sorry, i couldn’t resist. it gave me a chuckle 
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…serious tonnage…
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Feels to me like some increased upper body mass would be good for injury prevention. Probably doesn’t get you around the loop any faster but might get you back on the loop faster if you crash.
But I do understand the point you are making in terms of performance gains wrt increased benchpress.
I know that coach chad mentioned this in a podcast where he’s willing to carry a little extra upper body weight to help ‘bulletproof’ the body. I’ve fallen before and hit straight on the shoulder before and just got up and dusted it off. There’s something to be said for finding that balance in the goals you want for your personal lifestyle.
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That 280 deadlift though 
. One of my biggest regrets is not pushing deadlift a little more to get the 272.5kg/600lbs or even better 275kg for 10 big red plates in a meet, I always seemed to go too conservative on dead’s in meets.
Probably the opposite for me, my deadlift progressed the most first and left everything else behind but when I squatted a lot and made progress there deadlift would always come on too.
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1RM as of September 2019:
- Deadlift: 500lbs
- Front Squat: 400lbs
- Bench Press: 245lbs
I currently weigh 210lbs, down about 20 lbs from my heaviest last year, but fortunately my powerlifting benchmarks have still stayed about the same. I’m loosely following 5/3/1 and lift twice a week. My main reasons to keep lifting are 1) overall fitness in life and 2) survivability in a crash. It’s good to leave more damage on a car than it left on you and the extra mass helps when bumping bars 
.
You’re a perfect candidate for my experiment also… keeping similar benchmarks (of course you’ll lose a little) but then see if you can manage a 3.5w/kg… unless you’re already there… Then you’re my hero
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Haha! My FTP is very low but I’m working on it!
my motivation is hormonal benefit, the idea of being a total athlete as opposed to just a cyclist that participates in an unbalanced sport, better physique, injury prevention, and allows me to do something constructive when cycling isn’t an option
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Forgot to mention in this thread, if you haven’t already, check Alex Viada out at Complete Human Performance. Some really good information on balancing the extremes of endurance and strength sports and planning/training for both.
When I first started cycling/triathlon and was still powerlifting I found some of his Hybrid Athlete stuff useful.
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Awesome recommendation. I’m up to chapter 4 and really like the content. Thanks!
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Power lifting can be fun, and I like the idea of having a measurable goal. I did some in my 30s and into my 40s. I think my best was a 585 deadlift, 565 sumo squat and a 355 bench. (Those numbers for a power lifter are just barely respectable.) Mostly I did it to share with my wife, who has taken several world titles and records in power lifting.
Power lifting doesn’t really mix with bicycle racing, unless maybe you’re talking about being a track sprinter. I also found that it didn’t really mix well with Muay Thai and boxing because you’re like a dragster. You can put a hole in anything you hit, but you gas out too easily. That may be fine for a low or medium skilled opponent, but if you’re training with the real deal you’ll find yourself at an endurance deficit. Power lifting’s primary benefit I find is in the explosiveness you get from the speed work, not in the top end strength.
When it comes to bicycle racing or triathlons, I would defer to people more experienced than me. My own humble assessment is that carrying around too much muscle just slows you down.
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Finished the book. I really like his take on programming and cardio for the strength athlete. Really good tidbits and was an easy read.
It confirmed some painful conclusions I came up with going through this and that for myself, lifting is for me and it’s my current focus. Cycling will be my conditioning but I’m going to tweak it some to fit some of the principles laid out in the book.
TR is the perfect platform for me as the calendar feature will work perfectly to line up against my strength program (Wendler for now) and the pre-programmed routines will be the skeleton structure for how I intend to condition myself. I won’t be the fastest (at all) but at least I can do it and hope to hit some new records for myself in 2020. 
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Glad it turned out to be a useful recommendation. It helped me a lot for balancing programming and from what I remember the TR tri plans worked well with the idea of starting the week with higher intensity work and finishing the week with higher volume work.
Wendlers 531 (351 was how I ran it) is a solid program, I ran it for about 18 months as my first real strength program. This made me go back and look through my old training spreadsheets, 14 cycles of 531 in 2010/11 and made a ton of progress on all the big lifts.
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