Hi. It's Aodhan here (pronounced Aiden), I'm 21, close to graduating university and living in Nottingham, United Kingdom.
I started training with weights and going to the gym around three years ago, but last year a few friends said I should try out powerlifting, I did about a month of solid preparation for my first meet on December 1st, 2013, but didn't have any real idea about strength methods. I think I just did 5x5 for 4 weeks, working up to my openers for triples the week before the meet. Nevertheless, the experience was great, I went 6/9 that day with a few bad attempt choices, putting up a 407.5kg/898.4lbs total, falling only 12.5kg/27.5lbs short of a national qualifying total at 66kg/145.5lbs bodyweight if I remember rightly. part of the learning curve I guess. After that it was clear I needed to get into something more structured with my training and that's when my brother, (who I have to thank for getting me into training and giving me the nickname boulder) who's a personal trainer, started to read up on a few different methods, deciding on the cube method, he bought the e-book and read it back to front, we started the first cycle immediately after that meet. Although mainly only following the percentages strictly, we tried to do a lot of bodybuilding accessories to put on size at the same time as gaining strength. Sticking to mainly 5 sets of 10 on all accessory movements. We still endeavour to do this, my brother calls it the 'road to 100'(kg)!
Results of my first meet were as follows;
December 1st 2013.
Bodyweight 65.6kg/144.6lb
Squat: 155kg/341.7lb
Bench: 90kg/198.4lb
Deadlift: 162.5kg/358.3lb
Current bodyweight: 73kg/160.9lbs
Height: 5'6
Current PRs after first cube cycle:
Squat: 155kg/341.7lbs
Bench: 95kg/209.4lbs
Deadlift: 170kg/374.8lbs
I'll try and get videos of my first meet up online this coming week, as well as a few training vids from the first cycle of the cube method.
On Sunday the 11th may I have a meet, this time competing in the 74kg/163.1lb weight class. I can't see myself being too competitive against the other guys at this weight yet, I'm only 6 months deep into powerlifting properly, fairly new to this lifting journey and now competing at 8kg/17lb'ish heavier than last meet. I'm hoping to hit PR's on everything after hitting my 95% on the three lifts last week, feeling strong and confident going into the meet.
Drop a reply if you want to know anything to do with my training/diet/about me etc.
Thanks for reading.
Boulder