Derrie’s Deadlift PR

My training has been pretty shit since last July or so. After lifting at IrishPF nationals in July 2017 it took a bit of a nose dive. I’d a good day – a 250kg squat, 162.5 bench and 267.5kg deadlift, but it was below what I was capable of.

That happens a lot in powerlifting. You see guys killing it in training, signaling some big numbers coming, only to have a disappointing performance on the platform. It’s actually the plague of the 105s as there’s a few of us like that.

Scott, one of the lads outta Kaos gym has been promising BIG numbers for ages in training but never managed to pull it together on the platform, this year he did with some STUPID PRs. It was great to see.

But today’s mail is not about him – it’s about Derrie.

Derrie’s been around the 105s for quite a while now. He’s a big lump of a lad that’s always been threatening to make a breakthru but never quite has. He started training with us about 12 weeks before the 2018 nationals having not made much progress in the 12 months previous.

He came into RevFit with comp best of 230/150/275 (I think).

He came outta nationals having done 235/145/295.

We gave up a bit on the squat to preserve for a big deadlift, and took a risky 3rd on bench instead of locking in 147.5kg.

12 weeks isn’t a lot of time for a lad at that level, but during it we were able to make a few technical tweaks that put him in MUCH stronger positions and allowed him to set up for some big numbers.

By FAR the biggest change we made was moving his right hand wider on the bar during deadlifts. Because he pulls sumo there’s always a risk that you won’t get your shoulder back to lockout, and having seen him fail numerous lifts in comp for that over the years, I knew it was the big thing to fix.

Once we did that his DL started flying. To the point where the 295 he pulled as a 3rd attempt in competition looked like a reasonable opener or second attempt. I said to Luke before we started the DLs “this is kinda scary, we’re so far into unchartered territory that I don’t know where he’ll finish”.

In a perfect world I’d have loved to take a punt at 300+ with him, but given how fast his DL has progressed with us, we’d no idea how much would be too much and with weights that heavy you don’t want to roll the dice too hard. One thing’s for sure tho – next time out I’m confident we’ll see 240+/150+/300+ to put him as one of the top 105s in the country.

And it was all because he wasn’t afraid to make a change and try something new. Kinda cool how a guy at that level is still learning right?