It’s meet week. I started the water load today. Paul gets here on Thursday. I have one session planned with some light squat, bench, and leads that I’ll take on Wednesday, and other than that I’m just resting, trying to keep my calories as high as possible without gaining weight and keeping up with my mobility/stability work.

I’ve learned so much this prep I’ll write a full article on it once the meet is over. My set was better, I had a better handle on hydration and sodium, my sleep was words better, my technique on all three lifts got better even though my shoulder hurt the entire prep. I feel like a completely different lifter than I was just at my last meet. It’s been fun.

My shoulder came together just in time and my last bench session shown here was my first real pain free session of the entire prep. Suck that I wasn’t able to train bench as heavy as I could have, but I’m still in a position to potentially hit a PR and the lessons I’ve learned about shoulder mechanics and health will serve me well after this meet. There were points where I thought, shit I really should have gotten this under control before I chose a meet but I think there’s something to be said for the type of results you can produce when you have a deadline closing in and the sense of urgency it creates. Every time I found a new deficit in my shoulder that needed work I hit it almost every hour until I started to get the changes that I needed. This is another lesson I keep seeing, if you want to make yourself better whether performance or getting out of injury you have to MAKE yourself better. You gotta will that shit into existence.

Squats were the only lift that was completely injury free up until the last week, but my guess from last week was right and that second pop was needed to completely heal the tissue, I had pain already at 405 lsat week and this week it felt completely solid. The timing was perfect.

Because I couldn’t engage my left lat the entire prep, deadlifts suffered. This last session shown here was literally the only session of the prep I could really engage my left lat. I still have work to do there, but again, the timing was perfect.

I’m excited, I’m in a better place mentally than I was last time, and I’m ready.

Squat

3×3 @ 405

Bench

3×1 @ 365, 375

Dead

12×1 @405