We have all read training cycles designed to guide a lifter through their first meet. I have designed a number of these programs myself. But this cycle is the most important training I have ever written for someone. It’s for my amazing wife, Shannon. Her first meet is only four months after she gave birth to our first child Odin!

We are both firm believers that you can’t call yourself a powerlifter, bodybuilder or weightlifter without getting out on the platform or stage and paying your dues. So, with that in mind, we decided the first thing she wanted to check off the list is being a powerlifter.

We had a very simple time setting her goals for this meet:

  1. Make it through the meet.
  2. Do not get injured. (Note: All her training has been approved by her doctors)
  3. Have a great time preparing and competing in her first meet.

Shannon had a great base to start from. She was in incredible shape before the joys of pregnancy started to take their toll on her training. Shannon, with the thumbs up from our OB kept up her training with appropriate modifications right up until the week of Odin’s birth. Her last training day was on Thursday, April 4th, and Odin was born on Saturday, April 6th.

After doing some research, Shannon and I found out two very important things about her upcoming training:

  1. We have to start back at square-one with her body awareness. With all the hormone changes and structural changes that occur during pregnancy and labor, we initially had to progress slowly to allow her body to recover and prevent putting her low back and hips at risk of injury.
  2.  The sooner that she gets back into training, the sooner she will get her pre-baby body back and feel healthy and confident again. This would also help reduce the risk of suffering from postpartum depression.

Now for the fun stuff!

We started with three weeks of pre-/rehab style sessions to get her used to her new body. Then I dropped the bomb on her that I signed her up for a meet that was ten weeks away and her training started now!

My train-of-thought for her first four weeks of the cycle was to get lots of relatively high reps with a high intensity (about 80% of her projected 1RM) to make sure she gets her groove back on all three lifts.

Even though it was to a rep max, I wanted her to leave a few reps in the tank. That way we wouldn’t put her at any risk-of-injury. All the lifts were to be done in the same order as a meet, squat-bench-deadlift, so that deadlifting is always done while tired to simulate a meet.

After the first week, Shannon’s feedback was that it was a lot of work, she was feeling beat up, and her sessions were taking two to three hours to finish. This confused me, as I was doing the same template and getting my session done in 45 minutes to an hour. So, on a rain day off from work, I went in with her for her session.

She was on her Day 3 and after she works up to a very solid set of five, she shakes her head in approval, and says “That was good. Four more sets.”

I responded with the very appropriate, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Then she went on to explain that she was doing five sets of the top set of ALL the lifts EVERY DAY. Now the long training days and feeling beat up was making a lot more sense to me, as she was doing about a months worth of work in one week of training. Once that got all sorted out, her training sessions were cut in half, time wise, and she continues to see improvement by leaps and bounds week to week.

Now that we set a great base of the three lifts, I switched her training to a more Westside-style where we change her main lifts up every two weeks, as well as all four days are now working on main lifts. For example:

As of today, there are four weeks left in her training cycle. I can’t wait for part two when I get to brag about how great she has done!