Weightlifting: 2018 Review

T'was the year of the bulk, with Mac-like results.

I came back from a debilitating back injury early in 2018. I didn't start squatting again until April, and it took till the end of October to reach my previous level of strength (started out front squatting 155 lbs, and ended up doing a back squat with 350 lbs for five reps months later). My training has stabilized as I've found a decent routine I've stuck with for a while (outlined here). The only PR I set all year was a 195 lbs strict press at 197 lbs; but 2018 was supposed to be the year of bodybuilding, not one rep maxes. Instead of constantly testing my max, I focused on accumulating volume and lifting in the 5 to 10 rep range. My weight increased from 196-197 to 200-202, although there was a little bit of fat gain around my waist (though not as bad as Mac up there). Good, steady training is pretty boring, it turns out. Here's what I learned in 2018 in a nice, bullet-point format.

-When injured, train around injuries until healed. While my back healed, I did single-leg dumbbell squats, leg extensions, and sissy squats. Those exercises kept some of my muscle mass, although it's taken a long time to recover my back strength. Before getting injured, I was deadlifting over 500 lbs; I recently did 375 for 5 sumo style, so I'm still getting there.

-Switching to closely related lift variations keeps training fresh and progress moving. Moving to close grip for a few training cycles seems to have got my stagnating bench press moving again, and I plan on setting a low bar squat PR in two weeks after having switched this cycle from high bar squats to low bar.

-Weight gain is good, to a point. Most people don't want to hear this, but gaining weight is hard. At 5'9, I've had a hard time getting past 200 lbs without most of the weight gain being fat. However, the couple extra pounds I've gained have helped my training. It's just about eating a lot of decent food, rather than stuffing yourself with garbage.

-Find a training schedule that's just enough volume, rather than too much or too little. I really like four day a week training. My workouts run from forty minutes to an hour. Previously, I had been training five days or more a week. I find that if I lift more than four days a week, I get burned out quickly. As long as you're progressing, you're doing alright.

And that's it. I'm going to continue my current program for the foreseeable future, and hopefully I'll have a good year with some solid PRs. Achievable goals for the year would be a 450 lbs squat, a 315 lbs bench press, and a 550 lbs deadlift. I'll throw a 200 lbs strict press in there, since that would be a minuscule 5 lbs PR, but hey, progress on the strict press is small.