Deadlift PB

190 lbs, kittens :)

Conventional style, not sumo, so I am especially pleased since the sumo dead has always been stronger for me.

Credit goes to my brilliant trainer friend Wendy Watkins who has been telling me I need to eat starches every now and again if I want to keep kicking butt in the gym. She is right, of course. She always is. And she may quote me :)

In all seriousness, this sort of thing is why it's always good to get input from your trainer friends. No one knows everything there is to know about fitness, and even those who know a whole heck of a lot may have trouble being objective about their own training. This is why, by and large, I get my best results with programs other people have created. When I write programs for myself I tend to gravitate toward the things I like to do, which may not be the things I need, so my results generally are not as good as when I do other people's programs, suitably tweaked to eliminate any useless or counterproductive (for me) exercises and add any assistance exercises I might need. I don't tweak too much, though, since I figure if extensive revisions are necessary I'm better off doing something else.

The program I'm on at the moment is the Summer Prep Plan from Precision Nutrition, in case you're curious. It's meant to be a fat loss program not a strength program but I've been very pleased with the strength gains I've made. For me it has worked less well as a fat loss program, but I think that will change in a couple of weeks when the workouts become more "metabolic" in nature.