If you only follow my blog then you may not have seen that I recently took part in a powerlifting competition. The first one for 2 and some years, although I made the move up to the 120 kg category and weighed in at 114.3 some 11 kg heavier than I have ever competed at before I only managed to tie my personal best deadlift result at a competition.
The conditions in the competition were far from ideal due to logistical problems (needing to be out of the venue for a certain time) the second group of lifters only got to take 2 of their 3 attempts. The two attempts we did eventually get to take were rushed as well so we didn’t get a decent warm up. All of these factors (or excuses!) lead to me making my opening deadlift of 280 kg and then missing my second attempt at 290 kg at lockout. Under the circumstances had I deviated from my planned attempts and opener heavier or lighter I am pretty sure I would have made 290 kg which would have been a 10 kg personal best in competition.
However the fact that I only managed to equal my previous best really annoyed me. It annoyed me to the point where it nearly ruined my meet, a meet where I had managed a 37.5 kg personal best total. For a lifter who has been competing for 8 years, that is a pretty huge improvement even at a much heavier bodyweight. I should have been hugely happy but I wasn’t all because of deadlift.
This experience is what has spurred on this project I would like to introduce operation 700.
What is operation 700?
Operation 700 is my own personal quest to pull a 320 kg (705 lb) deadlift in the gym. Ever since I started lifting deadlift has been the bane of my existence every kilo above 220 kg I have had to fight for. Ever since I first pulled 290 kg back in December of 2012 I haven’t managed to get much past it. I recently pulled 293 kg in January of this year so that makes an impressive rate of improvement of 1 kg per year so at this current rate I will make a 320 kg pull in 2043 possibly on a hoverboard.
During the duration of “operation 700” deadlifts are going to be my number one training priority it is going to be the first exercise in every lower body session. I have made the decision to make it a blog series because I think it will show my followers –
- How programmes are put together and adapted during implementation.
- What it’s like to set a challenging training target and the journey a lifter goes through trying to achieve it.
- Proof of concept that just because you are terrible at something doesn’t mean you can’t get better at it.
The Programme
Block 1 of the programme is a simple 6-week linear cycle consisting of
- 2 weeks of low-intensity volume accumulation
- 2 weeks of transition work
- 2 weeks of intensification
The original plan was a frequency of 3 sessions a week however experience and practice are leading me to go to a 2 session a week frequency and splitting session 2’s volume over session 1 and 3 every week.
Below is block one in full working off the goal weight of 305 kg
Keeping up to date with operation 700.
I will be keeping a bi-weekly update on the blog here on castironstrength.com. If you want to follow the journey more closely then you can follow my training logs on
sugden barbell log
bodybuilding.com log
Weekly Vlogs on youtube
Hope you enjoy following along and will check you again in a couple of weeks for the next blog update.
Marc
