I remember my first 405 deadlift, mind you nobody cares about their first 400 deadlift, because its 3 big plates and some change, it has to be FOUR plates and of course no collars.
I was in high school, and was talking with some of the guys during study hall and we got to talking about the deadlift as there had been a PL contest on tv the previous Saturday. I was getting close to 400 but had not hit it yet. but I did not yet have an olympic set at the house and so I could only do reps and would travel to the Y or the Lincoln Health Club to use the olympic set and try PR's. Our school did have olympic sets, but they used to have use train in a giant circuit after practice, you know, set up 8 stations, do your set of 8 reps, blow the whistle, run to the next station, etc. no real chance to do any serious lifting then, though we did break into the school weightroom during home basketball games to have improntu lifting contests. Anyway, the group of guys asked me what I could deadlift, and I told them 400 and it was not that they did not believe me, but they wanted to see me do it and so I said, I will do it right after school, just before football practice. We always had about a 15 minute window of oppurtunity between school letting out and when we had to get dressed for practice. Well, we had a classroom meeting for some reason or another and so we had to be dressed and ready within about ten minutes so there went my chance, We practiced and then ran wind sprints and were off to the weight room to do our circuits--one of the guys said, 'hey keith, are you still going to try 400? and being stupid, I of course said yes. We got to the weightroom and I stripped down to football pants and the undershirt I had on, I loaded the bar and began warming up, 135, 225, 315 each for a single rep, I was tired from practice, but psyched up due to most of my team watching. I put the last two plates on....about this time the coaches showed up and just stood silently in the back, I remember thinking that I was going to fail at this in front of the entire team. As I was getting ready to lift, Jerry one of our biggest lineman (and a terrific street fighter) jumped up and walked to th ebar and tried to lift it, he could not even break it off the ground, "Holy S***" he said, and shook his head and sat back down. I approached the bar and everyone started yelling and screaming, I pulled it, not easy, but not an all-out effort either, just a solid lift. The coolest part was when I started to un-load the plates, a couple of the guys stopped me and said "we will do it for you"
great job on the IV plates!
