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Meet Recap: Zach competed at the USPA Gateway Classic yesterday, where he finished with a 33lb. meet PR total of 1201lbs.! Zach was able to hit a 413lb. squat (11lb. PR), 253lb. bench press, and then capped it off with a big 535lb. deadlift (34lb. PR)! Zach overcame a lot of unplanned circumstances this week, including a winter snowstorm that almost comprised the meet altogether with how bad the roads were on Friday!
It was a stressful meet week, as Monday Zach had his left adductor start acting up out of nowhere, as well as a shoulder injury that we have been slowly rehabbing for the past couple months, so we were not really sure what to expect come Saturday. But fortunately the adductor was feeling really good and didn’t hinder Zach much at all. The issue we ran into though is that we dropped his opener 10kgs on squat to play it safe, and after the first attempt moving so well, I had him take some bigger jumps than would be optimal to try to catch up to what we knew he could be capable of. We took a 12.5kg jump from his second attempt of 413lbs. to 440lbs., and I am fully confident the strength was there, it was just a matter of not being full prepared for that weight. Optimally we would have like to stick within 7.5-10kg jumps, as when you take those larger jumps there is a higher risk of form breakdown, which is what unfortunately happened. All in all though Zach performed exceptionally and put it all together with that last deadlift, which was a big PR and a perfect way to end the day!
Moving forward with Zach, we are going to take a good month or so to really back off and recover. Zach is a very injury prone lifter and is someone that needs to have a couple blocks a year where we really do a reset and allow his body to rest. In the future, one thing I plan to do with Zach is to no longer do a stereotypical peaking blocking. Even with this meet I had Zach do a fairly short peaking block, but it was still hard on him, as his body has a hard time pushing that hard when it comes to intensity. Instead we will use the template of the block we do before “peaking”, and do a slight taper off of that into a meet, as I believe that will allow him to come in being healthier and feeling more fresh on game day!
Division: Open
Weight Class: 100kg
Squat: 413lbs.
Bench: 253bs.
Deadlift: 535lbs.
Total: 1201lbs.
Coach: Steve
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