A previous post described my joint replacement surgery (left knee in March 2022 and right hip in August 2022) and my initial training in the following months. At the end of September 2023, 18 months after the knee replacement and 12 months after hip replacement, I participated in a national powerlifting competition. I competed in the M70-74 age and 90- 100 kg weight class and was the oldest competitor at the Swiss Single Lift Championships 2023 (SDFPF) in Yverdon-les-Bains on 30 September. I set three new Swiss records: 105 kg squat, 100 kg bench press and 180 kg deadlift. I’m pleased that I achieved a better squat than in any previous SDFPF competition and was only 5 kg and 10 kg off my best bench press and deadlift in competition. Here are the three record lifts.

In fact, neither the squat or deadlift was the limit of what I could lift. I was allowed a fourth attempt to try to improve the squat record I set on attempt 3. I successfully squatted 110 kg but unfortunately started to re-rack the bar immediately the head judge started to say “rack. Apparently I meeded to wait till the whole command was out his mouth. Oh well, live and learn. And the deadlift went up so smoothly and relatively easily that I am fairly sure I could have done 190 kg also. But in the moment, I did not ask for a fourth attempt, being somewhat concerned that too much hubris might cause a problem for the joint prosthesis. In hindsight, I regret not giving it a go.

My son Felix Strong also competed in the Swiss Single Lift Championship 2023. He set new Swiss records for the squat (195 kg) and bench press (125 kg) and added five kilos to his previous world record deadlift of 260 kg to lift 265 kg. All these in the T2 (16-17 year) age category and <82.5 kg weight category. He was also the best male lifter of the competition overall (all ages, all weights) for both the squat and deadlift..

In preparation for this competition, I took my training very slow and steady, starting very light and gradually building up over 15 months. I’ve always had knee limitations that made it difficult to squat below parallel. In addition, the surgeon had to detach the piriformis muscle to access the hip (mine was too strong to pull aside like he usually did). So I started by squatting to a bench a bit above parallel, gradually building up from 20 kg to 90 kg. I then started all over with a lower bench, squatting to parallel for a while, and finally took the bench away and started over, ensuring that as I progressed I was squatting below parallel. To help achieve this, I changed from low bar to high bar squat and slowed my squat right down. Rather than bouncing out of the hole (usually too soon), I drove myself down into the hole, came to a stop, and then drove myself up out of the hole. By early September, I was doing this with around 100 kg on my back and achieving depth. This competition was the first in which I succeeded in all four squat attempts without any red flags for depth issues.

In training for the competition, I focused on assistance exercises more than I have done in the past. I did a variant of the board press, in which I placed a cardboard carton from a whisky bottle inside my shirt. After I had done my normal bench press sets, I would add three sets of whisky box presses, adding 2.5 kg before each of these sets. This meant I was pressing up to 5 kg more than my actual one rep max to a point about 5 cm off my chest. I also did preacher curls, triceps pushups, weighted dips and lateral dumbbell raises.  For the squat, I did some ankle mobility work. For the deadlift, I did rack pulls, barbell bent rows, Romanian deadlifts and reverse hypers (three sets of 20 with 60 kg on the reverse hyper machine).

In peaking for the competition, I dropped most of the assistance exercises and trained all three lifts three times a week, with low volume (typically three working sets) and low reps (3 reps or less). For the deadlift, I lifted low reps in the range 100-150 kg, but did not go past 150 kg in training, apart from one 160 kg lift to be sure I could do my opening lift in the comp. I took my son’s advice that I should ensure I could do my opening lifts, by doing them before the competition, and possibly my second attempts also.