I'm going to take a minute to date myself. I took my first weight training P.E. class in high school in 1996. I did my first real pull-up and first benched 135 in college in 1999/2000. I began competing in 2001 and have competed every year, except for 2007 when I gave birth to my daughter and 2016 when I took time to build up my physique for bodybuilding.
Needless to say a lot of time has gone into training. I continued to get stronger and could see it in my training. Sometimes it translated to the platform and other times not. What do I mean by that?
Well, how many of you have had a fantastic training cycle, hitting PR's in the gym, only to miss a handful of lifts on meet day and PR on nothing?
**raises hand**
It has happened to me and I've seen it happen to the countless training partners as well. If training went so well, then why does the platform not show it.
Well, beside the fact that there are many variables playing into meet day (travel, nerves, sleep, nutrition, etc), there are periods in our training when things will just not move. It's inevitable.
I recently overhead a conversation from a lifter who had competed a couple times over the past 12 months. Her first meet was awesome. Second meet about 5 months later, even better. Third meet, not so great. At. All. Bombed out.
When hearing her discuss her future plans of another meet before the end of the year because, and I quote, "Prior to bombing out, I only put 10 pounds on my squat... I feel like I should be hitting bigger PR's from meet to meet."
*insert wide eyed emoji*
I'd give my left pinky toe for a 10 pound PR over a 4 month period!! If you read the other logs on Elitefts, you'd know that my teammate and friend Vincent Dizenzo didn't bench PR for 10 years!
We train for PRs. If we didn't want a PR, we wouldn't work so hard! If we didn't want PRs, we wouldn't be doing this as a hobby. But it's a bit disillusioned that a 10 pound PR isn't a solid PR.
Newbie gains have been written about over and over. A newer lifter can make solid progress for 2 years!! A newer lifter will hit a 40 pound PR, a 15 pound PR, then a 20 pound PR.... the gains just keep coming!!
Eventually the new gains slow down and real thought and smart training come into play. Every PR is a chance to learn what worked. Every non-PR is a chance to learn what didn't work.
Newer lifters... take every pound. Take every half pound. Take every miss and failure. Be excited when you do PR and be realistic in knowing that it won't always come so easy. In the meantime, learn from your program, take notes on your progress. And when the progress comes to halt, be ready for it. It will happen.
And when you learn to fight for every pound, it makes it that much sweeter.
