Meet Recap: After a 6 month slow rebuild for Adam, he was able to compete healthy and pain free at the USPA Gateway Classic, hitting a 595lb. squat, 397lb, bench press, and 606lb. deadlift for a 1598lb. total! This helped him place 3rd overall based off Wilks at a highly competitive meet!
The best part of the meet though is coming away knowing just how much more strength he has. Unfortunately a misgroove on squats ended up in Adam completely bottoming out his squat and having to hit an all out grinder at 595lbs., versus having a chance at the 617lbs. that I am very confident he had. And then an odd call on his first attempt deadlift resulted in not being able to fully display his strength on deadlifts and having to basically take his 2nd attempt as a 3rd. But the blessing in disguise is that we figured out exactly what has been causing these leg shakes that have plagued his top end strength, and as can be seen by the 606lb. deadlift, Adam has way more in him. His deadlift training had not been going that well leading into the meet, and we thought maybe at most he had 628lbs. in him, but after the “accidental” adjustment Adam made with his starting hip position on his 2nd and 3rd attempt, I honestly think he fairly easily had 650+ in him on the day.
For this meet I told Adam I was not going to force progress. What I mean by that is we spent a good 6 months slowly building up his tolerance for loading and volume so that he could be training 100% pain free, and I did not want to rush that. Fortunately, it worked out that this meet lined up for exactly the time when we were going to be hitting weights in the 85-92% range again, but the downside was we had very little exposure to those intensities in comparison to what would be optimal. After this meet though, we now have the chance to take what we have built up and start training in a more normal capacity and progress from there. So I have very high hopes and expectations for what is to come by the end of 2019!
Division: Open
Weight Class: 100kg
Squat: 595lbs.
Bench: 397bs.
Deadlift: 606lbs.
Total: 1598lbs.
Coach: Steve
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