Peter's Trap Bar DL PR

I hit a trap bar deadlift PR yesterday.

20lbs PR for Pete - Happy 45th Birthday bro!!! #FreakStrength #FreakFam #deadlift ---- #Fitspo #Eatclean #Health #Fitfam #Motivation #Gym #Healthy #Fitness #follow #like4like #tagsforlikes #instalike #likeforlike #follow4follow #followforfollow #l4l #f4f #followback #instafollow #likeforfollow #likeforlikes #20likes #likeback #likes4likes #followher #followhim #lflj

A post shared by Mike Guadango (@guadango) on Apr 17, 2017 at 11:40am PDT

That's 335 at 185 pounds of body weight. It shattered my previous PR by 20 pounds and matched my all-time best straight-bar DL. I felt like I had a lot of poundage left in me, but I hit a very solid PR and just cut it there. I can get more later.

Previously I pulled 315 at 180 pounds back in January. That matched my all-time PR pulled almost 8 years before. I pulled 315 on 4/3, and it was tough. I failed, needed to back off, and put on a belt, and then work my way back up to 315 and had nothing left in the tank.

Today it was just easy. I pulled:

5 x 155
2 x 205
2 x 245
1 x 295
1 x 315

Then I briefly failed on 335. I got set and started to pull and it broke the floor, but I realized I'd taken a too-wide stance and that forced me to roll forward onto my toes. I just stopped right there. I took less than a minute to re-set and pulled the rep in the video:

1 x 335 (with belt)

Pushing up the bar, and making Mike Guadango change record board listing:

Raising the bar on the @freakstrength record board.#freakstrength #freakfam #pr https://www.instagram.com/p/BS_zMtJl5N8/

A post shared by Peter Dell'Orto (@peterdellorto) on Apr 17, 2017 at 2:04pm PDT

335 isn't a very heavy deadlift for many people. For me, it's a significant PR and it shows me how far I've come.

I've got an eye on eventually pulled 365 at 182.5 pounds or less body weight - a double body weight deadlift.

I'd list credits of the people I need to thank for but the list would be too long. At the very least I need to mention three: John for getting me to pull 315 and 335 back in the day so I knew it was there in me now, Tom for constantly telling me to get after it and get it, and Mike for bringing me from trouble walking right to pulling a PR with room to spare.

If you had to start with two free e-Books, which two?

If I had to point people to two free PDFs to get started lifting and eating right, I'd go with these two:


From the Ground Up, by Dan John (reviewed here).

and

Fuck Calories!, by Krista Scott-Dixion

Why FTGU?

Because you have to start somewhere, and we don't really know where to begin. Dan John teaches athletes, and teaches Olympic lifts - but he also teaches solid basics.

I don't generally think Olympic lifts are for everyone, but I do think that understanding the concepts of those lifts is valuable. When it comes to a free ebook that explains what you are to do, why, and how, FTGU has everything covered.

Why FC?

Because when you are starting out, two things are in your way:

- what you think you know

- your habits

Cleaning up "what you think you know" is hard. We are bombarded literally every day with diet and diet-related news, tips, and most difficult yet, choices to make. What do I eat? Is this good for me? I heard I need more protein. I heard that this fat is good for you. I was told to eat more calories so I burn more, but also to eat less calories to lose weight - which is it? And so on and so on. Nevermind food labels, ad campaigns, and Photoshopped models pushing foods they didn't eat and supplements they didn't take to get like they did in the pictures.

FC helps by basically saying, "Here are the things to pay attention to about your body and how it reacts to what you put in it." But even more basically, more directly, and more usefully than how I just put it.

Those are the two free ebooks I'd recommend if you had to start with just free ebooks.

Visual Study Results on Instagram

If you're interested in keeping up, at least to a degree with studies about strength training, Chris Beardsley is your guy:

Chris Beardsley Instagram

His Instagram feed consists of visual layouts of study results in handy graphical formats. He explains further in the caption.

Personally I find it hard to keep up with even a useful fraction of the studies on strength training. They are too many, often small, written for scientific rigor not easy digestion, and scattered. Chris Beardsley is doing a great service by taking some of them and making the information pop out usefully.

Steven Low on Muscle Strain / Tendonitis

Steven Low wrote two excellent articles on rehabbing muscle strains and tendonitis, originally on his Eat-Move-Improve site. He's relocated to stevenlow.org, and I wanted to link to these two articles:

Overcoming Tendonitis

On Muscle Strains

If you suffer from either of these, these can be eye-opening looks at what's effective and the timeline involved in healing, rehab, and what kind of work you need to put in to prevent them.