Dude, don’t you dare screw this up by getting sick.
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Hell yeah man. Looking forward to see you crush this meet
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Damn Mark, I hope it’s just nerves and shit.
Good luck tomorrow Mate 
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As they say down here. She’ll be right.
Smash it mark
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Let’s go Mark! You got this man.
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ZMA, vitamin C, and sleep.
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hope you feel better and I know you will crush it
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Good luck at the comp Mark, lets see something special!! It’s the day we’ve ALL been waiting for 
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Kick some ass Mark!
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Woke at 254.4 lbs, looking similar to yesterday.
Definitely sick, sore throat and slightly congested. But, because I went to bed very early yesterday and did what I could to maximise my body’s ability to recover I’m not feeling too bad.
Thanks for all the support peoples. You guys rock. I’ll have results up in about 10 hours.
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Looking forward to seeing how you crushed some weights!
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Looking forward to it man. Excited to see the results.
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Good to hear you’re feeling a bit better. Regardless, crank it man!
You’re probably competing right now haha.
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Smash it mate!
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I’ll just leave this here - your walkout music.
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Or this:
Or this:
Or this:
Or this:
Bottom line, same thing I tell my kids - play hard, have fun. Everything else is just noise.
Rock on bro!
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Much better to hit a PR
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you guys rock.
Right, let’s go.
Got into the venue feeling as good as I could have hoped. Managed to drop my feed bag and shatter the glass tub with my sausages in it. Washed the glass off and repacked the bag. Great start.
Helped the rest of the Ultra crew in the first flight to warm up and get their attempts. Kept spraying my throat with antiseptic/anaesthetic spray and was liberal with the cold and flu tablets. Then it was time to work while the second flight lifted. Warm-ups felt fine, back was ok but I chucked on some liniment anyway. No issues warming up. Big Matt agreed to wrap my knees and turns out he is a hell of a wrapper.
Go time for squats and pickup on the 506 lbs opener was shit but it moved fine, like an opener should. Took 567 lbs for my second. Took a light hit of ammonia and got to it. Pickup was even worse, and sat way too far back so it was awkward as shit going down and wobbly coming back up. Got it, but re-tweaked my lower back. Called for 584 lbs as my third. Went to my unhappy place, huffed the shit out of the ammonia and got the pickup about right and nailed it. Back didn’t get any worse.
Squats done and a 28 lbs PR, but a tweaked back. Applied more ointment and did what I could to fix my back. A bunch of hanging and gentle stretching seemed to help but I knew sitting down was off table. Ate a little. Time to warm up for bench, and that was uneventful. Lower back calmed down too, which boded well. Kept hitting the throat spray and flu tablets hard.
Go time for bench and my 286 lbs opener flew. Called for 319 lbs for my second, took another hit of ammonia and it moved well, but I played it safe and took 325 and some more ammonia for my third. Felt fine coming down but around halfway up it just stopped. I didn’t stop pushing, but the bar didn’t budge. The judge called take it, which was the right call. I wasn’t going to call it out of stubbornness.
That was bench with an 11 lbs PR and my back feeling like it mighty actually hold up. So far, so good. Ate a little more and started warming up for deadlifts. Belt went on immediately, just in case. Everything till the mid 300s felt good and moved fast. Back was fine. The tweak was there but I could brace and it didn’t pull or play up. Go to 440 lbs and that changed. Bracing suddenly became a fuckton harder and by 517 lbs the whole pull felt like shit: heavy and slow. Lower back was not exactly keen on deadlifting but not bad enough to change anything or stop. That was warm-ups done. I knew deadlifts wouldn’t be fun by this stage but I’d held it together this long so I figured I’d make it.
Time to deadlift. Opened at 561 lbs and it moved badly at the start but came up fast enough. Didn’t feel that much different to the 517 lbs, but that didn’t mean a whole lot. At least I had a total. Called for 628 lbs as my second, as per the plan. I saw no reason not to. I knew it would be a fight, but my opener felt and moved much as the last warmup had during test week, and while I might be crook and have a tweaked back that I figured that would at worst mirror the fatigue I was carrying during test week when I pulled that 628 lbs. Big hit of ammonia, slaps on the back and managed to get to around mid shin and knew that was it. Lower back felt like wet celery and while my legs were putting out plenty of power I couldn’t for the life of me get my back to transfer it. Let the bar go, thought for a couple of seconds and passed on my third. There just wasn’t enough on the line to risk really injuring myself and I didn’t have the fight in me to try.
Thanked the Ultra crew and meet director and left.
Thats a 1466 lbs total, a 28 lbs squat PR, an 11 lbs bench PR and a tweaked back. Sixteen pounds off my best total, 100 lbs of the total I was shooting for. I’m disappointed but I’m not ashamed. I executed Greg’s plan as best I could and simply couldn’t quite put it together for a full day. Shit happens.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvYUk56gT0Z/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1xmz41ia5e46k
I’m resting for a week, then hitting the six weeks of hell that is hypertrophy and working towards my meet in October where I’ll take another shot at breaking that 1540 lbs total.
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Damn Mark, shit happens. You proved that your training works PR on squat and bench on a shitty day, well fucking done… 265 kg on your back. Fuark that’s a lot of iron.
You tweaked your back not so far back, you were sick during comp. I’d say those two combined was a recipe for disaster.
Your squat didn’t look as confident as it’s used to, neither did DL.
The bench looked strong and fast, had you not been sick and shit you’ve nailed the third attempt on bench as well.
Live to fight another day Mark.
Have you had a medical check on that back?
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@mortdk you nailed it. I had to dig deep for that third squat. I knew my back was off so I was way less confident going down. As soon as I hit the wraps I knew I’d get it though. Matt did a fantastic job with them. I thought I might have to cut them off my right leg after.
The back tweak was 13 days ago. Took a week to get almost back to normal but it was still stiffer than usual coming into today so I’m not surprised it went again. Another week of rest will do wonders, as will no heavy weight for a while. I may get a physio to check it out though if it doesn’t fix itself. I think I can probably trace the issue back to week three. I was very tired by then and deadlifts were a real struggle. I think that, combined with a long weekend and more sitting than usual put things just off enough for something to do on the Monday and when I squatted within a couple of hours of that it sealed the deal. Sitting too far back and too deep on that second attempt was all it took to aggravate it again.
Bench I think you may be right. I may have misgrooved it slightly coming back up as well, but whatever happened I still got a PR with my second. The weight never felt really heavy. It just stopped moving.
By deadlifts I was done. I had very little energy and I knew my back was off so that knocked a big chunk out of my confidence.
Today certainly could have gone much, much worse.
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