Bench Pressing, Dead Lifts, Chin-ups and Weight

Last night after Boot Camp I decided to lift following the advice of exercise Guru Rick Kampen.
Mr. Kampen has a web site devoted to health and longevity.
Frequency of exercise trumps all else according to Mr. Kampen.
(That could apply to a lot of things beyond exercise)
As he says, who wins a Marathon training once a week?
Dedication and discipline are required.
So I decided to take another dose of discipline.
His other caveat, if it hurts (my Parentheses’ and quotation marks) “I assume, real bad” don’t do it.
Since it always hurts, he must mean “real bad”.
(That could also apply to a lot of things not exercise.)
He stresses mixing it up, body weight exercises such as chin-ups can be very effective in creating strength and endurance.
Same thing with push-ups, crunches, planks and other forms of exercise that utilize gravity and your own body weight; these same exercises become easier as you become lighter so this is an added boost to stick to the diet.
Next he recommends when you do go to the gym, vary the routine.
He recommends three splits a week instead of exercising each muscle group once a week.
The most I can do is two splits since Boot Camp keeps me fairly well tapped out three days a week and spinning wrecks me on Sunday.
In the gym, high reps low weights, then moderate reps with moderate weight and then low reps with the really big guys; varying the activity keeps the body guessing.
My question, how big is big; is seventy big enough or should you try to get to 80 and 100 on the heavy days; me I am stuck at seventy or seventy-five on heavy days and that is with a strong following wind.
I personally don’t believe you can ever do enough crunches but then you will cause an imbalance with the back muscles and this is where the dead lift comes into play.
This is supposedly the Master exercise of all exercises.
You need to use feet, legs, (quads and hamstrings), arms, shoulders, hands, forearms, hips, abdomen, neck, shoulders and even the lowly platysma.
For some reason this exercise takes your breath away, not like a spectacular sunset, but like I can’t breathe, pillow over your face, drowning, kind of shortness of breath.
I think it has to do with all of the muscles especially the accessory muscles being recruited to lift the weight off the ground ten or fifteen times.
These are the same muscles that keep air moving in and out of the lungs.
Thus if they are lifting weight they can’t very we’ll breathe.
But if you keep it up, you will get better assuming you don’t pass out and crush yourself.
I was watching a youngster dead lift 415 pounds.
I don’t think I could roll 415 pounds but I will keep trying.
When I weighed in excess of 250 pounds I could barely lift 5 pounds, so the paradox, as my weight approaches 168 (still a ways to go) I can now lift over 160 pounds.
So maybe if I get to 100 pounds I’ll be able to lift 300.
Makes sense to me.
Wonder what Mr. Kampen would have to say about that?