22 Jan To My Younger Self

By Daniel Dalenberg

For over a decade I have been pursuing strength, size and powerlifting. This February will mark 13 years of active competition and the 2017 Arnold XPC will be my 25^th meet. Over that time, I’ve learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes, hurt myself a few times and matured as an athlete. I’ve been lucky; I’ve had a reasonable amount of success while continuing to make progress and avoiding any sort of serious injury. That said, there are a handful of lessons I’d love to be able to share with my younger self.

[wa-wps]

Take it slow

This is mostly on my bodyweight. When I started out, my first couple meets were at 165/181, but I knew I needed to gain weight. I pretty much skipped 198/220 only doing a couple meets there before going right to 242. At 242, I’ve competed as light as 233 and heavy as 257. At one point I tipped the scale at over 260. Which, by the way, was disgusting and I felt horrible as I am only 5’6”.  I’ve rapidly changed my bodyweight several times, gaining and losing 15+ pounds in a matter of a few weeks.

The rapid change, while interesting and entertaining to do, hasn’t yielded as much progress as I would have liked. I’ve learned that a bodyweight of 240-245 is just about right for me. I am extremely strong at this weight and maintain what I deem a reasonable amount of body fat and keeping my health in a good spot. I’d like to be this weight and a bit leaner and wish I would have taken a slower, more calculated approach. I think it overall would have been better for my body, better for my physique and ultimately better for my total.

Get training partners

The times that I have learned the most about powerlifting have been when I train with experienced people in person. Going to seminars, group training days and now having a solid crew that I train with every week has made me a much better lifter. Reading, online coaching and research was huge for helping figure out how to program and setup my training. But so much is missed unless you get face to face time.

In college I missed out on that. I wish that I had spent more time trying to find people in the area that I could go and train with. I know of at least one pretty good lifter that had a nice home gym just down the road from where I went to school. I didn’t learn about him until after I had graduated! I wish that I put more effort into finding quality training partners early on.

Take off seasons

This one is pretty simple. There was a short period where I went straight from one meet to the next and didn’t see much progress, if any, in between. The time in between just wasn’t enough to actually get stronger or any better. I wound up pretty beat down and with a handful of small, inconvenient overuse injuries that could have been easily prevented. I needed to take time to back off and just get stronger but only wanted to compete. Thankfully it didn’t cost me much, but I think I missed out on some quality progress.

I’m lucky

Ultimately, I consider myself pretty lucky and wouldn’t change much about my early lifting. I was smart enough to find a system that made sense and stuck with it for a lot of years. That worked for a long time and then when it didn’t, I was smart enough to connect with a coach, Brian Carroll, and ask for help. I was able to learn a lot of hard lessons the easy way, rather than making my own mistakes he was able pass a lot of knowledge on. I was also able to learn how to coach myself and be adaptable to my own needs.

So that would be my advice to my younger self or any newer lifter:

• Take it slow. Lifting progress, weight gain, competitive goals. Slow and steady.
• Find great training partners. They don’t care how strong you are; they just need extra bodies for spotters. Be the help they need and soak up as much as you can.
• Back off when your body needs it. You can’t push hard forever.
• Find a coach/mentor/guider. Even better if that mentor also happens to be a training partner.

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Daniel Dalenberg

Dan Dalenberg is a pro level raw and equipped powerlifter with elite totals in the 220, 242 and 275 class. Best official raw meet lifts include an 804 squat, 507 bench press, 715 dead lift and 2006 total. Best equipped lifts include an 950 squat, 715 bench, 735 deadlift and 2400 total at 242. Dan has been training under Brian's guidance using the 10/20/Life methodology since late 2010.

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