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Meet Recap: Peggy competed in her 8th meet and it was her best one yet, not only total wise, but her first time going 9 for 9 with 27 white lights!!! On top of that, I think Peggy now holds the record for most money won by any athlete I’ve coached! Cash prizes were given out at the USAPL MO River Open to the top Master’s lifter based on GL Score + Age Points, as well as the Best Overall Open Lifter was based on GL Score + Age Points. Peggy ended up placing first overall in the women’s Master’s division and then 2nd overall in the Open, taking home I believe around $800 and to full boxes of supplements! Peggy’s perfect day included a 181lb. squat, 110lb. bench press, and a 242lb. deadlift for a PR total of 534lbs. at 74 years old in the 76kg class! Squat and deadlift were huge PRs, but I know Peggy was probably the most excited about matching her meet PR bench of 110lbs. The last 2 meets she has missed that weight, and i has been a bit of a mental block since. As we were going through this final block, things weren’t going perfect, and I was trying to look back to see what was the main difference between recent training and when she hit 110lbs. back at 2019 Raw Nationals. And it clicked that the timing of her slight regression on bench coincided with COVID lockdowns. Since lockdowns Peggy has been training at home and hasn’t had the same access to accessory movements. Because of this we had experimented with higher bench press workload and lower accessory workload over the last year or so, and at times saw really good results with that, but it was inconsistent. She had hit 110lbs. in the gym a couple times, but just couldn’t quite replicate that on the platform. So for this final block leading into the meet we made the adjustment of pulling back on the amount of sets we did on bench press and increased the accessory workload with more dumbbell bench pressing and dumbbell pushups. Lastly, rather than really tapering her bench, we pretty much just trained straight into the meet. Her bench tends to only get better as the block goes along, and I believe likely maybe even a bigger factor was that with the setup we had been running, she really didn’t need to taper her bench press workload at all. Fortunately both these decisions were correct, and bench press performed just as we hoped on the day!
Division: Master’s 4
Weight Class: 76kg
Squat: 181lbs.
Bench: 110lbs.
Deadlift: 242lbs.
Total: 534lbs.
Coach: Steve
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