[quote]gorangers0525 wrote:
[quote]LiquidMercury wrote:
[quote]gorangers0525 wrote:
[quote]critietaeta wrote:
Mike Tuchscherer does a mock meet 26 days out from a meet… so it’s not that ridiculous of an idea. It looks like he’s even going close to failure on the 3rd lifts.
http://www.powerliftingwatch.com/node/22560
Edit: ok i kind of confused myself. Does 26 days out mean 26 days leading up to a meet or 26 after the meet?[/quote]
I was about to say. Arguably the best raw lifter in the world does them pretty often so it can’t be that bad of an idea. [/quote]
Do you have the recovery abilities and the experience/knowledge and how it effects your body to do that just like he does, one of the best raw lifters in the world? Chances are, no, you don’t. Sure it’s something to try but definitely not as a novice. As a novice you run a mock meet and guess what happens. You have a chance of shattering your confidence in a meet. You find your opener in your mock meet, and then maybe you go do that or something a little heavier for your opener in the real meet, where it actually counts, and guess what, maybe it feels super heavy that day. You start to freak out because it feels heavier than you remember it and you start losing confidence and then it becomes a downward spiral. Until you get more meet experience, actual meet experience, I’d stay away from running your own mock meets so close to an actual meet that counts.[/quote]
I agree with a lot of the points and you’re more experienced then me so I’m not here to bicker but don’t you think that a 14 year old with decent lifts is going to recover much faster than someone squatting/deadlifting in the 800+ lbs range? I know strength is relative but lifts in Mike T’s range definitely beat you up more and require a lot more recovery/work to recover. I do think he’d be better off by just continuing training but maybe he could learn a thing or two from a mock meet. [/quote]
Please do discuss - just because I may have more experience doesn’t mean I know everything by any means, I’ve simply been fortunate enough to have some experiences and train with people who have multiple decades of experience at the highest levels so I feel as though I’ve got a decent perspective is all. Yes a 14 year old with okay lifts is going to recover much faster than someone squatting/deadlifting in the 800+ range.
But also keep in mind, they’re less capable of understanding what their performance means on a given day and be able to translate it into better results, and in my opinion, the more important issue is that a 14 year old is much more susceptible to confidence issues. If he goes and does a mock meet 8 weeks out or so, he may recover from it (though he’s also losing out on valuable training time so close to a meet), but he also runs a high risk of destroying his confidence.
Maybe he doesn’t hit the numbers he wants so he pulls out of the meet. Maybe he hits some good numbers and he then decides “well I can do more at the meet” and he goes out there and over-estimates his lifts and ends up bombing out. Maybe, he does his mock meet, and does it on a real good day but then goes to the meet and isn’t feeling quite as “on” so everything feels super super heavy. He then decides not to go for bigger numbers at the meet or he gets freaked out that what felt easy 8 weeks ago now feels heavy, so he loses his confidence and then bombs out.
Yes these are a lot of “maybes”, but as someone who coaches high school athletes (220 of them) and has coached collegiate as well, I can tell you that confidence is such a paramount factor to success, in particular in lifting for younger athletes that doing anything that could compromise it so close to a meet/race/performance (regardless of sport) is absolutely something you want to avoid.