How Many Meets per Year?

Just wondering how often my fellow T-Nation competitive powerlifters step on the platform. Its only my first year competing but I’m on track for 4 meets in 2016. I’m guessing this is on the higher end. I suppose being drug-free helps as I don’t have to worry about cycling on and off, and can just jump from one meet prep to the next.

Thoughts?

Sorry, make that 3 in 2016 with a fourth likely in January '17.

I do 2 just so I can improve enough that I am certain to increase my end total. To often and you may not put enough on your lifts, that missing an attempt or two will give you a lower total than your last meet. My opinion though. I see all these big name lfters competing pretty often

2 Likes

For myself this is really my first full year competing and I have 4 planned for the year with 2 down so far. The remaining two being USAPL Raw Nationals and UPA Power Weekend. Only two planned for next year so far though and they are qualification sensitive, those are IPF Classic Worlds and the XPC meet at The Arnold Classic.

1 Like

2-3 generally.

Sometimes I take a long time between meets and head up to eliteFTS for LTT or PLE or andom outings and do some cool lifting there which sometimes are like a meet.

1 Like

Thanks for the replies guys. Just reflecting on whether or not I’m missing out by not really having a true offseason phase in my training. I work in public accounting so busy season (mid-Jan. through mid-April) is my “offseason” but I travel out of town a lot so training is inconsistent. I’m thinking the gains will eventually slow down and I’ll need longer between meets to improve like @Vincepac1500 alluded to. But for now I feel like I need to compete as often as possible.

I do 2 meets a year maybe a 3rd if one was just not exactly max effort.

I’ve been competing for 8 years and typically, now, do about two a year. The longer I go, the more difficult I find it to recover from meets. When I first started competing I could roll from meet to meet without much difficulty and my numbers continually went up because I was new and dialing in form and gear etc.

Now, higher totals come in smaller increments and they are much harder won. In my opinion the element that makes recovery difficult isn’t so much the weight you are lifting but the artificial generation of adrenaline; fight or flight when you hit the platform. That’s what can flatten me for a while.

1 Like

@ouroboro_s thanks. 2 per year seems to be the consensus among more experienced lifters.

I have not hit my year to date yet lifting in meets, but I am shooting for 4 a year. I think it is good being new to try the different federations (seeing which ones I like) and getting a custom to the time frames of an actual meet.

1-2.