02 Mar The Weight Gain Trap
By Dain Soppelsa/Friends of PRS
In a sport like powerlifting it’s all about lifting as much weight as possible, no matter what the cost. It is easy to get sucked into putting on body weight to make this happen. You may just find yourself packing face until your stomach feels like it will explode. Eating will no longer be fun. You won’t care about taste. It will just be about consuming calories. The mindset at that point is that if you get bigger, you will also get stronger. This is true to a point, but there is definitely a point of diminishing returns. At first bigger will probably mean stronger, but it’s not a wise path to follow forever. You’ll look in the mirror one day and realize that you look like crap, you feel like crap and your strength gains have stopped. I’ll admit that I’ve done all these things at one point or another. It feels good for your lifts to climb as your weight does the same. It’s easy to get started down this path, but it will be considerably harder to pull yourself out of this trap.
[wa-wps]
When I started powerlifting I pretty much started gaining weight right away. Both, from lifting heavy weights, and eating a lot of food. I was about 255 pounds when I did my first contest and shortly afterwards, I decided I should push my weight up to a full 275 pounds so I would fill out my weight class. This wasn’t a bad idea since I was sort of in no man’s land right between 242 and 275. So I was a full 275 within the next two meets. Some people told me they thought I would make a good 308 based on my frame, so I decided that would be my next body weight goal. I did a few meets in the 280’s and 290’s before I first managed to crack the 300 pound mark.
Once I cracked 300 pounds consistently, I decided I should gain about 7 to 8 pounds and fill out my weight class again. So I did just that in a few months. Then after a meet or two at 308, I found my body weight hovering between 310 and 312. So I started flirting with the idea of going SHW. So I did a couple meets at a light SHW, but some people told me, if I was going to be SHW, it’s silly to be just a couple pounds over 308. They said my competition at this weight class was going to be 325 pounds and up, so if I intended to be competitive I needed to get up to 325 pounds or so or go down to 308.
Well I decided to try to be a bigger SHW. This would require my first experience with forcing myself to eat, even when I wasn’t hungry. I have a pretty good appetite, but there comes a point where a person is just full. To gain weight at that point, I had to force down high calorie food past when my body told me to stop eating. I also got tired of cooking food, especially when nothing really sounded appetizing, so I found myself eating a lot of fast food. It’s fast and it’s cheap, so it was appealing at the time for the purpose of just pushing the number on the scale higher.
It only took a few months to put on the extra weight. I am a person that can gain weight fairly easily, so it came pretty quickly. I had achieved my SHW goal and I felt very strong, but the gym was the only place I felt good. I felt like crap doing anything besides lifting weights. I was getting a lower back pump from walking any further than about 20 feet. I had issues even tying my shoes. I found myself wearing a lot of gym shorts, workout pants and flip flops. Not only that, but the weight gain wasn’t paying off on the platform like I had hoped it would. I strung together a few bombs, not managing to get a squat passed in a meet for at least a year. I was told by more than one judge that due to me having short legs and being well over 300 pounds, it had become very difficult to judge my depth. So after a pow-wow with my training partners, I decided to lose some weight and try to finish a meet for a change of pace…
I cleaned my diet up and started doing a lot of outside work including sled and prowler work to help get my weight down. I did a meet at 308 on the way down from SHW and I did manage to get one squat in and finish the meet, but I was definitely not pleased with my performance, so I kept going with my original plan of going down to the 275 class and seeing how my body would react to being there.
I managed to make 275 the next time I did a meet and things did go better. I got some more lifts in than the previous meet and I definitely looked and felt much better than I had as a SHW lifter. My squat and bench didn’t go down much to speak of and my deadlift actually went up due to improving my starting position by being lighter. So I stayed at the 275 class and all my strength came back and more over time. It was a pretty good place for me to be based on how I’m built and my new leverages.
About the time I was making some progress, I managed to tear my pec pretty badly doing some floor presses about a week after competing in a push/pull where I benched 675 and pulled 675. These were both big PR’s for me at the time, especially the deadlift. This was my first real injury and I was lost motivation pretty quickly, so right after I had the injury, I decided to go down to the 242 class so that I could concentrate on my diet while my training would be very light and boring, so my injury could heal properly. It definitely helped my mental state during that 4-6 months of very monotonous training, while my pec got back to full strength.
I did make it down to 242, but I definitely did it wrong and my strength really suffered. I did the first Pro/Am in Columbus, OH. I competed on day one where squats and benches went fairly well. I was leading my weight class going into the deadlift, only to bomb out which was a first in the deadlift. The weight didn’t even break the floor. It felt like it was a 1000 pounds instead of low 600’s. So needless to say, I was disappointed with my performance. Without too much thought or reflection, I decided to do a bench only meet locally where I weighed 259 and managed to bomb again.
Convinced that the body weight itself was my only issue, I dedicated to get back up to a full 275 and compete there, which I did quickly. I did a few meets there and managed a pro total of 2304 with a near miss at a 1003 squat. My strength felt great and I had no reason to go anywhere, but that didn’t stop me from doing just that. I wanted to squat a 1000 pounds and I didn’t care if I made 275 of not. So my next meet I weighed something in the 280’s and squatted a grand pretty easily. Right after that meet, I decided to fill out my weight class of course. So I was back over 300 pounds the next meet I did. I squatted over a grand and totaled over 2400.
Then next meet I did was an SPF Pro/Am where I watched Brian Carroll squat a very deep 1185 at 275 pounds for a world record. I squatted 1055, benched 730 and pulled 650 for a 2435 total. I just missed a 720 deadlift that would have given me a 2505 total. So naturally the next thing I did was not cut weight to make 308 and go SHW again to try to get my first 2500 pound total. Next I did a meet in Detroit where I squatted 1060, benched my first 800, pulled 640 and totaled 2500 with only one deadlift completed. I felt strong as an ox in the squat and bench and crappy on the deadlift. The 330 pounds I weighed that day didn’t carry over to my deadlift.
Life happens and I made a detour from powerlifting for a while. So I started over with my weight and strength. I decided early on in the process that I didn’t need to spend anymore time at SHW. I just couldn’t justify putting my body through it again. There’s just nothing pleasant about it. So currently, I am right at about 300 pounds and I’m definitely not in great physical shape, but I don’t eat terrible or gorge and 300 pounds is where I stay pretty consistently. I don’t even have plans of gaining those last available 8 or so pounds to fill out the limit on my weight class. My life outside the gym doesn’t suck, but it could still improve. I’ll admit that. So my plan is to compete another couple years at 308 and finish my competitive lifting days at 275. I think it’s a good place for me to be healthy and strong.
My advice to someone just getting started in powerlifting would be to have patience. We are doing a sport where you want to lift the most weight possible, but it doesn’t have to be over night either. Take your time. I would also say that you should really evaluate where you honestly think you will be the strongest overall. In my experience, when your deadlift starts to go down while the squat and bench go up, that’s a good sign that you’ve maxed out your frame. There’s no shame in taking a step back on your bodyweight. I would also recommend that you don’t bounce from weight class to weight class either. You’ll never know what your potential is if you only do one or two meets at a weight class. Another good reason not to rush is that you never know when or if you’ll have an opportunity to compete in the lighter weight classes, so if skip right through them, you may never get back to them. You should also seek advice from people who know what they’re talking about and care about your well-being, people that won’t tell you to just keep going up in weight if it isn’t necessarily a good idea.
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