Written by Greg Panora
Dear PowerLiftingGodLegendKilla37,
It’s great to see new people involved in powerlifting. Yes, I saw your motivational memes on Instagram and instructional vids on Youtube, very cool. I also appreciated your advice on my vids, I had no idea that rounded back deadlifts were dangerous. You would think after 22 years of powerlifting someone would have mentioned that. Fortunately, I’ve been super lucky to not have any injuries…yet. I’ll check out this Ed Coan guy to see “how real men deadlift”, I hadn’t heard of him. Anyway, you said you have trained for about a year and were inquiring how long it would be before you were number one in the world. I really cant answer that but maybe I can help with some pieces of advice.
- Earn Your Respect On The Platform Not On The Internet- I get it, you are very stuck in your ways. Multi Ply is cheating and the IPF is the only fed. Great! Now go back your shit up! I think you will find out that maybe none of this is as simple as you think. Everybody is after the same thing but going about it differently. Consider a barbell to be like a ball and think about all the different sports that use a ball. Just because you like football doesn’t mean you have to have hate basketball and go on Lebrons Youtube vids and call him a pussy. Spend as much time competing as possible. My first year of powerlifting I competed like 17 times. I would drive all over New England by myself and compete everywhere I could. Those are the best memories of my life.
- Training and Eating Are All That Matter Listen, take all of those gadgets, wraps, shoes, supplements and your computer and put them in the closet. That’s not going to make you a lifter. I know you said you were 6’1 and 184 pounds. Your abs did look amazing in the mirror in your FB profile pic. How many lifters can you think of with a 30 inch waist? Lifters are monsters. Not fitness models. My main goal is to be the biggest, scariest motherf-cker in the room. If you are talking about cutting, definition or vascularity then maybe powerlifting isn’t for you. Hell, you will make way more money fitness modeling anyway. Also, your food pics look like they are out of some cooking magazine. You should be eating gross slop buckets of ground beef and rice. I used to carry around pots of it to class with me. I didn’t make a lot of friends but I got a lot of records.
- Think For Yourself Spend some time in the gym alone. Get rid of your bro’s and try to figure your own body out. I generally train after hours when no one else is there. Stop being so one dimensional and add some reps and hypertrophy work in. I saw that you said “bodybuilders are bitches and you could kick Kai Greens ass in a street fight any day.” He was incline benching 495 my brother! Maybe start looking at other strength athletes besides powerlifters. I work in a CrossFit and I use a lot of stuff I got from them. I started using a lot of bodyweight stuff and jumping and hit a PRs on all 3 lifts.
- Know The History Of The Sport I love Mark Bell too. He is one of the people I most admire in this sport. He has done more for this sport than anyone I can think of. However, there was a sport before any of that. It’s a problem if you know CT Fletcher (who is also awesome) but don’t know Paul Anderson, Doug Young, Luke Iams, Doyle Kennedy, Bill Kazmaier, Matt Dimel, and Don Reinhoudt were. Look up the world record bench at 181 and tell me that doesn’t give you a boner. These guys in the 70’s were doing things that I can’t even fathom. Stuff that still hasn’t been reproduced today with all of our modern equipment and dietary knowledge. These guys didn’t even have memes to motivate them or guys like you giving them coaching advice.
Anyway, I hope this helps. I know this stuff has been helped me in my training. Try to be a little less of a hard on and let lifters lift. I understand that its hard to not attack everything you see under a fake name but it really doesn’t help the sport. Plus, you seem like a nice kid and I don’t want a court case for breaking your jaw and rupturing your kidneys if I meet you ☺ I hope you take some of this and break the world record. Also, good luck with the SEAL test and UFC career. I saw you were planning to do that as well. This is a long hard road so prepare yourself for a lot of BS along the way. Stick to your goals and you will be alright.
Sincerely,
Greg Panora
