Why I Hate Power Lifting - bet that got your attention!

I don’t Power Lift. I don’t want to Power Lift. Ever. Ever ever.

Liberating just saying it! I hate lifting so heavy that I feel I’m going to pop a foo-foo valve. I hate trying to get ‘PB’s’ and set gym records. I don’t want to compete against others while pretending that I’m only really competing against myself (whateves!). I don’t care whether I ever bench my own body weight for reps. And what’s more …. while I’m quite interested and often enthused by others’ achievements – the bottom line is that I don’t really care if you do either. That’s not meant to be offensive – on the contrary – I am a follower of many ‘strengthi̅es’ but your achievements are yours and the greatest delight in your achievements should belong to you. Does that make sense? I think it does because it means that what I do I should only do for my enjoyment and not some perceived greatness that I might be receiving from nameless others on silly social media sites.

What has inspired this ramble today? Yet another trend has hit the fitness world and yet again I don’t seem to ‘fit’. Throughout my life I have often felt like a square peg trying to jam myself into a round hole. That’s my own dumb fault and I’ve come a long way since high-school when I truly suffered for my quest. I have (and do) read and re-read the story about the apples and bananas. If you don’t know it, here it is in a nutshell;

If you are an apple and you meet someone who doesn’t like apples, you can try to be a banana – because you know they love bananas and you want them to like you. But you’re an apple. Not a banana. So all you can ever hope to be is a pretend-banana, which would make you a low-grade of apple because all energy is going into being that pretend banana. But guess what? You will never be a true banana, and that person only likes bananas. So, in short, you’re still an apple and will always be an apple and nothing you can do will make that person like apples.

Back to training. It seems to take me a while to get into new trends. I tend to balk at all things ‘celebrity’ and by that I mean all highly popular trends. I prefer to take a back seat and see if they are credible for me. There are many that I have not felt drawn to when the masses flocked there; I don’t do kettlebells – they hurt my wrists. I have never picked up a battle rope – none at my gym and no inclination to buy one. I have never tried official Crossfit – but I have done plenty of workouts in my garage that I could probably call ‘Kirsten’ and it would fit into the WOD books. And I don’t care for power lifting/strength lifting – ie. lifting ultra-heavy shit with the goal being to get it from Point A to Point B.

I’ve been told, I’ve read articles and I've listened to podcasts that strongly state that lifting heavy really is the only way to increase muscle. Who am I to disagree? Maybe they are right – though anyone who claims to be the ‘god’ of what is right just turns me off big time, especially when they mock others to get their own point across – maybe they are wrong. Who really cares? I just know it’s not for me.

Why? Well I tried that heavy stuff for a while and I found the following things happened quite rapidly;

·         I took all focus of my muscle connection, putting more effort and energy in technique. For example, this meant that a lot of my bench press strain was in my back and my legs – less so in my chest. I’m sure it did actually work my chest – but there were many other muscles in play too – quite possibly due to the aforementioned bad technique. In short, I lost that connection that I rely on to really make my muscle scream.

·         My mind took a huge hit when I started to lift for strength progress. I know there are a dozen different apps and programs that are designed to spur along the trainee with automated weight increases etc etc. I detest them. Can’t think of anything that I would like to do less than be challenged to lift heavier by a robotic app.

·         And most important of all, by a country mile – I started to hurt. The heavy squats (most definitely performed badly by me) caused some sort of awful strain and ongoing pain in my lower back and in the middle of my upper back. I had never, ever had these injuries before and, all of a sudden, I had pain and strain. The ache lasted post workout and into the night and I had to find certain ways to sleep and sit to offer relief. I had a nasty screaming in my elbows from my arm position with the low bar squats and they would start paining when I even looked at that bar! This put deadlifts in the same boat. I just started hurting!

With the niggling injuries came the mind games. I was going backwards in weights rather than forwards. Oh that wonderful feeling you get when you get to the gym and know that, not only am I unable to lift heavier – I can’t even lift the weight I was on not 6 weeks ago!!! And I was indoctrinated to think that a nice ligh/high volume program was completely useless for anything. So I found ways to skip the gym. And that, quite frankly, for me – is unheard of.

So I stopped with it. I jumped off the strength train and right back into what I love most. Training my muscles in any way that makes them scream, with a progressive program in place for the long term. Just to clarify – I still train as heavy as I can with the rep range I am undertaking. I try to leave nothing behind. I’m no wimp. But I’m no power lifter either. And I don’t want to be one. If that means I look less than I could – so be it. I can live with that. Because the joy I get from training comes from the style of training I undertake.

On that, I have been with the wonderful Jo Mountfort for about 4 months now and I have to say that I’m loving every second of it! I’m challenged, my butt is whopped and I can see progress. I really do love the programs and it’s a different style of programming than I’m used to, which is a great change. I feel very renewed and revitalised. And guess what? Jo is a Miss Universe a few times over (WFF) and now a Pro – and she doesn’t do power lifting.

Nutrition is also going pretty darn well. I’m 2kg lighter at this point of my prep than I was last time so that gives me wriggle room. There is always pressure in prep to get as lean as necessary while not getting there too quickly or too soon. But I fought the weight-clock last time around and I have no intentions of doing that again. I would rather stand down from a comp than frantically scramble for a date with my weight. I have Giselle (NZ) looking after me and she works closely with Jo. Together they are a formidable team. That makes our little trio pretty darn awesome in my eyes.

It's finally time for a pic. I don’t do them often and the higher the onslaught of ‘selfies’ on FB, the less inclined I am to post them least I be grouped in with the regular monotony of asses and biceps that inundate our feeds as a comp gets near. But I will post them here and it takes a concerted ‘click’ to get to them so I feel better about that – haha – ‘taking the moral highground’ = PUKE!!

INBA 2012                                                           Clearly not 'comp lean' - yesterday

So all in all, everything goes well right now. House renos are beginning in a few weeks, work is as busy and challenging as usual - but I gotta say that I love it! - and this ol Darwin comp is looming in a few weeks. Apart from that, my three children are booked to the brim with school work, sports, dance, social lives and even a part time job for my oldest princess. Around all of this I'm trying out some new healthy recipes for them (thank you Ms Stringer!) and we are planning some pretty outstanding holidays for the year ahead.

Never a dull moment. Ever.