Currently I am in contest prep mode for a meet in New Jersey at the end of January. It is an equipped only meet with two weight classes, along with a lot of great lifters so I couldn’t pass it up. The week prior to this, I established a bit of a baseline hitting all my lifts at 75% and under. This week was a quick deload before getting to all the fun stuff next week that I am excited to hit. My weight right now is about 225lbs, which is the heaviest I have ever been. I’m hoping that the extra weight that I put on during my off season will help me out with having my best possible meet day. There won’t be any weight cut at all, maybe just watching what I eat for a week or two  before the meet to put me just under 220lbs.

During deload week I went out and did myself the favor of getting a deep tissue done as well as some chiro work from Dr. Jay Marienthal. I have been working a lot on trying to improve my shoulder mobility. It seems to put me at a big disadvantage by not being able to bring my grip in at all on my squats. The chiropractor did some work and gave me a few exercises to do daily in order to help open my shoulders up.

I worked up to a minimum of 5 singles all at 50% of my raw maxes. Squats were done with 325, pulls at 315, and I skipped out on bench day last week to get my deep tissue done. Next week will be 2×2 top sets of everything at 80%, as well as some 85% reverse band lifts thrown in to prep me for the following week.