Powerlifting Questionnaire - 7/13/05

1. What is your name, age and profession?

My name is Ryan Nielson I’m 33 and my job title right now is Multimedia Programmer, but I’m not sure that describes it very well.

2. Give us a BRIEF lifting history including your best lifts/total.

I’ve been lifting for 19 years and competing for about 17 years now. Our high school had a coach named George McAdams that was a powerlifter and got lots of other kids involved. I started lifting after school with some friends and was hooked. I was very thin and weak, but just sticking to it and never quitting finally started to pay off after many years. In a meet my best lifts were squat 606, bench 507, and deadlift 551 at the 242 class.

3. Give us a brief template of your training week.

It changes so much it would be hard, but for the last 3 weeks now I’m doing squat deadlift exercises with high volume Mon, Wed, Fri and benching Tuesday and Saturday.

4. What kind of workout did you do when you first got into lifting and how old were you?

This was way back in high school I was about 14 my workout consisted of benching way heavier than I should be, bouncing the bar off my chest and lifting my butt way off the bench then doing a few sets of cheat curls. This is probably the typical high school workout except I did that every day 7 days a week. When your in high school you do a lot of dumb things and won’t listen to anybody.

5. What kind of powerlifting workout did you do when you first started competing?

I tried any of the old peaking routines that I saw in Powerlifting USA. One I remember well was the Ken Lain bench peaking routine which actually worked pretty well for me. I think that’s one of the only ones I didn’t overtrain on. Also I remember doing an Ed Coan 4 week squat wave that worked pretty good.

6. What kind of powerlifting equipment (bench shirt, squat suit, etc.) do you use?

Right now it’s Titan all the way. I love the fury shirt, the centurion and boss briefs. With the titan gear I can use it in any federation so it has it’s advantages that way.

7. What powerlifting equipment would you like to try?

If money was no issue I’d like to have a huge collection of over 50 bench shirts to try of every style. That would be fun.

8. What is the best advice anyone has ever given you about lifting?

Believe it or not it was as simple as “train in your gear” so your familiar with it. I used to just train raw and throw all my gear on at the meet. I had a lot of bad inconsistent meets cause of this.

9. What is the worst advice you’ve ever been given?

There was a guy I knew way back in high school that said to squat with a close stance and your toes pointing inward pigeon toed so much that your knees should come together and touch each other through most of the lift. He said that created more stability but does the opposite. Actually he could squat pretty good that way believe it or not.

10. What is the worst injury you’ve had and what did you do to overcome it?

I have twice hurt my low back with herniated discs. I had to take a few years off from heavy squatting and deadlifts and that was hard, but I still kept up with benching and now my bench is my best lift because of that.

11. What is the worst sticking point (on any on the lifts) that you had to overcome and what did you do to correct it?

I was around 181 bodyweight and I was stuck at somewhere around a 300-315 competition bench for about 8 years. I overcame that by doing just what I think Larry Pacifico said “gain weight” and “work your triceps.” I started college and got on a meal plan that was basically all you can eat 3 times a day. I put on some quality weight that those few years and put over 100 lbs. on my bench.

12. What exercises do you believe have increased your bench, squat and deadlift?

I'll try to keep it brief. For squats a few things that worked lately. Box squats in all my competition gear on with bands (helped me perfect my meet condition technique), the safety squat bar (forced me to drive my head back out of the hole) and glute ham raises (ham stregnth helped me explode out of the bottom better). For bench partial range board work allows me to train at 100% quite often. Working abs & my core 3-4 times a week instead of twice has made my deadlift go up as well as working on technique.

13. What does your diet consist of?

I stick to this as much as I can but fall off the wagon sometimes.

7:30am 4 eggs and a slice of toast
10am bowl of oatmeal with protein shake
Noon Some kind of meat and vegetables
3pm 2 cans of tuna with some mayonnaise and tobasco.
5pm some kind of quick snack like a banana or cheese stick
8pm dinner whatever my wife is cooking. Avoiding sweets.

14. What kind of supplements do you use?

I use some protein powder all the time year round. I use creatine if I don’t have to lose weight for a meet and I think glutamine works pretty well. Those are the big 3 if I had to pick 3 things to take.

15. Where do you get your training information?

I was a subscriber to all the powerlifting mags. Now I get a lot of information from the internet because it’s a free source. But you’ve got to wade through it to find the good stuff.

16. What changes would you like to see in powerlifting?

Nothing. I hate the politics of this sport.

17. If you’ve ever had to cut weight for a powerlifting contest, what did you do?

I’ll just list the ones I’ve tried. Cutting out carbs the last few weeks does a whole lot alone. I’ve also drank 2 gallons of water a day to trick your body into shedding more water. I’ve even spit into a cup on the drive over to the meet.

18. Is there anyone you would like to thank?

My family, friends and training partners.