I’m going to start with Friday morning. My day started off by getting up at 5:45 A.M. I got up and went straight to the scale and weighed in at 151.2. I was pretty happy with that because that meant only a little over 2 pounds left to lose before 9 am weigh-ins. Since the hotel didn’t have a sauna I resorted to sitting in my truck with sweat pant and a sweat shirt on. Two hours later I weighed in at 148.4, officially. From there it was pretty boring. I re-hydrated and ate, a lot. Saturday morning I woke up at 6:30 and began to get ready physically and mentally. I don’t really have any morning routines that I go through so I just ate breakfast and chatted with my family until I had to go down for the rules meeting at 8 am.
Warm-ups were about the same as usual.
Stretch
Bar x5 (65lb bar)
155 x4
245 x3
315 x2
355 x1
385 x1
425 with wraps x1
I was nervous before the first squat for sure. I want to make sure that I would hit depth and make it as fast of a squat as possible. I believe I got one red light for my opener of 455 because the judge thought it was a half inch too high. Second squat, I took my last meets PR of 479. It moved very well and no problems there. On my third, Brandon and I decided 490 would be a good jump to make given on how I felt on my second. I really wanted that 500lb squat, but looking back at it I don’t think I would’ve pulled it off. Still ended up with an 11 pound PR.
Moving on to Bench warm-ups:
Bar x5
135 x5
185 x3
225 x1
235 x1
My opener was 251. It was very smooth and felt light. Moved on to 274 which was a 10 pound PR over my last meets 264lb. I think we made the right call to make a smaller jump and go for 281. It was about all I had in me. I was super happy with this though because this is the exact amount of weight that I failed with 4 months ago. It showed that I had actually made some progress in the off season. Very happy with a 17 pound PR.
Deadlift Warm-up:
135 x3
225 x3
315 x3
365 x2
405 x1
425 x1
These deadlifts look almost identical to my last meets. I had an opener of 455 pounds. Second, I took 474 pounds. We decided that on the last one since 474 looked so easy that I would take something over 500. We decided to go with 507 and if that looked good, then I would go for a 4th and try to get my 1300 lb total. Brandon all while trying to figure out the third attempt was checking coefficients to put me in the best place possible to win the meet. After we watched the guy that I was competing against get his second attempt, we figured I would have to pull over 550lbs so that went out the window pretty quick and we focused on getting me to go 9 for 9 on the day. Anyhow, 507 flew up with no problem. To get my 1300 lb total I had to pull 522 or more we went for 529. The pull was smooth all the way until the last couple inches where I believe it got a little out in front of me and made a slight downward motion. It was tough to see those two red lights up on the board because my ultimate goal was to total 1300 lbs. I guess it’ll have to wait until net time!
The meet ran very smoothly. I couldn’t have asked for a better day. It was a fast meet, just how I like it. I wasn’t waiting long at all in between lifts. I like that because it makes the meet a lot more interesting. If you want to see some meet footage go on over to my instagram @a_elpers. I keep all my lifting videos on there!