Peaking Advise

My goal for Jan 22 meet is 450/405/600. Last meet in Oct was 401/375/551. Now i am in my 6 week of an 8 week trainig cycle where 4 weeks is volume with roughly 60% weight, then in the proceeding weeks 5-8 work off projected max percentage of 80,85,90,95 and then reset.

Now my dilemna is in this last week, I hit my PR’s from my last meet with somewhat of ease. What do I do now to get the most bang for my buck?

  1. Keep relative linear in weight progression
  2. drop weight a tad and add over 100Lbs of resistance
  3. Keep weight linear and add reverse bands in order to “Over-load”
  4. Should I wait for the last 3 weeks of training to hit the “over-load” with reverse bands.

I am still new PL and I train alone so any advise will help. By the way, after next week, I will take a deload week and then hit the next 3-weeks hard with a week to rest before meet.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

If you are still relatively new, just about anything is going to work. It sounds like you have the general idea of periodization down so thats a good thing. My only advice would be to eitheruse VERY light band band tension on your “over-loads” or, better yet, dont use them at all for the final 3 weeks. My reasoning is those final few weeks are dedicated to 2 things:

  1. Mastering sport form
  2. Recovery/Supercompensation for the competition (peaking)

Depending on how new to training you are, the reverse bands probably wont mess anything up but those last few weeks should be dedicated to feeling “real” heavy weights.

Raw or geared?
I agree with StormTheBeach, drop the bands.

If you are new to powerlifting, then I would advise you to keep it simple, don’t over think things.
If you want overloads, I personally love heavy unracks for my raw training. It helped me transition into gear smoothly, and also made everything else seem light…
Personally I think it is unneeded for you right now though. Just stick to the program you have. If things are feeling good maybe test it some one day. I personally do not like going into a meet without feeling all 3 of my possible attempts beforehand.

[quote]Squirt1991 wrote:
Raw or geared?
I agree with StormTheBeach, drop the bands.

If you are new to powerlifting, then I would advise you to keep it simple, don’t over think things.
If you want overloads, I personally love heavy unracks for my raw training. It helped me transition into gear smoothly, and also made everything else seem light…
Personally I think it is unneeded for you right now though. Just stick to the program you have. If things are feeling good maybe test it some one day. I personally do not like going into a meet without feeling all 3 of my possible attempts beforehand. [/quote]

I did forget to mention that; I compete RAW with Knee Wraps.

Both you and Storm have presented some good advice. This will be my 4th meet and I am still making adjustments based on how I recover and progress.

Thanks!