Sunday was a DL day at Apollon and it was time to start working some suited pulls in rep for the meet next month, to figure out what I'll be wearing.

I've never used a deadlift suit, and have always pulled sumo in my squat suits. I knew the suit I wore at the last meet was too small, so I put on the same gear I wore last week (Pro briefs and Ace suit).

Warmed up to 3 plates, got my stuff on, and worked up to 545 (probably opener). That's where the fun started.

545 - miss. It was slow off the floor, then I lost my grip at the top.

I figured that the combination of the suit and brief were too much support to get into position, so I axed the brief and took it a gain.

545 - miss. Faster off the floor, but my hand popped open again. I've been working my alternating grip because my hook has been unreliable lately. So I decided to switch back to hook and try it again.

545 - miss. Goddamn grip again.

Took a last shot with over under, this time spending more time to wedge as much hand meat as possible into the knurling.

545  - made it.

Needless to say I was pissed, and feeling a little defeated, especially with a crappy squat workout the previous week. But I have a feeling I know what's going on.

Over the last few months, I've been working much harder on bringing up my raw strength. I've been using less gear than I normally do, and doing special exercises that I haven't used in years. It's working, because my pre are going up, and my back strength is steadily improving. The only problem is that it isn't transferring over to gear.

While this stuff is great for offseason work, and it's sorely needed right now, It isn't what I need to get meet ready. Although it doesn't address my weaknesses, I need a lot more suit work than I thought to get ready for the platform. I'm just not getting enough overload and technical work without it.

So rather than try to crap 3 months of suit work into 3 weeks, I will be competing bench-only next month. As bad as my lower body stuff has been going in the last few weeks, that is how well my bench has been moving along. So rather than limp through another meet trying to eek out a total pr, I'm going to say f-it and see just how much I can bench.

As far as the lower body stuff, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing as far as addressing raw strength, then transition back to gear 16 weeks or so out from my next meet.