This past Saturday I competed in the RPS Lexen Fall Classic. I went 2/3 on Squats and then bombed out (0/3) on Bench. This was the firs time I've bombed out of a meet, and it was definitely frustrating; but the important thing is to adjust and move on smarter as I train for XPC Finals..
At the end of the day, I didn't do what I needed to do in order to finish the meet and hit my goal numbers, and it's up to me to make the necessary adjustments moving forward. I plan on putting together a solid performance in March, and doing everything necessary to make sure that happens.
While there are definitely no excuses for my poor performance, I've done enough meets at this point to feel pretty confident saying things were "off" right from the beginning of this one.
The past few months I've been getting switched off and on different medications to try and help with panic attacks and insomnia, and the ones I've been on have been giving me a bunch of side effects that have negatively affected training (and made life in general a lot more frustrating as of late). The past few months I've been on a benzodiazepine 3x a day, and since it works as a sedative, it's made my heavy training in particular a lot tougher. Getting dizzy when unracking squats, having trouble staying tight, and just general weakness took a toll on training. I tried to talk to my doctor to get off of them before the meet, but that's been a whole different mess I'm working to solve. Since they're a drug you build a dependence on, I couldn't stop taking them without getting withdrawal, and decided to take my normal dosage rather than risk withdrawal effects for the meet.
I think these issues affected all my lifts pretty dramatically during the meet. My conservative opening squat of 670 I had to re-rack after almost passing out, and then barely got it after resetting and unracking again. I missed my second (710) after getting unstable again and making some really poor technical mistakes, and then came back and got a slow 710 on my third. Normally after squats I feel pretty good and get a second wind for bench, but I could barely stand up without getting light-headed after squats at this meet. Warm-ups went okay for bench, but I missed my opener (505) after setting the rack too high and getting loose, then missed my second pressing a little out of the groove, and then missed it again on my third just not having the strength to press it through to lockout. I just felt burnt out as soon as I attempted the first 505.
This meet was a tune-up before XPC Finals since I already qualified earlier this year (at 220) and was a test-run at competing at 198s. Since my training weight has been around 209 anyways, it was an easy water cut, and I was able to get down to 198 and then back up to 209 without using a sauna or laxatives or anything dramatic (I give credit to Brandon Smitley for great guidance through this). Even though I felt the weight cut went very well for this meet and all my gear fit well on meet day, I will be competing at 220s for XPC Finals, and work on slowly eating up into the top end of the weight class as the meet gets closer.
I have a lot of technical things to continue to working on in training, mainly my setup and arch on squat, and pressing groove on bench. Strength-wise I need to build up my lower back strength and obviously just strength in general; and I need to build up my speed over the course of this next training cycle. Matt Smith will be up at EliteFTS on the weekends (I travel there to squat on Saturdays) along with Dave Tate and some other weekenders, so I will be getting some great help from them training for XPC Finals. We have a good gameplan and I'm looking forward to getting right back into training after a week off. My number one goal right now is to get things figured out with the doctor, and to get back on a roll with training hard and making technical improvements for next meet. I'm confident I will get things on track and know it's up to me to take control of my situation and improve it. There will be good lessons for me to take from this process and both the failures and successes will be just another key part of my development as a lifter and as a coach. I'm not as concerned about the fact that I bombed in this meet as I am about fixing the issues that are affecting training (and my life) as a whole. It's just another challenge to take on moving forward.
Thanks again to Dave and Team EliteFTS, Matt Smith, Todd Brock, Mario, Brandon, Ben, Bruce, Renea, Hannah, and all the awesome people from NBS Fitness that I had a chance to share the platform with this weekend. Congrats to all those that competed and did really well. On to the next one..