Welcome to IronBar Fitness. I suppose I should start by introducing myself. My name is Brandon Braner and I am from Minneapolis, MN. I know many of you are asking yourself why the hell should I read this guys blog and why should I care what he is doing in the gym? The answer is simple, you went to goggle and typed in something like power lifting tips, bench technique, how do I get stronger or a million other strings that brought you here. So why should you care what I am talking about, because you want to.
I am 23 years old and am by no means a professional power lifter. No one from west side knows who the hell I am, if you ask anyone in the power lifting community they will probably look confused why you are asking about a 23 year old from Minneapolis. The reason no one knows who I am...I am new to the sport. I started training for completive power lifting in February 2009, but that is by no means the first time I had set foot in a gym.
I started lifting when I was 7th grade. Back then it was all about football and wrestling, and if you asked the football coach who was also the track coach it had something to do with track and field as well. I started out in the gym somewhat resembling the fat kid from goonies. The thought of fitness had never crossed my mind. I remember the first time I walked to into the weight room and everyone was like omg look at the fat kid. Lucky enough there were a couple of people in the gym who took me under their wing and showed me the basics of what was going on. Let me reiterate that point THE BASICS this is where most new people to the sport get lost is where to start. I remember my first max bench was 55 lbs. For a kid who weights 170lbs in 7th grade was terrible, but I did not get discouraged. By the time I started 8th grade I was still at 177 lbs but My bench was up to 135lbs. By the time I graduated high school I was 200 lbs and bench pressing a touch over 350. Sadly enough after high school I declined two football and two wrestling offers from two very nice d3 private colleges to go drink beer at the local community college with my high school buddies.
Fast forward 5 years to 2009. I am 300lbs still got some strength left but am overall very unhappy with my body. I am upstairs talking with my neighbor and she states we need to join the gym to get into better shape. Bear in mind that she is 5 '5 90lbs and drop dead gorgeous so I agree I will start going to the gym with her, who wouldn't. So we make it about 3 weeks before she bonks out but I had seen some fat drop down and though I miss this. So I start hitting the weights again at roughly at 335 lbs max bench so I decided I might still have it. Trying to remember some of the workouts I did back in the day, so for the next couple months I did my own thing working on what I felt would best help me. By April I had hit the 390 lbs bench mark. Now most of you are like hold on you went from 335 to 390 from February to April. You have to remember this was not my first rodeo in the gym and I was 300 lbs I had a lot of shit to turn into muscle. Once I got back into it, it wasn't long until my body remembered how to do what it did before. Anyways I was soon at a 405 lbs bench which is somewhere I never thought I would be. This has a lot to do with reading on technique and asking some people some basic questions on what they had to do. By this time I felt comfortable and entered my first meet. Now due to some knee issues back in high school you barley ever see me doing heavy squats so I mainly compete bench only, call me a pussy I don't care I want to walk when I'm 50. But before I entered the competition I wanted to drop some weight so I went on a high protein very low carb diet. Basically cold meat sandwich for lunch some fish and rice for dinner and cottage cheese for snacks. I dropped 30 lbs in 28 days so I got to 270 by the competition but what else happened by bench plummeted. Obviously when you loose that much weight a lot of it is muscle. So I got to the competition and put up 391 on my first attempt which for my weight and age (275+ and junior class USAPL) at the time was an American Record. So I set the American record and bombed my next two 402 attempts. Cool I just won my first meet, June 27th, 2009 Twin Ports Open.
So I quit the diet 3 weeks later as I needed to get my bench back up as it continued to drop to around 390. Deciding I want as much experience as I can get my first year I sign up for my next competition. It took place Sept 13th 2009 in Cleveland, Ohio. The 2009 USAPL Bench Press Nationals. What the hell am I thinking you ask? After lifting there, trust me I will never have stage fright again in a local meet, plus there are some big boys there plenty of knowledge to soak up. So I worked my ass off for the next 8 weeks or so, I adopted a version of Westside that I found online and modified it a bit to fit what seemed to work best for me. At this point in time I did not have chains or bands, and hit a PR 440lbs bench in the gym. Congrats right a gym touch and go bench vs. a competition bench are nowhere near the same. So I get to nationals and put up 424 on my first attempt, went up like butter. I then jumped to 446 attempting to keep up with the competition. I ended up finishing 2nd in the raw junior and 4th in the raw open.
Today is October 18th, I just hit a new PR of 470 raw and a 565 reveres band press using EFS Monster Mini Bands. So back to the original question, why the fuck should you care what I am doing or what I have to say? I have added over 135 lbs to my bench in 9 months. I have taken second and fourth in a National competition and set and American record. That’s a lot of shit to do in 9 months. IronBar Fitness is not here to have big talk and big fancy exercises to get you confused, right now as I myself am a beginner we are focusing on basics and developing new and exciting begins for power lifting.
If you feel that you have the knowledge and what it takes to help IronBar Fitness in its goals of developing a new generation of strongmen and power lifters please feel free to email me your accomplishments and what you bring to the table. Just go to the contact us section and attach a word document with your "resume."
Welcome and happy training
-Brandon Braner
