Sheiko’s student Christophe Rebreyend (Netherlands) set some new national records and will now go to European RAW championships.

Christophe Rebreend is the tallest powerlifter (200cm; 6ft 6.7in) I have coached over my entire 45 year career. He is taller than Kirill Sarychev (197cm; 6ft 5.5in). But while Kirill’s body weight is 177kg (389lb), making him similar to a fairy-tale hero, Christophe’s body weight (118 kg; 260lb) and build  is more like a basketball player rather than a powerlifter. We started working with Christophe Rebreend on June 16, immediately after his performance at a competition where he totaled 725 kg (1,595lb) RAW at 118kg (260lb). When watching a video sent by Christophe, I immediately noticed his tall, thin body with long arms. I told Christophe that our first task is a body weight increase due to a less than optimal muscle thickness to height ratio. There would be three stages to the gaining process. In the first stage, an increase in weight to 130kg (286lb) should be reached by the end of December. In the second stage, an increase in weight to 140kg (308lb) by the middle of May, and finally 150kg (330lb) by the end of 2015. The second task would be to change and improve the performance of his competition exercises. Christophe had technical errors in each lift.

 Squat:

- narrow stance

- excessive forward lean at the start and further exaggeration during the lift

- knees went ahead far too much

- relaxation of the back muscles in the bottom position, which leads to extra depth and trouble standing up from this position

Bench press:

- a narrow grip

- while the arch was good at the beginning, it reduced during the lift due to lack of leg support

Deadlift:

- round back at the start

- hips too low

- leaning back too quickly at the lockout

- head position too high

- bad (not clear, no pause) fixation at the final position

- raised the head up with the eyes staring at the ceiling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We carefully chose special preparatory exercises that would fix these and other problems. For example, one of these special exercises was the ”wall squat”, which I have previously written about. Christophe sends me a weekly report on his training during the previous week and notes about the performance of each exercise. He also sends me videos so that I can see the progression of his technique. My impression of Christophe is that he is quite interesting to work. He is a smart athlete who wants to know why it is necessary to do any particular exercise and not some other exercise. None of his exercises are done thoughtlessly; each element of the movement is felt. He fully capitalizes on all the methods that I use in our joint work and if somewhere he doesn’t understand something completely, he asks me. After 6 months of hard training Christophe has added more than 12kg (26.4lb) of bodyweight and 35kg (77lb) in total. On the 7th of December he competed at the Dutch Nationals RAW where he totaled 760kg (1,672lb) at 131kg (288lb). It gives him a ticket to the National Team for participation at the European Championships in 2015.  Christophe also set a record in the squat and deadlift.  Below you can find a detailed report of my student, Christophe Rebreyend.

Christophe’s statistics

 

 

 

 

 

 Christophe Rebreyend:

“The RAW Dutch nationals this year was an important competition for me. First of all because it is the largest powerlifting competition in the Netherlands, second because it also served as a qualification for the international competitions (the demand was 760 kg in de 120+).

On the competition day I did the following lifts:

Squat: 255- 270 – 276 (+11 kg competition PR)
Bench Press: 152.5 miss( technical mistake) – 155 – 165 (+15 kg competition PR)
Deadlift: 305 – 319 – 325 miss (+4 kg competition PR)
Total: 760 kg

Squat and deadlift were national records in the RAW 120+ class. Also, I met the target of 760 kg, which made me really content.

During the preparation the main focus was on 2 things. We worked very hard on my lacking bench press, by doing a high amount of upper body work, while in the meantime gaining extra bodyweight. Overall during this period I gained a significant amount of upper body mass and I gained 12 kg of bodyweight, until 131 kg at competition’s day. And the results in the bench are steadily growing. Second, my squat technique was lacking a lot (soft back, knees forward). Boris made me do wall squats in order to fix the knee problems and soft back, in conjunction with a widening of the stance and putting my toes more outwards. In the end I think my technique has improved quite a bit. Ofcourse I would like to thank Boris for his coaching, a lot of good improvements were made because of it. Also thanks to the people who helped me during the meet and during the preparation.  Further, I will give a short background on my lifting so far. I started lifting at age 21, in a local gym. Before that I was never involved in strength sports, just soccer. Already after a few weeks some guys there introduced me in the world of powerlifting and strongman. I became addicted to lifting very rapidly and over the years I did some smaller strongman competitions and some local powerlifting meets. At some point I decided to go fully for powerlifting and I joined the NPB (Dutch powerlift federation, affiliated with the IPF) and did a RAW competition in 2012, where I did 245 – 120 – 280, which was ok at the time, but somewhat lower than my gym lifts. The following year in 2013 I could not train as regularly as before, due to finishing my studies and I did not improve a lot. Then at the beginning of this year I did a round of the infamous Smolov squat routine which brought the squat to 260 and after that, I discovered Boris Sheiko started a website upon which a 4 day program was hosted. I did have some previous experience with his programs in 2012 also and I made good progress at that time, so I wanted to give this program a go, in order to prepare for a qualification competition for the Dutch Nationals. This went very well and in the competition I did 265 – 150 – 310, which was a significant improvement of the former competition. It was then, that I decided to ask Boris for coaching”.

 

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