I recently competed in the 2024 USA Powerlifting Virginia Battle at Bull Run on Saturday September 21, 2024. In this Lifter's Debrief, I'll review my preparation and performance from my first USAPL meet as a Masters Lifter. I'll be reviewing this meet from two perspectives: 1) as a lifter and 2) as a Virginia State Referee, which I officially became as of May 2024. Throughout this retrospective analysis I'll share some lessons-learned and technical changes I will consider in preparation for Virginia State Championships in March 2025!
Disclaimers:
I am not endorsed or endorsing any of the products or brands listed below. They are identified for context, informational, and entertainment purposes only.
There is footage of me in a singlet. If that offends you, then look the other way.
Any views and opinions expressed are my own and are not affiliated with USA Powerlifting or any brands listed below.
COMPROMISED MEET PREP
While this was the healthiest I have ever felt immediately going INTO a meet, I did lose about 2 months of productive training due to nagging back pain that I could not get to go away. After my previous meet in March 2024, no I didn't do a meet recap, I started experimenting with a semi-sumo or modified sumo stance deadlift. The reason being, I wanted to see if the narrower stance would give me more speed off the floor at the cost of a slightly harder lockout; it seemed like a reasonable compromise to make at the time.
However, in addition to the stance change, I began exposing myself to low bar squatting again after exclusively high bar squatting for almost a year and half. Whether it was the new stance, low bar squatting, too many changes too soon, or a combination of factors, starting in May I found myself unable to tolerate narrow stance deadlifts above 405 lb on my primary deadlift day, and unable to tolerate any deadlift stance above 315 lb on my secondary deadlift day.
After 4 weeks of reacclimating back to my regular deadlift stance, I found my deadlifts feeling pretty good again. So, of course in mid-June I decided to go for some pretty aggressive pause low bar squat weights, because why not? As the folks at Barbell Medicine would say during a rehab scenario, you are going to feel better before you actually are better. In hindsight, my back was indeed feeling better before it actually was better, as I would find out the following week, and is the first lesson-learned. On the next primary deadlift day, I found myself feeling unexpected back soreness and fatigue in my lower right back at 315 lbs. I would also feel the same sensation during squat warm ups and working sets. It wasn't painful per se, but it definitely felt like if I continued going heavier it would become painful and potentially injurious, like my body was warning me.
My coach and I were able to get the back feeling good again after 3 weeks of exclusively pin squatting both high bar and low bar. At about 9 weeks out, I had to decide whether I wanted to continue meet prep or just pull out of the competition. Obviously, I decided to continue the meet prep or I wouldn't be writing this :) Since we didn't have enough data on my low bar squat, we decided to continue riding the high bar horse, a horse I had been riding successfully since January 2023.
Lesson 1: ...during a rehab scenario, you are going to FEEL better before you actually ARE better.
THE PLAN
The goal for this meet was to hit a meet total PR of 545 kg. The meet card developed for this competition based on the prep offered multiple avenues to get there. This goal was not unreasonable given how training went and how healthy I felt going into the the meet. Below is a summary of the meet card as well as an abridged range of possible outcomes.
Different coaches use different formats and ways to convey meet strategy. To understand the version above, we can use squat as an example. The opener is 180 kg, which is your first attempt that should be picked based on how your training up to the meet has been going. Some coaches may say it should be a weight you can rep 3 to 4 times on your worst day. Other coaches may have your opener be like a last warm up set. For me, we went with weights that moved @ RPE 6 to 7 during training for a single repetition and depending on the lift. After taking your opener or first attempt, if it felt like RPE 7.5 or less, you would add 10 kg and submit 190 kg at the scoring table. If it felt like RPE 8.5 or more, you would only add 7.5 kg or submit 187.5 kg. If it was about RPE 8, you would split the difference toward the heavier weight. The same thing applies for the third attempt; after taking your second attempt, you would submit a weight to the scoring table either 7.5, 5.0, or 2.5 kg heavier than your second attempt based on the RPE criteria in the table above.
Based on the abridged range of possible outcomes, in a very worst case scenario I would only hit my openers and total 505 kg. In a very best scenario, all the weights would feel relatively light and I would total 552.5 kg. My expectation going into meet day was that it would be somewhere in between the "Pessimistic" and "Realistic" outcomes which would have landed right where I needed to be! The pessimistic outcomes show what the numbers may look like if all the weights felt heavier than expected while realistic shows a scenario where we are splitting the difference toward the heavier weights. There are actually over 27 different possible outcomes, but the utility of gaming possibilities to that level isn't of any use when you're on the platform.
THE EXECUTION
The actual outcome ended up being on the pessimistic end, but only because I missed my deadlift opener, which I'll dive into more later when we analyze performance on the individual lifts below. The range of possible outcomes above assumed I would hit all my openers, and it never entered my mind that I could possibly miss my deadlift opener nor account for the psychological effect it would have on me when I did.
Squat Analysis
I started warming up for squats around 30 minutes before my opener per usual. The warmups and opener at 180 kg moved like they did in training, so I added 10 kg for my 2nd attempt. The 2nd attempt felt harder than I wanted, whether it was RPE 9 or more, at the time felt like more but was probably less in hindsight. So I went in with a conservative 2.5 kg jump to leave more in the tank for deadlifts because I knew I could make up for the extra 2.5 kg there if I needed to. Little did I know those plans would get derailed.
There were no new lessons-learned for the squat from this competition. Since the previous meet in March 2024, I continued to experiment with different stance widths and toe angle and found myself squatting best with a narrower high bar stance with toes more forward than in previous competitions. For more information on squat anthropometry and what you can do about it, check out this post here:
As far as the Refereeing at this meet, I think they were spot on. They weren't requiring ass to grass squats and were upholding the standard.
Bench Press Analysis
This was the first meet in over a year I went into without any impending strains on my left pec, so I felt pretty confident with bench going into this competition. Warmups felt good, and the opener moved well enough, although it was a heavier opener than I had done in previous meets. I stuck to the plan and added 5 kg for my second attempt which moved @ RPE 9 to 9.5, so I went for the bare minimum jump of 2.5 kg which seemed to be the right call.
Refereeing was again spot on in my opinion. They weren't taking too long to give a "start" command after unracking, and if it took long to get a "press" command, it was because the bar was moving a bit.
This being one of the healthiest my benches has felt going into a meet, the programming for my taper was heavier than in previous preps where I was dealing with pec issues. The higher intensity bench taper with multiple 85% plus exposures may have added more fatigue than anticipated, as my upper back just felt extremely sore on 2nd and 3rd attempt benches. In the previous 2 competitions where we were nursing my pec the weeks before the meet, my benches had a lot more speed and pop on competition day, whereas these were more grindy. I wouldn't say there were any lessons-learned here per se, but rather some useful data collection. So, for my next competition, the plan will be to have lighter bench exposures or less high intensity exposures starting 1 week out.
Deadlift Analysis
At this point, my total was 307.5 kg, so I knew I had to hit 237.5 on deadlift to hit my PR goal of 545, which was not unreasonable given my deadlift history. Similar to previous meets, at this point I'm running on caffeine and adrenaline. I started warming up for deads around 30 minutes before my opener. My opener at 217.5 kg moved quick, however, there was a small divot in the platform under my left foot. I noticed it when setting up my stance, but continued anyway to initiate a pull with reckless abandon. Near lockout, I found myself losing balance and you can see my left toe moving at timestamp 0:08. This caused me to wobble at the top, and while I was able to recover the lift, I did get blue carded for downward movement, which was the correct call. So, hats off to the refs for upholding the standard! In hindsight, I should have moved the bar so that my feet would be on stable ground.
At the time, I wasn't sure if it was a platform issue or a strength issue, maybe I just ran out of gas that day? So, I did the most conservative thing I could do and repeat 217.5 as my 2nd attempt. This time, I made doubly sure that the location of the bar was somewhere with stable footing, and my 2nd attempt moved like an easy opener, which should have happened the previous lift... At this point, I knew it wasn't a strength issue, but jumping from 217.5 to 237.5 was just too risky considering there was no way I was going to get 2nd or 1st place even if I did hit it. So for my 3rd attempt I when for a conservative 10 kg jump and hit nothin' but net.
Had I not been rattled by my opening attempt, and been a little more confident in my ability, I could have still increased weight on my 2nd attempt to put me in reach of that PR total for my 3rd attempt. Based on how 227.5 kg moved, there was definitely more in the tank, but whether or not there was enough in the tank for 237.5, we'll never know :) As far as lessons-learned, I think that the old adage "fortune favors the bold," rings true here. If I had a slightly longer meet prep with additional higher intensity exposures, I definitely think I would have had the confidence to be bold in this situation...
Lesson 2: ...fortune favors the bold.
NEXT STEPS
In addition to incorporating all the lessons-learned into my next meet prep, I'll be getting back on the low-bar squat horse to see how far we can take it as my primary competition squat pattern. Also, I'll be incorporating velocity based training to see if we can get a little bit more granular with my RPE ratings on the competition movements, which will hopefully lead to better training decisions, and less downtime due to nagging aches and pains.
HIGHLIGHTS AND SHOUTOUTS
All in all I had a great meet and would like to thank USA Powerlifting Virginia for putting together another great event. While I didn't hit any personal records, I can't complain about the outcome given the shortened meet prep. Here are the highlights:
🥉90 kg Men's Raw Open 3rd
🥇 90 kg Men's Raw Master IA 1st
🙆🏽♂️ 8 for 9
💪 Matched best competition bench (previous meet)
🦵 Matched best competition squat (2 meets ago)
🤙Didn't tweak my back on deadlifts
Of course all of this would not have been made possible without the love and support of my wife who puts up with my training, blogging, and lack of attention to things unrelated to it :) As always, many thanks to my coach Hassan Mansour of Barbell Medicine for his continued guidance and wisdom.
Each meet is a stepping stone for the next, and I'm now gearing up for USAPL Virginia State Championships in March 2025, so stay tuned!