Sergey Bubkaing; and Conquistadors and Rock Climbers

I hit a new benchmark in my lifting today, and using that to talk about Sergey Bubka and boat burning

Sergey Bubka is a former Soviet / Ukranian pole vaulter who set multiple world records. Each time, he would put the bar a single centimeter higher, thus setting a new world record (he was pretty much unchallenged in his time, so he could afford to not fully push himself).

The story goes that Bubka was simply responding to incentives - he was eligible for some reward each time he broke the world record, and so he set to break it multiple times.

I’m told that the more contemporary pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis also follows a similar strategy - of setting the bar slightly higher each time and breaking multiple world records in the process.

I was thinking about this at the gym this morning. I set a new personal record in the deadlift. My previous best was a single repetition (1RM) at 180 kg. Today I put 181 kg on the bar, and lifted it twice. Here it is:

Rather, I thought of Bubka before I decided to put 181 kg on the bar today. Basically the thought process went like this - yesterday on Facebook I had found some old reel where I’d put my lifts from this week in September 2019 (165 kg x 1 ), and September 2021 (170 kg x 3). So given that I was going to deadlift today, it was a good day to go heavier than I had four years ago, and get the thing filmed and post it.

I started lifting barbells in 2014, when I read Starting Strength. Thanks to the recommendations in the book, I mostly increased weight on the bar (for all lifts) by 2.5 kg (Starting Strength recommends beginners to add “five pounds to the bar each week”).

When I joined my current gym in 2019, the smallest plates here were 2.5kg, which meant that to add weight to a lift, I had to do it 5kg at a time. That was too steep a jump for my upper body lifts (press and bench press) and those stalled. Squats and deadlifts continued to improve, though very marginally (I haven’t been pushing myself that much, to be honest).

Even though the gym procured “fractional” (500g, 1kg, 2kg) plates a couple of years ago, I was mentally conditioned to going up with a least count of 5kg. So, with my deadlift 1RM being at 180kg (set 2 days before my son was born, in 2023). I had for the longest time been thinking that I need to attempt 185 next, and mentally had not been there.

My initial plan today was to equal my previous RM of 180, but instead of one rep, I’ll do two or three. And as I was warming up and working my weight up (I lifted 70x5, 110x5, 140x4, 160x3 on the way to the big lift today) I started thinking about steps and failures.

I realised there are two kinds of people - some who do better with safety nets, and some who do better without.

Conquistadors and Rock Climbers

On one hand are the “conquistadors”. If you remember the story, Hernan Cortez famously burnt his boats upon reaching Mexico - the conquistadors had no option but to conquer the Aztecs. This class of people don’t want safety nets. The thinking here is that if you have a safety net, then you don’t try hard enough. So you burn your boats or bridges or whatever, and just keep going all in.

The other set is what I would call “rock climbers”. Imagine you are scaling a rock face - every few metres you climb, you drive a ring into the rock and pass your rope through that. This way, even if you fall, your fall is limited. This allows you take more risks while climbing, and you climb better and higher.

Having made the analogy, I wasn’t sure where I lay. Or maybe I was trying to figure out the steps I needed to take to hit today’s objectives. Long ago, I remember trying to hit 170 meant doing a set of 165, and then doing 170 (so even if I failed that, I could write 165 in my log). Nowadays, though, I’m taking bigger jumps, more cognizant of tiring myself out before I hit the big weights.

Back to Bubka

In any case, I’d set myself up to progress 70-110-140-160-175 today. It was when I was between the 140 and 160 sets that I realized I could just go straight to 180. And then I thought - I’ve already done 180x1 twice in my life (once each in 2023 and 2024). Why don’t I, just for kicks, do 181 today? I should be able to lift it. If I can do more reps it’s simply a bonus.

And so i walked over to the plates area (in my gym, unusually, the plates and squat racks are far away from each other. I deadlift in front of the squat racks itself) and got myself additional plates.

With the fractional plates in my gym, there is no need to take big steps any more - I can just do small increments and get lots of PRs (though nobody will give me reward for that - I got home and showed my wife the above video, and she was like “very good, but why do you even do this? what’s the use?”).

The other advantage of Bubkaing is that I don’t need to be that afraid of taking “big steps” any more. If I could do 181 today, I know 182 shouldn’t be too hard after a week of not deadlifting. And I need to apply this to my other lifts as well. For example, I benched 80kg in May, but haven’t ventured close since, thinking “I need to hit 85 next”. 81 will seem far less daunting.

Back to the other topic I discussed here - what do you think of the conquistadors versus rock climbers analogy? What works better for you?

Maybe I prefer the conquistador strategy, going for big gains. When I started with 181 today, my aim was “complete two reps, try for a third”. After two, I just felt satisfied and just set the barbell down and went home.