You put the work in. Your legs are stronger. Your back is stonger. Even your grip has improved. You are stronger. Believe it. After 5 cycles forward, and working a lot, you are as tired/fatigued as you are going to get. Believe it.
Now you need to recover, and to figure out how to transfer your new strength (banging out reps) into 1 explosive effort (max attempt). Get some (6?8?10?)singles, or “speed pulls” in. When you can move 80% (480) really fast, you can pull 600. 5 weeks out, work with 400. Blast that shit! Add 20 pounds per week. Finish with 480 fast, rest a week, pull 600! It worked for Eddie Hall.
Haha, well, I don’t think I’ve ever not acknowledged the utility of these methods but rather, tried to put them in context according to the training level and thought process of whoever was asking for advice.
Lol. Just to add, as I said before, I don’t really believe in a hypertrophy rep range despite being an old school meathead who trains mainly for looks. In my experience, the speed sets here are sufficient for inducing hypertrophy because of the short rest periods, focus on explosiveness and high volume of work. Personally, for other lifts, I may do something like sets of 6 like this after hitting a heavier top set until the rep speed slows too much or technical failure occurs.
@MarkKO
As you know, I’m not a powerlifter. Just offering some suggestions based on what I’ve read and applied.
I’ve never peaked a lift for a comp before so I’m not the person to ask. I err on the side of higher reps rather than lower. If I were to do it I’d just do the classic 10s, 5s, triples, doubles, singles, but that’s as scientific as I’d get.
If you ever decide to tan up, put on a thong and flex in front of a room full of guys I’ll be much more help, but for now I’m just here for moral support!
Guys thanks so much for the support and advice. Means a lot.
Anyway, after taking all your excellent advice into consideration and calming down and thinking about it, this puts it best:
I’ll reset my TM for deadlift back to what it was for cycle three (539 lbs). The cycle leading to the meet - cycle seven - I’ll keep 351 with the reset TM and just hit a 572 lbs single in week three. I’ll run 531 again from cycle eight, not 351, and see where that takes me. By cycle 10 my TM will be back to where it is now. Ideally that’ll see me pulling 572 lbs for two to three in week three of cycle 10.
I’ll also kind of reset my squat TM for cycle eight: I’ll use my TM for this cycle (six) because this cycle I’ve mostly squatted in wraps. That means I can pick up where I left off in terms of aiming for unwrapped squat rep PRs. I’ll still increase it for cycle seven, but then go back down.
For attempts, I’ll definitely not go above 578 lbs for DL as a third. For bench, I’ll go for 302 lbs, and 550 lbs for my squat.
Had my second Body Impedance Analysis today - three months of deficit. Wearing training shorts and shirt I weighed 216.7 lbs, bodyfat at 23.5% (I think, I know I lost less than two percent but more than one) and skeletal muscle mass down 700 grams.
Less of a change than I expected, but I didn’t want to have lost more than a kilo of skeletal muscle mass so that’s a win. I know I look a bunch leaner, at any rate, based on what I see and what others tell me.
I may change my macros slightly, but I’ll need to decide how much extra hassle that’ll be and if it’s worth it. What I’m currently doing is obviously working reasonably well so there is little incentive to change it.
When time comes to break out the tan and thong I’ll call upon @Yogi1.
35 band pull aparts lying on the bench after the first three warm up sets - I think this is where I’ll put these kind of things from now on. Seems to work better.
5x220 lbs, 6 RPE - moved my touch point back to the base of my pecs. Best set I’ve had in ages, felt so much more powerful
3x247 lbs, 6-7 RPE - felt good despite a relatively poor unrack
4x280 lbs, 9-10 RPE - I’d gone into this session telling myself I’d had a good session, and for this set reminded myself that fear is the mind killer and this happened. Massively pleased. First bench rep PR in ages.
2x297 lbs, 10 RPE - again reminded myself that fear is the mind killer. That seems to help. This was a planned joker set at my TM, meant to be a single but after the first rep had to go for a double. Another rep PR.
Borderline incredulous. It’s like the last four cycles of mediocre benching somehow put together a stronger bench as long as I stopped being an idiot and touched where I need to. If I needed any further proof that 531 works, I sure got it today.
While I remember:
TOUCH AT THE BASE OF MY PECS
PULL THE BAR APART AND DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE FLARE
The interesting this is that the formula for each of those PR sets has my calculated max within a pound (317.5 and 316.6 lbs) of each other.
Took a lot of discipline not to have a crack at 302 lbs.
4x4x200 lbs paused bench press
5x20x88 lbs seated calf raises between sets - two sets after the last bench set
I don’t know, I’ve done 300 touch and go in the gym but missed it as my second and third attempt at my last meet. That’s been a bugaboo for me … Benching at full-strength in the gym and slightly depleted in a meet being that its after 3 heavy squats. I opened at 270 then went straight to 300. Probably would have had a better shot if I laid up with 290 first. Need to pick smarter attempts…
Looks good to me! I am noticing people typically keeping all of their bench attempts within 30 pounds. I need to be conservative because I’ve so far made 30 lb jumps between first and seconds.
How did you come to those numbers for your meet bud? Im totally stumped on what to shoot for!
Dropping your TMs back a few cycles seems a good idea, it’ll be interesting to see how much better you do with the numbers this time around, compared to the last time you did them!!
I’m starting cycle 5 after my deload next week, hoping I don’t stall out and have to reset my TMs just yet, wanna try squeeze a bit out more out before my meet.
A mix of what I want to hit and what I think I can hit.
For squat, I think I’m a good chance of hitting 250 kg, but of 240 kg and 245 kg feel horrible when I attempt them obviously I’ll drop down. I’m going to have a crack at 235 kg for a double tomorrow and that’ll be a good indicator I think. The absolute lowest I’d go is 240 kg but something would have to be seriously off for that to happen - not saying that won’t happen, but I’m focusing on it not happening.
For bench I want to crack 300 lbs after missing it last meet, and yesterday makes me think that’s a real possibility. Failing that, I’ll settle for 135 kg but I’m very determined to not let it come to that.
For deadlift I wanted 600 lbs but it’s pretty obvious to me that’ll be highly unlikely so I’ll settle for a meet PR. I’m pretty confident 262.5 kg will go up - that’ll give me a 650 kg total assuming I go 250/137.5 first. If I don’t and I’m having a bad day I’ll go for 257.5 since that’ll be 2.5 kg higher than any DL I’ve pulled in meet.
You can see really that meets are about PRs for me.
I shall bear that in mind. I’m pretty confident. Last meet prep I could only manage a very grindy 297 lbs a week out and only missed 302 lbs in meet at my sticking point. I think I’m in a much better position now. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have hit 302 lbs twice before the meet (three weeks out and one week out) this time.
