Fractional Plates

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From The Desk Of Clarence Bass

"PR’s are built one pound at a time." The trademarked motto of Piedmont Design Associates (PDA), the world’s prime supplier of fractional plates and purveyor of eclectic lifting paraphernalia

Sticking Point? Try Fractional Plates

Piedmont Design Associates (PDA), of Malden, SC, a company run by an interesting fellow by the name of John Szimanski, Jr., was founded to fill the need for fractional plates. And for anyone who’s been training for a while, the need is likely to be considerable. There comes a time in just about everyone’s training career when gains are hard to come by, especially in standard jumps 2 ½ kilos or five pounds. Upping your PR five pounds a crack just doesn’t work anymore. Every time you try it, you hit a brick wall and become more and more frustrated. That’s when fractional plates, which generally start at 1/4 pound or 1/8 kilo, can get you going again.

As John Szimanski says, you generally can’t feel the difference when you add one pound to any load over 100, and if you keep doing it week after week or even month after month, you can make some exciting progress.

Simply slapping an extra pound onto your PR isn’t the best approach, however, according to Szimanski. It’s better to rest a week or two first, to re-charge your batteries. When you resume up training, Szimanski suggests backing off your poundage 30 or 40 percent, to allow you to get some momentum going again. Add 10 pounds a week for several weeks, and then five pounds, until you’re back to about 95 percent of your recent best. That’s when you switch to one pound at a time, and as he puts it, "you never look back." It’s up, up and away after that. Theoretically, at that rate, you can add 50 pounds a year. While that’s probably a little too optimistic, the odds are that you’ll make meaningful progress, one pound at a time.

I suggest plugging fractional plates into a periodization plan, such as those described in Ripped 3, Lean for Life and Challenge Yourself. That’s what I’ve done, and it has worked very well. Instead of trying to add five pounds to your best at the end of each training phase, lower your sights and shoot for a pound or two, which is more realistic when you have many training cycles under your belt. Believe me, it’s a lot more satisfying to add one or even ½ kilo to your PR in the power snatch, and do it regularly, than to try for an extra 2½ kilos – and fail cycle after cycle.

About PDA

To learn more about PDA and fractional plates, visit their website at fractionalplates.com. You’ll love their service: They answer your questions promptly, acknowledge your order when it comes in and let you know when it’s shipped. They also publish a bulletin which shows all the neat stuff they offer and includes interesting commentary by John Szimanski and others. Believe it or not, the fractional plates you get from them even come engraved with your initials. They hope their little "gems" will help you look forward to every workout – progress and motivation go hand in hand – and that you’ll pass them on from generation to generation. They’re a unique little company. Dealing with them makes you feel special.

Tell them we sent you. (No, we don’t get a cut.)

Ripped Enterprises, 528 Chama, N.E., Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108, Phone (505) 266-5858, e-mail: cncbass@aol.com., FAX (505) 266-9123. Office hours are Monday-Friday, 8-5, Mountain time.