Another "big" guy here

[DuckVader]

Hello everyone,

My name is Jason and I just joined this forum.

Here is a little background information on me.

I grew up around weights. My family has always had exercise equipment of some kind in the house. I was always the strongest of all my friends, but I was also the biggest. By my senior year in high school I weighed 320 lbs. I managed to drop down to 265 lbs before I graduated though. I was also at the time bench pressing 305lbs, squatting 400lbs, power cleaning 225lbs, and overhead pressing 215lbs. I never tried anything really heavy because I was in football and the coach didn't want us to push too hard because he needed us healthy, we had a small team.

After high school I started to get into some serious weight lifting. By 1 year out, I was benching 335lbs (max), squatting 655lbs (max), and overhead pressing 250lbs (max). But then I hurt my shoulder, messed up my AC joint, and did not hit the gym again until about 2 months ago. It has been over 3 years.

Luckily I started work a very physical job that allowed to be keep strong about a year ago. When I started working there I was up to 345lbs. By this past spring I was down to 280lbs. I work for a stone veneer factory and my job is to lift and carry stone that can weigh anywhere from 1lb to 300+lbs, all day, at a high rate of speed.

Like I said, I joined the gym again two months ago since my job was no longer challenging. Currently I am up to 300-305lbs, I am 22 years old, and I am about 6'3'' tall.

In the gym I do mostly compound exercises. Right now, this is the amount of weight I can lift for some of the exercises I do. Bench press, final set, 350lbs at 4 reps. Squat, final set, 495 lbs at 5 reps. Overhead press, final set, 215lbs at 4 reps. Deadlift, final set, 405 lbs at 5 reps. There is some other things I do as well, but those are my main ones.

My goal is to break 400lbs on bench, 600lbs on squat, 250lbs on overheard, and 500 on deadlift by the summer, so I have about 7 months to do it.

That is about it, I just figured I would say hello.

Jason

[paul]

u had some very impressive numbers, jason. and yes u r a very big guy, i wish i was your size. sucks about the shoulder injury tho. on a side note, what kind of things did u do to get your weights up so high? 655 squat and 250 overhead press is impressive. what kind of things did u do for those lifts?

[rere]

I'd be interested if you had any tips also. What an impressive Overhead Press.
Tips please

[DuckVader]

I don't know if I can offer you any tips. All I do is lift it for the most part.

On the overhead press I start the bar at the same height I start my squat it, which is right about the middle of my chest. I push straight up from where it sits for my first rep, then do however many more reps I can get. I lower to about my nose/chin area for each rep. I wish I could be more helpful than that. Right now with my shoulder injury I can not do as much as before, but I hope that within the next 7 months I will be able to.

For squat, I stand with my feet a bit wider than shoulder width, and the feet just slightly pointed out. The bar does not sit on the base of my neck, but more on my shoulder blades. I pick a spot on the wall in head of me that is above my head and I focus on that the whole time. I go down to where my thighs are almost parallel to the floor, about 1-2 inches short of parallel. When I push up I push my hips forward and my knees kind of outward. I will warm up with 315lbs for 10-12 reps, but first I stretch my thighs and calves a lot.

I also wish I could push myself harder at the gym than I currently do. I do not have anyone to lift with, so I have to make sure I am doing a weight that I can handle, and I do less reps than I probably could, just because I don't want to risk it.

I did a power clean the other day of 225lbs and I got that pretty easily, so I have no idea how much I can do yet. I don't have the greatest facility to work at, so the power clean is hard to do.

Do any of you have any tips on the dead lift? I never used to do it before, so this is only like my 2nd month with it.

[paul]

speed pulls have helped me a lot on the deadlift. about 60% 1RMfor 6-8 sets of 3 are good.