Powerlifting Meet Recap

Let me tell you, I was bummed.

I cried. I felt sick. I wanted to scream and rage.

Had I written this post too soon after the meet, it might have been this horrible, dripping with sarcasm, pity-fest of self hatred. (I actually already started and deleted that post.)

I want to thank my good friend, Andrea, for metaphorically smacking my across my emo face and helping me come to terms with what happened.

I put a high standard on myself, and I let outside influences get the best of me and what I "should" be doing at meets. As a trainer, and strength & conditioning coach I feel like my performance has to be even more solid since I'm espousing this information. How many people do I think are expecting some awesome performance from me? Clients? Athletes? Coaches? Co-workers? Bosses? Is it real or am I imagining it?

But I had a bad day.

Was it about the training leading in? Maybe.
Was it about the nutrition leading in? Maybe.
Was it about nutrition that day? Maybe.
Was it about my psycho head-space? Maybe.

Probably a dash of the first three, and a huge serving of the last, which also tends to affect the first three.

Squat: Sorry for the video quality, it was taken with an iPhone. Next time, I'll insist ManFriend use my "real" camera. This is my successful third attempt at 130kg. My squat has been suffering lately, and here it felt like I had more gas in the tank. 

Bench: Only made my opener at 67.5kg. I don't know what happened here other than my shoulders were screaming during the next two attempts, and I tend to let my elbows collapse in when my shoulders reach a certain level of pain-rage. There is no power in the pterodactyl elbow position.

Deadlift: ManFriend didn't get my opener, again, the only deadlift attempt I made at 160kg. Again, this confused me a lot because I've regularly done lifts, both conventional and sumo, at 380lbs, and to miss a 167.5kg (368.5 lbs) deadlift is NOT what I do.

There aren't powerlifting meets in the area that often. I honestly think that something that matters to my headspace is feeling a weight, and feeling it *relatively* often. With the Westside method I've been following, most of my heavy attempts are more like my opener weights plus chains or bands or boards (or some combo thereof). I think that being the newbie that I am, it's more important on max effort days to feel the "real" weight and leave the bands and chains for my dynamic days.

My coach would probably call bullshit on that, but I know what my headspace was going in.

Sidenote: I assume most of my pageviews come from my Facebook feed. It seems that the RSS feed app I used hasn't pulled my last couple of posts, and I can't figure out why.