Category Archives: Strength athletics

Strength training, powerlifting, and strongman

Competing in Powerlifting after total joint replacements

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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.

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Some photos from the World Single Lift Championship 2023

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My younger son Felix Strong competed at the World Drug Free Single Lift Championship in Sardinia on 2-4 June this year. My previous post included videos of his three lifts for squat, bench press and deadlift. He competed in the 16-17 year age category (T2) and the <82.5 kg weight category and set a new world record of 260 kg for the deadlift, and two Swiss records for the squat (180 kg) and bench  press (115 kg).

We also purchased some photos taken by a professional photographer, Luca Antonio Piga, and I’ve posted some of them below.

245 kg going down after a successful first deadlift
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New World Record for the deadlift at the World Single Lift Championship 2023

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After setting three Swiss records and a world record at the Swiss Full Powerlifting Championship in March this year (see earlier post), my younger son Felix Strong was invited by the Swiss Drug Free Powerlifting Federation to compete at the World Single Lift Championship in Sardinia on 2-4 June. This WDFPF competition was held in Alghero on the northwest coast of Sardinia. Felix, accompanied by his father (me) and mother, flew to Olbia on the northeast coast on 30 May. We spent a couple of days exploring the Olbia region before driving across to Alghero on 1 June.

Felix did extremely well, setting a new world record for the deadlift in his age-weight class, and new Swiss records for the squat and bench press.  He competed in the T2 (16-17 year) age category having turned 17 earlier in 2023 and in the 75-82.5 kg weight class. As each lift was a separate competition on a different day, he had to weigh in each morning. His weight ranged from 81.5 to 82.2 kg. 

The video below shows his world record deadlift of 260 kg. This exceeded the previous record of 255 kg for his age-weight class by 5 kg. Apart from coming first in his age-weight category, he also came third overall in the weight category (75-82.5 kg), which included around 30 men of all ages. As the Italian commentator said, “È straordinario!”

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Powerlifting after total knee replacement – Part 1.

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I discovered I had osteoarthritis in both knees in early 2015. I found strength training very helpful and I took up powerlifting, competing at national level from 2017 to 2021 in the 60-64 then 65-69 year age category. I had a total knee replacement (TKR) of the left knee in March 2022. 

Before doing the TKR, I spoke to my surgeon about what I would still be able to do with a TKR and also searched the web for information. My surgeon echoed the standard advice that high impact activities such as running and jumping should be avoided completely, as should activities that involve aggressive pivoting (tennis, basketball, most martial arts). A few specifically mention Olympic weightlifting as involving high impact and should be avoided (for example here). Even so, I have come across people who have continued to run or do martial arts after joint replacement.

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New World record set in Swiss Powerlifting Championship

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My younger son Felix Strong trained hard this year for the Swiss Full Powerlifting Championship in Lausanne on 25 March. He competed in the T2 (16-17 year) age category having turned 17 a month earlier, and in the 75-82.5 kg weight class. 

Felix sets a new world record of 245 kg for the unequipped deadlift during a full powerlifting competition

He did extremely well, setting new Swiss records for all three lifts and for the total: squat 172.5 kg, bench press 110 kg, deadlift 245 kg and total 520 kg (1146 lb). His deadlift was almost 15 kg higher than the current world record of 230.5 kg and the Swiss Drug Free Powerlifting Federation has submitted it to the world body (WDFPF) for approval as the new world record. Short videos of his three lifts are below.

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My son sets powerlifting records at age 16

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I equipped a garage gym during the Covid-19 lock-downs at the urging of my older son and my younger son has now also caught the strength training bug. My older son is focusing on Olympic weightlifting, which involves explosive lifts to chest or overhead. The competition lifts are the snatch and the clean and jerk. My younger son has shown an aptitude for powerlifting with its three competition lifts: the squat, the bench press and the deadlift.

I suggested he compete in the Swiss Drug Free Single Lift and Powerlifting Championships 2022 on 25 September. He set new Swiss single lift records for bench press (95 kg) and dead lift (210 kg) in the 16-17 year age category and the under 82.5 kg weight category. The short video below shows his 210 kg deadlift.

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Competing at the SDFPF Powerlifting Championship 2021

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Last weekend, I competed at the Swiss Drug Free Powerlifting Championship 2021, held in Basel on 25 September. This was my first national powerlifting competition since competing in the last SDFPF Championship in February 2019. The 2020 Championship was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic I managed to lose around 10 kg bodyweight and competed this year in the 82.5 – 90 kg category at a body weight of 87.3 kg, almost 10 kg lighter than my weight of 96.5 kg in 2019. Despite my efforts to improve my squat and ensure that I squatted below parallel, I discovered by filming my squats in the week leading up to competition that I was only getting clearly below parallel around 50% of the time.

I opened my squat attempts conservatively at 90 kg, and succeeded in getting a below-parallel valid lift. However, I was disappointed to fail the next two attempts at 100 kg with inadequate depth.

For the other two lifts, I exceeded my anticipated results with a 100 kg bench press and 190 kg deadlift. These were both new Swiss records for the under 90 kg Master M6 age category (65-69 years), as was my powerlifting total of 380 kg. Below are short videos of the deadlift and bench press.

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The trap bar deadlift

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The conventional deadlift is done using a standard 20 kg barbell in powerlifting. Trap bars have a hexagonal shape which you stand in (which is why they’re sometimes called “hex bars”) with sleeves on the end that let you load weight, and they have handles on either side that allow you to grip the bar with a neutral grip.

During my 8-week wave cycling program for the squat, I had also been using the trap bar to do some deadlifting once a week during the last half of the program. Prior to that, I was doing Romanian deadlifts at about 60% of my conventional deadlift 1 rep max to work on improving hamstring strength. After I tested my squat 1-rep max, I also decided to see whether I could lift more than my current 1 rep max of 210 kg. The video below shows me setting a new personal best at 220 kg, and I felt I still had a little more in the tank.

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Improving my squat using wave cycling

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After a week skiing in February 2015, my knees became inflamed and painful and I had trouble walking up and down stairs. I found that deadlifts improved my knee function and started powerlifting training for deadlifts and bench press. For the first months, I avoided the squat completely, and only gradually started to squat with relatively light weights around 50-60 kg. In the last couple of years, I’ve discovered that my knees are fine with squatting with good technique to parallel or below. I still have trouble getting below parallel with heavy weight on the back but am working on improving mobility. In my last pre-pandemic competition in December 2019, I squatted 107.5 kg with depth that was only just below parallel and one of the judges told me afterwards he thought they had been lenient in judging depth. This was substantially behind my deadlift at 190 kg. Most powerlifters have squat somewhat less than they can powerlift, but the difference is on average only around 20% and is narrower at 15% at the elite level (see here for averages based on over 7 million lifts).

So I decided to focus over the last 8 weeks on improving my squat, to do only a minimal amount of deadlifting, and no bench press (instead to rehabilitate an AC joint injury). I had been reading Pavel Tsatsouline’s book Beyond Bodybuilding: Muscle and Strength Training Secrets for The Renaissance Man and decided to do the 8 week wave cycling program that he describes on page 80 of the Kindle edition.  Here is how it worked for my squat:

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Strength training in the time of coronavirus

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Geneva is about to ease the restrictions associated with the second wave of the pandemic. During this wave, average new cases per day in Geneva peaked at close to 3,000 confirmed cases per 100,000 population in the 14 days to 8 November. This was the highest recorded rate at regional level in western Europe. In other words, 3% of the population were confirmed new cases in that fortnight, and the real incidence would have been higher than that.

As can be seen in the figure above, the social restrictions introduced in most European countries have worked quite rapidly in turning the second wave downwards. The exceptions are Germany where it has plateaued by not yet coming down, though it never reached the levels of nearby countries, and Sweden where it is about to pass Switzerland on the way up. Daily new cases per million population in the USA now exceeds that in Switzerland. The USA now has 12 million confirmed cases, and the CDC estimates that the true number of infections is around 50 million, or 1 in 7 of the total population. Trump of course has gone AWOL and I suspect the USA is in for a bad winter.

My gym closed down again during this second wave. During the first wave it closed down for around 2 months and I tried to continue some light weight work at home. I had borrowed a couple of kettlebells from the gym and was somewhat aimlessly swinging these from time to time. However, my son took up a kettlebell challenge to do 10,000 swings of a 24 kg kettlebell in 4 weeks. He upgraded to 28 kg partway through.  That’s 500 a day, and he broke them up with some kettlebell presses every now and then.

I was inspired, and bought a 16 kg and 28 kg kettlebell and started using them 3 times a week. Initially, I was doing kettlebell swings at 28 kg and various double kettlebell routines with two 16 kg kettlebells (see video), though my favourite routine was the kettlebell snatch (second video). By the end of the lockdown I was doing 100 snatches, 100 clean and press and 100 double handed swings.

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