A sorta kinda daily open thread to use as an alternative to posting on the main board. You should post here for:

  • PRs
  • Formchecks
  • Rudimentary discussion or questions
  • General conversation with other users
  • Memes, funnies, and general bollocks not appropriate to the main board
  • If you have suggestions for the subreddit, let us know!
  • This thread now defaults to "new" sorting.

For the purpose of fairness across timezones this thread works on a 44hr cycle.

  • parent

  • Have USAPL announced their approved list of knee sleeves for 2026 yet? I did some searching and couldn't find it. Need to know if I can keep using my Pioneers or have to buy something else.

    parent

  • Saw a Paul Carter post come up on my feed saying that deadlifts don't build hamstrings. And that they are as effective as squats for doing so.

    I remember when Paul Carter was just meme'd about Ed Coan telling him he was good for a 700 pull.

    parent

    There is some truth to that statement, which is that in a deadlift, the knee and hip are extending simultaneously so the hamstrings are lengthening at the knee while shortening at the hip, therefore not changing length very much. There's tension on them, but they're not experiencing a full contraction, so a conventional deadlift isn't going to be the best for hamstrings hypertrophy. To train the hammies you want to limit knee bend. That's why stiff legged deadlifts bias them more.

    Paul Carter is absolutely a giant man-baby though.

    parent root

    Paul Carter said that the hamstring is “turned off” and therefore irrelevant on a squat and deadlift. It’s true that when a muscle is acting as an agonist and antagonist it will be downregulated, but “turned off” and “irrelevant” is something made up. He likes to make huge all or nothing statements about lifting and then be a dick when you disagree

    parent root

    But that's quite specific to how you deadlift. And ultimately you're not gonna have weak hamstrings if you could only train deadlifts and got them very strong.

    I hear you, though.

    parent root

    Sure, but if you compare the change of the hip and knee angle in conventional deadlifts it's quite a leap to conclude they're not doing jackshit for hamstring hypertrophy just like squats. (context edit: I checked the post and Paul made the comparison that they're the same because there's both knee and hip extension in both) Paul isn't saying that conventional deadlift isn't ideal for hamstring hypertrophy or something more reasonable like that, he's straight up saying that it won't grow your hams at all. I'm sure he doesn't mean literally zero stimulus eg. for untrained person, but anyway that's how he's wording it.

    I know that absolute statements, simplifications, overly dogmatic advice etc. does well on short form social media content and that's been his MO for years if not always but still cmon bruh.

    parent root

    Yeah, he also said to me, "the gastrocnemius is literally turned off during a squat" as another example of his ridiculous oversimplifications.

    parent root

    That clown is still around? He was an idiot a decade ago and I see no evidence he's become less of one.

    parent root

  • [removed]

    parent

    You should be discussing this with a medical professional.

    parent root

  • I’m going to be going off socials over Christmas so to all my powerlifter friends in here - have a good Christmas and if any family members annoy you this holiday just remember you can bench more than them!

    parent

  • Does anyone get there bloodwork done who competes naturally? And what would you get done?

    parent

    I just got mine done. For general tests, you may want to look into:

    Complete blood count (CBC)
    Comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP)
    Cholesterol panel
    HbA1c
    ApoB
    Vitamin D

    From there, you may need to look into what else you need based on gender, age, current health issues, and family health issues.

    parent root

    Yes. Male or female matters a lot here so you may want to add that context.

    parent root

    I am female hoping for female advice! Thanks 🙂

    parent root

  • I’ve been powerlifting for the last 3 years (2 meets) I have taking the last 1.5 years off due to shoulder surgery. Since before I decided to powerlift to now, 300 has been my max consistent bench. Yes I have gotten more and way less but this has been my average max. My weakness is the lack of variability in my accessories. Does anyone have a good program they follow that they have had success with? I used to have a coach, pre surgery. He has since opened up two more gyms and no longer coaches. I also don’t want to pay the $100+ a month until I have some new number.

    Thanks in advance

    TLDR: need a new program to help improve bench

    parent

    Candito bench program has been really good for my bench. One thing its missing is deadlift volume but you can run another one focusing on deadlift

    parent root

    Are you currently following a program?

    My favorite program is SBS RtF outside of prep. It's in the (now free) program bundle.

    I also saw decent progress from 531BBB.

    parent root