Q; Give us some background info. How and when did you get into Powerlifting?
A: I am 38 years old, married, and have two children. I live in Jacksonville, Florida, where I work at Alpha School of Massage as an Administrator.
In 1994 I was racing on a local motocross circuit. I was fast, but was fading in the later laps. I started to weight train to get into shape. A few years later I was more interested in moving weight than riding. I was training at my neighborhood gym when I met Felicia, Tony Garland’s girlfriend at the time. Tony is my oldest training partner. She encouraged me to go check out what they were doing, and 5 weeks later I competed at Buddy Duke’s USPF Southern States Championship. I won the 220 novice class, and best novice lifter. That was December 2000. In 2003 I founded Team Samson.
Q: What are your PR numbers and what achievements are you most proud of?
A: My best meet squats are: 940 @ 220, and 930 @ 198. (Editor’s note: Adam hit the 940 squat @ 220 at his meet over the weekend. He totaled 2250.)
My bench PR is: 644 @ 198. It’s lower at 220. I can’t figure that out.
Deadlift PR: 685 @ 198 and 220.
I won the 2003 AAPF National Championship @ 220, and the 2004 APF National Championship also @ 220. I am proud of both of those accomplishments. I’d like to get a few more National titles though.
Q: What is you favorite lift and why?
A: I like to squat. I like to train squat over the other lifts because it’s the lift where I feel I do the most work. Even on a light days, legs always lets me know I’ve done something worth my time.
Q: What are your current goals?
A: My most pressing goal is to break a grand on the squat @ 198. I’m close now. I’m hitting high 900’s on regular basis at a body weight of 210, give or take a pound. I’m not dieting for the next couple of meets so it will be a few months. I want to get a grand on the platform first, then I’ll take a few pounds off and get it @ 198. A high 900 at the end of October, a grand in December, and then I’ll catch it at the lower weight class.
On the bench I want to go over 700. That’s my most lofty goal. On the deadlift, 700 as well. That should go soon. I’m hitting it in the gym now.
Q: What are you current training methods?
A: I’m in meet mode right now so everything is heavy and geared all the time. I push a weight one week, say 900 on the squat, and the next week I push it up about 50 lbs and go 950. Then I’ll take it down the following week to 925 and then move up again the following week, to 975. Every heavy set is done with straps and wraps just like a meet. I feel my training should be as similar to a meet as possible. If I wrap for a certain weight at a meet, or go straps up and tight at the meet, my training is going to be done the same way.
So 5 weeks out my squat look something like this:
Week 5: 900 x 1
Week 4: 950 x 1
Week 3: 925 x 1
Week 2: 975 x 1
Week 1: Rest
Bench is pretty similar, only changing to accommodate the ever changing personality of the bench shirt. That means boards and rep schemes change constantly. I go shirted every week for as long as my body can take it. When my body needs rest, I ignore it until I am forced to acknowledge it, usually by my forearms.
Deadlifts are done weekly, and suited as the meet nears. Same train of thought as with squats; I pull suited in the meet, I train suited close to the meet. We do a lot of block pulls after our pulls from the floor. Those are done raw.
This is what I’m doing now as I near a meet. My training doesn’t always look like this. You’ll have to check my training log to see what we do further out from the meets.
Q: What are you best/worst/funniest moments in the sport?
A: My best moment has to be my most recent meet. It wasn’t a big meet, and it wasn’t a huge total, but it broke a string of bomb outs that had me believing I might never put up another total. Between some bad lifts and getting sick a few times, I just couldn’t do anything on the platform. Getting that total was a huge relief and one of my best moments.
The worst and funniest are probably one in the same. I’m not going to use the guy’s name, but after 18 months of training at Samson it was time for this guy to go. There’s too many reasons to list individually, but he was dangerous and a distraction. For 18 months this guy trained for free. Absolutely no cost to him whatsoever. So when I asked him to leave he gathered his stuff and took off. A few weeks later, I get a letter delivered by a mutual friend asking for a few things he had left behind. Mainly a set of blocks he would put his feet on when he benched, and a roll of toilet paper. He had a roll of toilet paper in the gym because after a few trips to my bathroom, sometimes twice in one workout, I had to cut him off from my house. So he would occasionally make a trip to the woods. So this guy, after 18 months of free training, asks for a roll of toilet paper. That just struck me wrong, so I threw his blocks into a wheel barrel and used his toilet paper and way to much gasoline to light them on fire. Probably my worst moment in the sport, but it’s definitely my funniest when I look back on it.
Q: Have you dealt with any injuries?
A: The only real injury I have dealt with is a lower back injury I suffered training for AWPC Worlds in 2003. I was squatting when I heard a loud noise in my back. It was loud enough that my spotter asked what the noise was. I felt no immediate pain, but by the time I drove home (45 minutes) I could hardly walk and couldn’t stand up straight. My chiropractor diagnosed me with a split disk; a side-to-side split. It put me out for a month, and then for a second month when I tried to come back too soon. I didn’t make the Worlds that year. Other than that, I’ve had nothing more than the normal aches and pains. My elbows and forearms flare up a few times a year and will sideline me for a few weeks. I’m currently researching some more permanent cures than ibuprofen and ice. Trigger points, stretches, massage, and micro current seem to be options. I’ll let you know how that goes as I try each one and find a good solution. I know a lot of guys suffer with the same problem.
Q: Take us through a typical day for you.
A: A normal day for me goes something like this: I wake up around six am and do some reading. Then, I get my youngest son up for school, drink a shake, and head out to take my son to school and be at work around eight. I work at a massage school, so some days are quite interesting. I eat shortly after I get to work. I’m able to snack all day, including shakes, so I usually get another one around noon, and lunch about one. I leave work at four to be at the gym around 5:30. We are flexible, so that time can change. If you need time to work late or whatever, we make calls and try to accommodate. I’m usually in the gym 2 hours, longer if more than a few people are shirting up or maxing out. Then it’s off to baseball practice with my ten year old. I’ll have a shake on my way out, supper comes late, and then another shake before bed. I have a fourteen year old too. He’s just getting back into ball after a few years off, so I’ll be fitting that into the schedule in the near future. He’ll be hitting the gym with us soon. Anyway, that’s how most of my days go down.
Q: Tell us about Team Samson.
A: I formed Team Samson for several reasons. Primarily, I was traveling all over the place to train. For a while I was traveling an hour and a half each way to train on a monolift. The I had to go 45 minutes to another spot to train the other lifts. The time I was investing was killing me, not to mention that having different sets of training partners for each lift sucks. So I started collecting equipment piece by piece. A pull down here, a monolift there, a few bars, and when I thought I had enough I built the garage we train in now. I was already forming a group of solid training partners that had started training in my boss’s garage before mine was built.
My wife came up to me one morning and told me that a guy with a tractor was coming up the drive. I tried to act like I was curious and surprised, but I knew what was going on. When she pressed the issue I told her that the guy with the tractor was here to lay the foundation for “our” gym. The gym and my wife are still here, so I guess it was OK with her.
Team Samson currently consists of Brian Carroll, Tony Garland, Clint Smith, Nathan McCarty, Mark Graham, and myself. Brian, Clint, and I have all held spots in the top 10 ranking of our respective weight classes, something that was not true of any of us before we trained together. It’s important to have the right people around you.
Q: What is your diet like? What is your favorite binge?
A: My diet sucks. After 10 years of competing I just now drink a protein shake on a regular basis. My training partners would say my whole diet is a binge. Cereal at night, sweets all day, fried food. I like all the crap. I’m cleaning it up now. My friend John Kiefer jokes with me about some post I put up about how good his diet info is, but I always preface my comments by telling everyone that I’m too lazy to do it. I did my first competition in 2000 @ 214. That’s exactly what I walk around at today. I should fix that.
Q: Do you take any supplements?
A: Like I said, I down a protein shake 4 times a day. I throw in some glutamine and creatine throughout the day. I’m adding some more things in along the way, like vitamins and some amino acids.
Q: Who do you admire most, who inspires you?
A: In powerlifting, I admire Shawn Frankl. What else is there to say about a guy who continually adds pound after pound to his total year after year? Insane numbers. He’s also in my weight class, so he leaves me with no excuses. That could kill you or inspire you, and I choose to let it inspire me.
Outside of powerlifting my wife is the most inspiring person I know. She puts up with a lot from me, including the fact that there is a gym in our backyard. We have two boys, so that’s a challenge, and she is a nurse’s assistant. That means she works very hard so that sick and dying people can feel clean and human. She works on the women’s health and oncology floor. She does things I wouldn’t dream of doing, and does it with a sense of caring that is beyond my comprehension.
Q: If you could give one piece of advice to the average lifter (not necessarily a powerlifter), what would it be?
A: What ever your goal is, be it fitness, strength, size, whatever… just find someone who has accomplished that goal and train with them.
Q: What would you bring to EFS, and why should our readers be interested in you?
A: The answer to that goes along with “what advice I would give to the average lifter.” I have spent 10 years following that very advice. I’ve surrounded myself with lifters who have done what I want to do. I wanted to be stronger so I spent a lot of time and money seeking out those who wanted to do the same and had done it already. I built a place where those people could come together, and I learned what they know. Together we learned more.
I’ll bring experience, not just my own, but that of several top 10 lifters who I train/trained with. These are lifters who have done what most of the readers want to do. I’m going to bring not just my lifts, but the lifts of my partners. I’ve got a mix of new and experienced training partners, and I’ll let readers learn with us. I’ll show readers what we are doing right so they can mimic it, and what are we doing wrong so they can avoid it. I want to bring information that will be good for the novice lifter who doesn’t have the benefit of training with top lifters. This information will be accompanied by videos of new lifters still struggling with form themselves. That’s what I want to bring to EFS.
Plus, I’m a good looking guy compared to some of the guys you have now. Your readers can’t be happy with looking at guys like Al Caslow and Brian Carroll, although Jason Pegg is a pretty good looking guy.
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Great interview. Adam is an awesome addition to EFS. I will definitely be following his log.
Adam got me into this sport as a novice about two years ago. He and the guys at Team Samson taught me how to truely train and have been there to put up with my questions along the way. I have developed a love for this sport as we all do and am taking it as serious as ever. I competed in my first meet back in May and have my second coming up this weekend with a fair addition to my total, and I owe this hugely to Adam. I hope to train with them again soon! Thanks guys.
Congrats Adam. Glad you are here with us. Your knowledge and personality will be a welcome to us lifters and readers for sure.