Finally Hit The 500 lbs Club!

Bull fucking shit. Sorry, I just don't believe that that is doable in a year unless you're either on drugs or doing something irregular. I see guys at the gym slaving away constantly, and they don't bench two plates or pull 3.

They may very well be at the gym constantly, but that does not mean they're doing the right thing for maximum strength development. Or that you're seeing what they're actually capable of: People don't usually lift their actual maxes in a training session - that's done either in a meet, or on a dedicated PR test day.

I lift with a girl that crossed over 300 wilks about six months into training. On a cut. Absolutely no drugs. No protein supplements, even. She's just put in the hard work five days/week, picking up and putting down heavy shit on programs that are actually focused on sustainable strength development [1]. Focused on getting her technique right. Focused on eating clean and sleeping right.

Then there's her attitude: She isn't satisfied with being a small fish in a small pond. She wants to be the biggest fish in the biggest pond. She wants to be the one who lifts the heaviest weights. You've been told this elsewhere in the thread, but your attitude towards things actually changes things a lot. In particular when you're a beginner, you need to work with relatively high intensity, and you need to be able to tolerate some discomfort during your lifts.

That last one is sort of a biggie: If you stop when it gets "hard", you'll never get anywhere - progression is the willingness to actually push past preconceived notions about what you can or can't do. When people here tell you that your numbers are bad, it is because by most standards, your numbers are - in particular in the bench - worse than that of an essentially untrained male. Combine those numbers with "being satisfied" with where you are, and you have a pretty good recipe for not going anywhere with your lifts.

Because like I said - I've never seen someone able to lift that much and there are some huge fucking dudes at my gym.

Well, there is this "huge" guy at our gym as well. His demeanor is "constantly angry and hostile", "dismissive and rude towards his girlfriend" and "arrogant", and he pretty much fits the stereotype of someone that does too much roids, and with his attitude, I wouldn't shed a tear if he found a different gym. Incidentally, his lifts are shit, because his technique flat out stinks. Sure, he gets 220 kg (485 lbs) off the floor in the deadlift, but he's 105-110 kg (230-240 lbs) of meat at ~172-173 cm height (5'7") but he doesn't actually lock it out correctly, and he's bent from his lower back up. He grunts like he's taking a shit when doing 140 kg squats, and he isn't even squatting to IPA depth (for the uninitiated: IPA is a powerlifting federation that has a rumour for passing squats that are way above the commonly agreed on depth, where the hip crease shall be below the top of the knee). Dude actually got angry when his girlfriend experienced curiosity about squatting to depth. Might have had something to do with the fact that he'd have trouble putting up the weights that the girl next to him did, if he had to "do it by the book".

However, that was a digression: If you go to a powerlifting-oriented gym, or even a gym with people oriented toward powerlifting, instead of a place where people go to get their half hour of exercise, you will find people that do lift that heavy, because their goal is different from "looking good naked in front of the mirror".


[1] As you've likely been told elsewhere, Starting Strength has … flaws. The volume isn't particularly high. It's lacking in total volume, and the endless chasing of PR's in what are essentially accessory lifts (one of which doesn't even belong there - the power clean is a very technical lift, and rows are much more efficient, means the intensity is too high for sustained progress.

/r/Fitness Thread Parent