I Thought Age Brought Wisdom

This is good news, if not a little confusing: I benched 290 the other day.  That’s not far from my all-time best, 310, and way better than expected, considering I hadn’t really been training for it.  Instead, I’ve been doing high reps with fairly light weights and fooling around with a little rack work, on a break from the heavy grind.  Startling as it is, this is good news.  If I handle my programming right, then even greater feats await.  The only problem is that I’m not exactly sure what to do, having confused much of what I thought I knew about training.   

I learned what NOT to do last Spring, which is keep at heavy sets for a long time.  I had a hip hurting from heavy deadlifts, a leftward hitch at the bottom of my squat, and a bench press that had regressed from 310 down to a 280 I was glad to get just before jumping ship.  

In July of 2021, I dropped my weights to 55 percent of max and hit sets of 10, fixing my form errors and lifting pain free.  I’ve debated with myself over whether that was too light; it’s been a long, slow trip back - but then again it was great: easy in many ways, and it cleared my head.  By the time Christmas approached, I had notched upward enough that I couldn’t make 10’s anymore in the squat and bench.  The Romanian deads were getting dicey, and the narrow grip inclines had already died two or three weeks before.  

Christmas seemed to present a natural break.  It was time to switch into a familiar 8-5-2 weekly progression and push the heavier weights once more.  

Fate intervened.  The 17 year old brought a case of Omicron Coronavirus home from school, canceling our holiday travel plans.  (No symptoms, no drama . . . ) but with not much to do, I figured I’d still lift during vacation week.   At this age, the soreness upon returning from a week off can be more trouble than the rest was worth, so I just messed around with some maxes.  

290 is exciting and not too far away from 315, three plates on each end of the bar, a longtime goal, a notable, not heavily traversed peak in the rugged mountain range of masculine achievement.  If the light stuff has gotten me this far, then a reasonable, judiciously applied amount of additional work can get me the rest of the way.  

How do I get there - and come to think of it, how did I get here?  

Really, the truth is that it wasn’t just the light stuff.  I probably shouldn’t admit this, but for a while I thought it was - until I remembered something I had considered pretty extraneous, the handful of pin presses I’d been doing. Starting a bench press from a dead stop on set of rack pins down near chest level forces the central nervous system to activate the maximal number of motor units needed for that given weight - which will be more motor units than if you had lowered the bar from arms’ length and taken advantage of the stretch reflex.  Pin presses are very direct, very focused, and therefore very potent, but done in excess they quickly become counterproductive.  A few of my reps have included driving 285 from near my chest, so Holy Smokes - that probably has something to do with the 290.       

Now, wait a minute: this changes the entire ballgame.  The strength focus is now a surprisingly small amount of heavy work, two rounds of 6-rep drop sets: 2 with 285, 2 with 255, and 2 with 235 - much of which is not really that heavy.  The sets of 10 at 70 or 75 percent of max in the bench join dips, inclines and kettlebell presses done in the same manner, providing a general, multi-faceted strength development at an intensity from which I can recover.  

If this particular combination of heavy and light carries my bench press to 310, 315, and beyond, then I’ve found the Golden Ticket, the best regimen for my age.  

My age . . . my age has probably figured in to all the difficulties I’ve created for myself.  I’ve been told, ‘You can’t handle weights like that at your age,’ to which I’ve responded with, ‘Watch me . . ,’ and grinding along in Sisyphean struggles with heavy, heavy sets in the bench, squat and dead, all in the hope of building the capacity for outrageous maxes.  

I have to decide whether this discovery reflects something bad or good.  

‘You can’t handle the tonnage, old man.’

‘You are seasoned and far more efficient than you ever imagined.’

I guess this is good news, as bizarre it all seems.  Strength gains, like all good things in life, are usually more hard won.

It’s a new way to proceed.  The old way hasn’t worked lately, so we’ll avoid insanity, at least from the standpoint of doing the same thing all over again.   I’ll use similar approaches in the squat and dead, and I shouldn’t exhaust myself too soon.