I’m currently in meet prep for the 2016 APF Equipped Nationals, in Orlando, Florida on May 28th, 2016. I will be competing at 132 pounds, raw with knee wraps. The big picture is to prep for this meet, and obtain a top three placing to qualify for WPC Worlds in November.

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Saturday I got back into the knee wraps and began my peaking aspect of meet prep. I'm experimenting with a bit of a different approach to peaking for my squat. Normally this wouldn't be something that I do, but minor tweaks to programming generally needs to be made. With Nationals not a HUGE meet (but still pretty important), I decided it was best to experiment now before world's. This way if it doesn't work, I can go back to what I had been doing, but if it does work well, I know I can run with it later in November.

I opted to make my opener 490, and based off how it felt on Saturday, this is going to be a pretty safe opener based upon speed and how it felt. Usually I will take my projected second attempt with reverse bands (usually micro's), but this time around I'm deciding to go against bands (this time monster mini's). The reason for this is that I need to work on getting down just a hair faster. I feel that I'm doing better, but with the bands giving me an overspeed eccentric, it's going to reinforce that for me even better. I went with the monster mini bands because this is approximately 50-60 pounds at the top of the lift, and would put me at the furthest I'd reach for a second attempt. So with that said, it was like me feeling out 540-550, but also forcing me to be faster and continue driving my back into the bar hard to finish the lift (where with reverse bands it's actually helping get the bar accelerated for me from the bottom). Based on how that felt, I feel very good and comfortable handling those loads.

I then ran with the cambered squat bar to keep a good hefty amount of my back with the chains, but still force out a good grind, and then followed that up with the SS Yoke Bar to address my upper back issues. It was a bit of a higher volume day, but I know after next weekend that's all going to fall off pretty quickly, and there won't be much more time to work on that.

All in all, I feel very good with how this session went. It certainly helped build up the confidence.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpKlVzMK18g]

Items Used in this Training Session
Chains
EZ Loaders
Monster Mini Bands
SS Yoke Bar
Cambered Bar

Warm Up
Reverse Hyper - 3x15
Standing Cable Crunch - 3x15

A1) Squat
65x10
155x5
245x3
295x2
335x1
385x1
425x1
460x2 - add Mystical Knee Wraps
490x1  - add Krait Knee Wraps
490x1 - add monster mini bands

B1) Cambered Bar Squat vs 3 Chains Per Side
155x3 - add chains
205x3
245x3
295x3
335x3
365x1
400x1 - PR

C1) SSB Squats
155x8
245x8
295x8
335x8
355x8
335x8

D1) Wtd GHH/Back Ext off GHR
3x15

E1) Reverse Hyper Partials (top end)
3x20

F1) Lying Band Leg Curls
100 total reps

G1) Wtd Spread Eagle Sit Ups
4x10