I'm currently in a off season style of training, trying to bring up weak points and improve body composition for the duration of the summer. At the end of summer I will reevaluate where I stand, and decide whether I would like to compete in the late fall, or wait until the XPC Finals in March of 2016.

For programming and coaching inquires, please email SmitleyPerformanceSystems@gmail.com

I would first like to provide an apology of my brief lapse of training log updates. I have had some personal issues for a minor leave of updates, and felt that it was best that I take some personal time away from much internet work. I have still been training, but personally, I just needed the space. Thank you.

The Powerlifting Experience 2 was one of the best seminars that I have been to. I'm sure by now you've probably caught up on a large majority of the content that the rest of Team Elitefts has posted, so I will try not to overload you with a lot of the stuff yet again, but give you a brief rundown of how things went from my end.

Friday

Friday morning I worked with some clients, and then once I was finished with some work I made my way over to London, OH. Once I arrived at the S4 Compound, I went inside to chat with a good amount of people that were there. I showed up about two hours early for our day 1 of UGSS. These are always such a blast to catch up with everyone and get in some great training. These are times where I pick up a ton of great knowledge and technique things that I need to work on. My training partners do a great job, but having a new fresh set of eyes on me always helps.

Training wise, I was supposed to have a deadlift emphasis day, but I opted to squat and deadlift since it was my final week of the training cycle. I could tell my body was ready for a deload (which I mentioned in a previous log post), but decided to push this weekend hard as it was my final weekend to go heavy for a while. Squats and deadlifts were feeling good, but I had Bob Youngs call my day for me on squats. Bob has been around the game for a LONG time, so when he speaks...I listen. Overall, training went VERY well. The compound was packed and it was hard to get everything done I would have liked, but I had fun and got in some good work nonetheless. Considering my intensity was higher than I was expecting, it was probably good my volume of work was kept to a minimum.

After training, we met with our groups that we would be having on Saturday. We broke down how things would go, made everyone ask questions, introduce themselves, and basically just get to know our attendees for the weekend. I was part of team DRIVEN, with Goggins, Eric, Swede, Ken, Sheri, Traci, Murph, and Russ and Bruce as our loaders and helpers (they did some great coaching as well).

After this was all taken care of, we grabbed some grub from the food truck, and then went back to the hotel (where I roomed with Eric from MGG). I slammed some more calories before bed, as I knew the next day I would be working and coaching hard and not have a whole lot of time for food during the day.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq1_eAFxWu4]

Items Used in this Training Session
ALL the elitefts toys

Warm Up
Bulgarian Split Squats - 2x20
Overhead Squat (with dowel) - 2x15

Grip Work
None for the day

A1) Squat
60x10
150x5
200x5
240x3
290x3
330x1
360x3
380x1
420x1
440x1
460x1 - PR (I never squat super heavy in sleeves with a straight bar, and this moved so fast. I wanted to go to 480 but Bob shut me down here.)

B1) Deadlift
135x5
245x3
335x2
385x1
445x1
485x1 (for 95% this moved incredibly well, also)

C1) Wide Stance Belt Squats
5x20

Saturday

I woke up early in the morning with Eric and went down to grab some breakfast. After some food we made our way to the compound to coach all day. I managed to have two of my online clients, Mike and Tyler, in my group. This was awesome, as they serve overseas and were home for leave. It was great to put faces with names and actually get my hands on them. I wanted them to get coached up by the other coaches more than me since I do their coaching already, but it was great to see personally what they need to work on moving forward. They both hit PR's all day long, and did a fantastic job. The other attendees also did a tremendous job, and it was great to get to know some of the people that take the time to interact on the site and enjoy my training logs. The support is always appreciated, and it was nice to give that back.

 After all the coaching was done, there were some great talks from Dave, Goggins, Dizenzo, and Clint Darden. I was fortunate from Dave to be able to speak as well about my experiences about how technique had made a difference in my own training, notably my world record squat at XPC's. At the end of the day, 164 PR's were set, and attendees valued the lessons of technique and minor adjustments to making training fit for them to continue to progress and become better lifters.

After the seminar was over, the team made our way back to the hotel to eat some pizza and have a few adult beverages. We welcomed some of the new elitefts team members (oh how that brings back memories from two years ago), and had a crazy wild evening. I'm not going to go into detail, but Murph and Bob Youngs after a long day and some inspired stories are a great group to be around. It's moments like these where together as a team we really get away from all the lifting, and just become normal people like everyone else and have fun. After a long night, I called it an evening in attempts to get some rest for a day of benching on Sunday.