So let's recap
Squatted heavy Monday, Benched Medium-ish Wednesday and now doing a meet Saturday? So, addressing the elephant in the room, yes, I was training moderately heavy the week of the meet. Guess what, I will also be training the week after the meet as well. This is a Prep meet for me and I do these for my own personal needs. I do not recommend this for everyone because it takes planning and for the majority individuals in this sport suck at planning, not to mention most powerlifters cannot tone down their egos enough to make this process work.
Learning
2 years ago I was fortunate enough to have EliteFTS coach Eric Marocher open his door to me at the legendary Monster Grage Gym in Illinois. He gave me a great history lesson in the sport of powerlifting and took A LOT of his free time on his off day to chat with me. He suggested for me to start implementing prep meets prior to main meets to get my feet wet and calm my nerves. Since my conversation with him, I have done two prep meets (this one is my second). The outcome of my first prep meet resulted in my best meet total to date, I am hoping history will repeat itself come Rebook Record Breakers.
Passing On
This prep meet was filled with learning experiences for me. I have struggled with mind games since becoming competitive in the 181 weight class, I am my own competition, other didn't even have to worry about playing number games with me cause I would single-handedly take myself out of a meet. With this particular meet, I wanted to be able to focus on keeping my mind right. I have been blessed to be a part of team EliteFTS and given access to many great lifters, just having their phone numbers and access to them is odd to wrap my head around yet they would treat anyone the same with questions posed to them. For this particular issue I reached out to Ben Pollack who is huge on mental preparation, this man gave me a rundown of his process BEFORE he came out with an article on it and his book was released on the site. Next, my coach and John Gaglione also when through a few overlapping suggestions regarding breathing and concentration.
With the aid of EliteFTS teammates and their suggestions the day was a huge success, this is the first time in my short powerlifting career I was able to go 9/9. Now granted, I was in a higher weight class and the attempts taken were not true max effort but I still put together a meet that was a higher total than my last "main meet" and executed things with confidence when confronted with my mind. Coach Gaglione called my numbers perfectly and just like that the meet is over and it is on to turning my sites to Record Breakers.
This week following the meet will consist of a "deload / reload" if you will, letting my body recover from the meet but still getting ready to train at over 90%. I am roughly 6 weeks out and weight is dropping at a good rate to come in just where I need to. I am excited to compete on a larger stage with my new tools in my toolbox I have lacked for years in the form of mental preparation.
Squat: 622.8 - 672.4 - 700
Bench: 347.2 - 363.8 - 374.8
Deadlift: 589.7 - 644.8 - 672.4 (nearly lost it)
1747 @198