the novice lifter's critical thinking and curiosity about the relationship between cardio and strength training, and explains that while a higher VO2 max does not automatically equate to greater exercise performance, dedicated aerobic training can improve recovery, mitigate the risks of atherosclerosis, and contribute to overall health and well-being, with examples citing Lance Armstrong, Eddie Merckx, and Oskar Svendsen.
• If a strength athlete experiences a negative impact on their strength from 10-20 minutes of zone 2 cardio, it may be a cardiovascular health issue rather than a problem with the cardio modality itself.

Conjugate Training

- Conjugate training can be tailored to fit anyone, including older people post-surgery, by emphasizing GPP (General Physical Preparedness) until range of motion increases and pain decreases.

Building Strength and Muscle Mass

• To build strength, it's essential to increase muscle mass, which can take at least 10 years for a powerlifter starting in their late teens or mid-20s, with significant gains in the first year and progressively slower progress thereafter.

Deadlift Progress

- Common limiting factors for deadlift progress include grip strength, improper bracing, and a poor start position, which can be addressed through targeted training and practice.

Aging and Strength Gains

• As athletes age, factors like diet, sleep, stress mitigation, and consistent training become more crucial for continued strength gains, and reframing one's approach to training can help maintain motivation and progress.

Check out my website for training updates, published articles, and a whole slew of other weird shit:

www.hedlesky.com

This one is my favorite so far. It is a little pricier, but it is also not a weird cheap ass chrome painted metal that’s going to break and chip apart after a few uses. This is also one of the easier tools to use on yourself because of all the different edges and the angles you can get leverage on. 

https://amzn.to/3MUixt5

Just in case you can’t get an appointment at the goop lab, these super cheap scrape tools work pretty good. They are designed for soft scraping on your face, but I have worked them pretty hard into my thicker bits and not seen any wear or tear. Warning, I did have to throw out one of them because it had a weird little notch that kept cutting the shit out of me. These are cheap. You get what you pay for. 

Check out AKMV-18 if you dig the intro music:
https://solo.to/akmv18

Solum quod per exitum. 

This is going to sound weird, but you probably don’t need a coach for powerlifting. Especially if you’re new to the sport. I did a little thought experiment on social media a while back where I asked a few questions in several powerlifting and strength sport oriented groups. My questions were directed specifically towards coaches, but I got some great feedback from some clients of online coaches as well. My questions were the following:

1. How many competitions on average does a lifter do with your programming before they retire or go off on their own?

1. What is your best guess on how many meets a lifter competes in total throughout their entire career?

Summing up the average answers to question 1: 1. I got a multitude of reasons for this, but the main justification was that powerlifting has such a low barrier of entry, that most people experience powerlifting at their gym in one way or another, or see it on youtube, or has seen the multitude of influencers that are now out there and a competition basically became a bucket list item. A “do-it-just-to-say-I-did-it” thing. Which is cool. I get that. 

The answers to number 2 were all over the place. If I had to put an average to it, I’d say the general consensus is 2-4 meets. 

Now, I am a fucking weirdo. According to open powerlifting (and it’s missing a few), I’ve competed in over 40 meets. I have also never had a coach (except for a short period of time when working with Mike Zourdos just out of sheer curiosity how he set up his DUP programs which was an equal parts thought provoking, learning, and brutal experience). This led me down a rabbit hole of question and answer seeking. My overarching question at this point: 

Does having a coach do more harm than good for a beginner lifter?

My vote is a very certain yes. First of all the quality of online coaching is all over the place. You’ve got the world class exceptionalism of businesses like Reactive Training Systems all the way down to some 17 year old kid that deadlifts kinda a lot and is really good at making tik toks. If your coach has never bought his own toilet paper for himself, then you’re making a mistake. 

Second, failure is absolutely what breeds success. Trial and error. You can only be good at something after you sucked at it tremendously and had to work tooth and nail to improve at it. We see it all the time. It seems like every year at this point there is a new flash in the pan phenom that smashes some ridiculous weight somewhere and then just fizzles out after a few months, maybe a few years. This sport is a long haul. The longer you can stay in it, the more consistent your training is, the better you will be. Some research has been directed towards consistency and competing and found that athletes that compete in 4 meets a year have the most consistent progress and total improvements. That’s about four 12 week programs a year. That’s a lot of opportunities to throw some shit to the wall and see what sticks. Having a coach places this responsibility to figure shit out on them, not you. This leads me to my third point.

Coaches kill your accountability. I know this is counter intuitive to the reason why most people get a coach, but hear me out. Like I mentioned above, the vast majority of lifters use a coach for one meet and ditch them. I think this shows an inherent problem. The problem is a deflection of accountability. Say a lifter does their meet, does a great job, and ditches their coach for some reason to go off on their own. 99% of the  time (80% of statistics are made up on the spot) the lifter is going to hop back on the exact same program and either get hurt for a