Spent a large part of today either asleep or dozing. Night shift, combined with a busy holiday period where I didn’t really get a decent long sleep at any point, decided to hit me. My fiancee and the munchkin were great about it, so by the time work rolled around I felt vaguely human again.
Anyway, one strategy I have to help me relax when I’m trying to get to sleep is to go through my next meet’s third attempts and visualise going through the lifts. I hadn’t actually given much consideration to my attempts or even a distinct goal for my next meet. My focus in the last couple of months of 2016 had been on getting through the rest of the year’s training and getting the first half of 2017’s training set out - the extent to which my next meet was involved in that latter was little more than picking a meet so I had a date to schedule things towards. Beyond wanting to improve my total and break 300 lbs on bench I really hadn’t given any thought to what I wanted to do.
For some reason, while I lay there dozing that is precisely where my mind decided to go. It was almost surreal, but satisfying.
Squat - 572 lbs (260 kg)
Bench - 319 lbs (145 kg)
Deadlift - 600 lbs (272.5 kg)
Total - 1491 lbs (677.5 kg)
I probably spent a good two hours at least going over whether these were realistic targets for early July. Whichever way I look at it, I think they are. The squat is probably the biggest jump, but if everything goes according to plan I’ll be hitting a wrapped triple at 528 lbs during my peaking phase - assuming I hit that, and I can say that even now I would back myself to manage 528 lbs for a double so I’m confident - I don’t see 572 lbs in meet as being unrealistic. For bench, I figure there’s no point in aiming to just scrape 300 lbs. I can hit 302 lbs now messily. Give me even a couple more months and 302 lbs with calls will be fine again, so adding 17 lbs or so over seven months is, again, realistic.
I had a bit of a breakthrough with bench at the end of December - I can’t quite put a finger on it, but I think having gotten to a good 302 lbs, then getting hurt and missing it in meet and then a couple of months later managing to grind it out at a lower bodyweight finally makes me feel like I can say, yes, I can bench 300 lbs. I’m not going to limit myself to making just over 300 lbs a third attempt when the next meet is seven months away. I made a conscious decision when I started benching again after my bicep strain that I would no longer consider myself a bad bencher - rather I would train my bench like a good bencher. It all came down to how comfortable DB benching was, and how much I could move with DBs; how good closer grip bench felt coming back was a part of it too. My mentality now is that while I might not be a great bencher, I’m sure as hell not a bad bencher. I’m convinced the vast majority of issues I had with benching stemmed from having convinced myself I was a bad bencher and as a result adopting a technique, setup and expectations based on that assumption.
For deadlift, I think 600 lbs is a good third attempt - it will just be a matter of nutting up and moving it. Almost every third deadlift I’ve gotten so far - in fact all bar one - left me feeling I could have pulled a bit more. I’ll set my second attempt so that (assuming I got my third bench) it gets me a PR total by 5-10 lbs or so. That way even if I don’t manage 600 lbs, I’ll have a PR total to go home with.
Given that I’ll be in the 198s for that meet, I think a 1491 total would be pretty decent. Yes, it is a big improvement on my current total - but no matter which way I turn it, I don’t see how any of those attempts are wildly unrealistic. As it stands, this is what my initial plan for each lift looks like.
Squat
1 - 495 lbs (225 kg)
2A - 539 lbs (245 kg)
2B - 528 lbs (240 kg)
3A - 572 lbs (260 kg)
3B - 561 lbs (255 kg)
Bench
1 - 286 lbs (130 kg)
2A - 308 lbs (140 kg)
2B - 302 lbs (137.5 kg)
3A - 319 lbs (145 kg)
3B - 308 lbs (140 kg)
Deadlift
1 - 506 lbs (230 kg)
2A - 561 lbs (255 kg)
2B - 550 lbs (250 kg)
3A - 600 lbs (272.5 kg)
3B - 583 lbs (265 kg)
That would give me a total ranging between 1452 lbs (660 kg) and 1491 lbs (677.5 kg) and around 1380 lbs (627.5 kg) if things go rather badly.
Obviously this is all subject to reality as time progresses, but it is a starting point I am very comfortable with.