The weight cut went well; I started at about 171 on Thursday, dropped down to 167 by Friday evening, and then shaved off to about 165 with two hot baths. My boiler isn't very good, and the shower can't serve very well as a steam room, so I'll be stuck with hot baths in future. It's an unpleasant experience but worth it for the advantage. I dropped a further 3-4 pounds in the car on the way there by blasting the heat at max.
The recomp was fairly interesting; lots of In-n-Out and some pastries and icecream, essentially. I'm going to do this differently in future, mostly with regards to the pastries; those were not a good decision.
For the meet itself -
Thanks to the abundance of women entering (including one from LA Crossfit who nearly beat my first total - girl was a beast), lightweight men went in the second flight. Unfortunately, this also meant that since the womens' flight was about as short as it could be without getting merged with the men's, starting my squat warmups halfway through their second attempts left me finishing at 275 for a single with very tired quads. The bar jumped off of my back (and based on Chad Smith's comments about his meet experience, I'm going to shoot for in training a lot more often) but I was hoping to warm up further. The first two squats were fairly easy (340 as an opener, then a 375 bodyweight PR); for the third I jumped straight to setting a state record (~413, previous record 407) but missed halfway up. This was close enough that I think the difference was environmental (to the extent that a single training partner shouting "head back," or louder music, or possibly just a willingness to yell would have made a difference) rather than physical.
My bench press sucks currently - even in competition I couldn't manage much more than I've put up in training, which suggests that I need to make some drastic changes. The ~190 opener went up fairly smoothly, but 215 was an incredible struggle (to the extent that when Coan called to rack it I was still a few degrees away from extension on my right elbow). I initially passed on my third but changed my mind and asked for 225 - I knew I was unlikely to get it but also knew that I'd feel worse for not trying.
The deadlifts were eye-opening in that my opener was tough, my second involved letting my back loose a bit, and my third (which I needed to get to total over 1000 and for which I pushed myself to homicidal levels of anger - Coan commented during cleanup that he thought I was going to kill him after I put it down) only avoided dangerous levels of back rounding because of the belt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWJP2WQ1bOA
Programming-wise -
This competition made a few very important things very obvious:
1) My squat programming works, and if I continue at 165 for the fall my emphasis should be on maintenance more than progress. The next bench record is 275, and I'll need to build up my upper back strength as part of training for that; the next deadlift record is somewhere around 515, for which I'll need to focus on low back strength but generally build virtually everything else. Between those two I doubt I'll need to focus explicitly on building up my squat, especially to the extent that I have been recently.
2) Either my bench programming is terrible or my technique needs serious revision (in other words, my training max should not be that close to my competition max). I should be able to address the latter by taking a few trips up to Supertraining over the summer to work on form, but I'll have to make some serious programming revisions (see below).
3) My deadlift programming might be working technically (though I doubt it) but it's not addressing my main weak point and thus needs serious revision. I may also want to revise my technique, particularly given some things I heard from Rhino and his training partners.
4) I need to do a lot of work on building up my chins and rows.
Thoughts on the bench:
1) There is nothing wrong with taking a close grip. I noticed during the heavyweight bench attempts that virtually all of the strongest benchers at the meet (Bell, Lilly, Efferding, etc.) went no wider than middle finger on the rings for their raw attempts (and Mark didn't even go wider than that for his shirted attempt later on). These guys are all significantly wider than I am at the shoulder, so I can probably keep my grip in closer without issue.
2) Looking back, my bench seems to benefit from somewhat more volume on both the movement itself and on supplemental work. The more 5x5-type approach seems to drive it upwards very effectively. Strict overhead and floor pressing definitely seems to drive it well; dumbbell benching also may be it's harder to say there. Cycling out for different movements also helps.
Thoughts on the deadlift:
My low back is the weak link, somewhat followed by an inability to consistently mix lumbar extension with thoracic flexion. Barbell rows should help with this but I'm still not entirely sure what I should do to fix it, though suspended good mornings do come to mind. As far as I can tell, the only thing that's ever really worked to drive my deadlift up significantly is linear progression with the movement itself. My assumption here is that it works because the higher time under tension adds some volume to build up strength in my lower back, though I'm not entirely sure of that.
Brandon Lilly's ideas (not directed specifically at me) include deadlifts with a 5-second pause immediately after the bar breaks the floor and pulls from a slight (1-inch) deficit. Emevas's touch-and-go ROM progression stands out as an attractive option, as does a simple linear progression of deadlifting. SSB squatting also could be useful but isn't within my reach for the time being. Rack pulls could be useful but they're already covered on the ROM progression side.
Rambling overall ideas:
Have at least one day per week with the squat as a primary movement, and one with the front squat. These can be kept on the Bulgarian protocol, because that appears to be working very well for the time being. I may attempt to continue squatting maximally every day.
I think I'm going to experiment with reducing benching frequency and adding in more rotation movements. Maximal bench singles don't appear to be very useful, and the RSF seem to have gotten rid of the pads on the good benches so I may not be able to press for singles for a while regardless (I'm not comfortable pressing maximally on the others). My overall pressing frequency will probably also be reduced - I'm thinking 3 days per week, one benching, one pressing, and one floor pressing. These movements don't have to be first in the day.
I want to maintain the general Bulgarian squatting approach. However, I'm thinking that since my bench increased best during periods when I was doing 5x5 either as core as a supplement to max effort work I'll have two days focused on that to accumulate greater pressing volume. I think I will keep technical maxes in; apart from anything else, I found that the 5x5 supplemental work felt better after something somewhat heavier. That said, I'm not committed to the idea of doing maximal work - I have a feeling that my bench could use some speed emphasis, so I may wind up having some technical work around 90% of expected max prior to the pressing and floor pressing. I'll probably take the technical work up 5 pounds every two weeks or something to that effect. I'm not convinced of the wisdom of both pressing and floor pressing every week; previously I had a lot of luck just alternating them, but I don't have many alternatives besides deloading every fourth week. Alternatively, I could reduce or remove the bench technical work, keep the squatting at the start of that day, and rely on the fatigue from that to act as some additional warmup. I'm not very enthusiastic about that idea, though.
I'm thinking I'll start each week with the "Emevas Deadlift" (sans belt) and then pull some fairly heavy singles on Wednesdays. My idea here is to build back strength using the time under tension on Mondays and then hit some heavier singles on Wednesdays for form purposes. Since this is the deadlift we're probably talking about singles no heavier than what I'm squatting.
I do not have any idea how this is going to turn out.
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