5/10/08- Albany Strength USAPL- Meet Recap

All in all, a very successful meet and a very successful 20 weeks of training between this and the last competition. I'll go piece by piece...

Making Weight
I really didn't have much weight to lose for this meet, so that made things quite easy. I was only coming down from around 203lb during the training cycle. The week before, I avoided the cheat meals that I occasionally have. I dropped the carbs back a bit, and drank 2 gallons of water a day starting the Monday of meet week. I got to step on the scale the day before, and weighed in at 201.4lb. 12 hours out from weigh-ins, I cut out water and food, only having drank a gallon the day before.

I went to bed the night before at 10PM, the earliest I have gone to bed in ages...and I slept almost all the way through until 6:15AM. I've never gotten more than a few hours of sleep before a meet due to nerves, but I seemed to be much more relaxed about it.

I was a bit worried that I wasn't dehydrated enough judging by the color of my piss. It was essentially clear, all they way up until the weigh-ins. I ended up being 197.4lb. Drank 2 cups of water, ate my first "meal", 2 more cups of water, and then Gatorade and more food.


Squat
To say that squat warmups were rushed would be an understatement. Too many people in the room and all of them trying to get warmed up as fast as possible. I was able to do the bar for 2 sets, 185x3, 235x2, 275x1 and then I realized that the flight before mine was ending. So I had to jump from 70% to 90% (my opener). This worried me but 350lb went up pretty easy. As planned, I jumped to 375lb. I sunk it way too deep and it threw me forward. I also forgot to force my elbows forward. The weight moved much more slowly than it should have, and I was pissed to have wasted the energy. 400lb was the plan, but I knew that I wouldn't be getting it up if I sunk it that deep. I decided that I would basically go to what felt like shallow depth and just try to make the lift. Well, what I thought was shallow was deep enough for the judges and on film, and I landed a 400lb squat. My first double bodyweight squat and first 400 to legit depth. A 25lb meet and 10lb gym PR. I have never fought that hard and long for a squat.

Bench Press
Warmups felt good. 260lb went up pretty easily. 280lb went up pretty easily, but slower than it should have. That is a 5lb meet PR. In hindsight, I should have played it safe with 285-290, but not big deal. I missed on 295lb.

Deadlift
Warmups felt great. I took one set of tripes at 50% and the rest were singles. 480lb was speedy. 515lb was a 2.5lb meet PR and broke the NY State Raw 198 USAPL deadlift record of 500. 550lb was smooth as hell and probably the prettiest max deadlift I have ever done. I also used baby powder on my thighs for the first time during my last attempt. This was a 37.5lb meet PR and a 15lb gym PR...very big improvements!

After the meet had ended, I decided that I wanted to take 555lb for a ride in the warmup room. After some ammonia and the blaring of "Thunderstruck" in my earphones, I ripped it off the ground. It came up, and past the knees, up the thigh and then the impossible happened...I was stuck 2 inches from lockout. I kept pulling and felt like my insides were going to shoot out of my ass. Then I dropped it. Then I almost passed out. Then I took the camera back to look over the video and deleted it by accident. I was pretty pissed, but I learned a hugely valuable lesson. I was going to take rack pulls out of my program because I had never, not once, ever, missed a deadlift above the knees. I think I know to keep them in now.

Total
I went 8/9 and got a 1,230lb total for a 67lb meet PR. Can't really ask for more than that. According to the 100% RAW Classification chart, that puts me at Class I. Next stop Master, then one day...Elite!