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Brian Carroll
I have begun using 10/20/Life to prepare for meets because I can’t trust me to program intelligently for myself. I do everything to myself I’d never program for someone else and end up injured. I made a list of what I wanted out of a program from intelligence of design, proven results, fatigue management, etc. Then I went through my assembled books and yours hits the nail on the head. So I am committed to using it through the rest of 2017 and all of 2018. I have been bench only, but am doing the full program so I can begin competing in a full meet at least once a year starting 2019.
So here is my dilemma, my calendar of events doesn’t line up great in 2018 for the written program and am wondering what changes you’d make to weeks to fit it all in. I will cut back on meets after this run, but Relentless and Nationals are the important ones to me and have the worst schedule conflict.
Competing Bench Only, Open and M1. Training all 3 lifts using the 4 day/week plan.
I am spending the next year to build a total, but focusing on single ply bench only competition in 2018.
Off-Season Cycle into South Dakota Push/Pull (Dec. 16th) Tentative opener is 760 in a Super Katana
2 weeks off (12/17-12/31)
Contest prep cycle/peaking into South Dakota State Meet March 17, 2018
Relentless Minnesota (early July 2018) roughly 16 weeks after State Meet
USAPL Bench Press Nationals (9/1/18) roughly 8 weeks after Relentless
After 2018, I will do one full meet per year and focus on Nationals for Bench only. Relentless will be bench only as well.
How would you arrange offseason/contest prep cycles for this calendar of events. After Nationals, I’ll take the rest of the year with no contests. I have your book. Digital and hard copy, so if I missed where you covered this type situation or am over-thinking this, I’ll apologize in advance.
Thanks and sorry for writing a fucking book. Look forward to your thoughts on this.
I’d do less meets.
At the very least, prioritize why you want to do them.
Push/Pull- Probably not needed.
State meet- Push hard for this one.
Relentless- Treat it like a heavy training day. You don’t need to for nationals, it’s just for fun and for the charity. Don’t sacrifice nationals for a “fun” meet. So I’d probably train offseason style and have this meet be your RPE 9 test week.
Nationals- This should be the top priority.
Dan has a really good point here. Relentless is fun, but in the grand scheme of things, there is no reward for performing well. No places, no prizes, and no competition.
The December push/pull meet seems like a pretty irrelevant meet too. It will likely be a just for fun meet as well, but you should ask yourself what the point of doing it is.
I’m sure you are familiar with the 2 meet rule in the book. While there circumstances where more meets are done, there has to be some very good reasoning behind them. Your adrenals can only preduce so many adrenaline hormones, and performance regardless of how seriously you take it, takes much of that away.
Just agree with Dan and Sabrina, less is more. Prioritize which meets you would rather do. Make a pro/con list if you have to but I would cut back on meets otherwise you run the risk of over-training (which could set you up for injury) burning out and showing up with sub-optimal performance at the bigger meets.