Well... I ate too much!

Never let it be said that I hide some of the more bitter aspects of my powerlifting journey.

While I initially had great success dropping weight a couple weeks ago, it turns out that I not only gained it all back, but I put on another couple of pounds. So, I am sitting at 285. The good news is, I am able to change up my registration for the meet this Saturday so I can compete still. The bad news is, there is a big difference between competing in the 275 pound weight class and the 308 pound weight class.

So, not sure how things will go. I am expecting to put up a PR in the squat, so stay tuned for that. If I don't come home with a medal, at least it will be good to hit a new high number. I was hoping to hit 375 on the bench, but I am not sure I will manage more than about 360... we'll just have to see.

However, one thing that has gone funky for me is my deadlift. Personally, this is the hardest lift for me to nail down. I am still fine-tuning my deadlift programming because I can't find anything that works consistently. When I train light (60-75% 1RM) then I notice huge strength drops. However, when I train heavy (90-95% 1RM) I notice great gains but they cycle violently and are inconsistent. If I train at 80%, then I kind of stagnate. Even shuffling things around and mixing light, medium, and heavy days doesn't seem to work. It's always rough to hit a plateau... but it's aggravating to hit one so close to a meet. At this point I don't know that I can add any weight over my previous meet.

After the meet I am going to come back with a weightlifting routine that helps to strip off weight. Obviously I will have to actually count calories as well, or else risk keeping all of my jiggly body fat... it does help in the winter as far as insulation goes though... so I have that going for me, which is nice. 😉

In any case, after I put up the meet results, I think I will do a few weekly logs as well. See if maybe by showing those off it might help me remain a bit more diligent. The plan is to cycle off of the heavy lifting for a month or two and go almost to a hypertrophy regimen while watching my diet. I was toying with the idea of going on a keto diet, but I haven't found any peer reviewed studies that go beyond a few weeks, so I am a bit leery of experimenting with that with nationals coming up in May. More likely, I will go with a rounded diet, balancing macros and making sure there are no wasted calories etc.

Wish me luck!