Reflections of a powerlifting comp prep

It has been almost 7 months since my last comp. It has felt like a life time ago and here I will go through the lessons I have learnt (through total failure) that will let me continue to enjoy this thing called powerlifting for another little while.

My last comp was a huge success for me personally. I PB’d my squat at 225kg, comp PB’d my bench @ 152.5kg and PB’d my deadlift @ 260kg. All while weighing 81.8kg - not bad!

After the competition though, I was cooked. I had gone through a pretty intense calorie deficit over the last 12-18 months, going from a squishy 95kg to being… well… almost stage ready at 81.8kg. While I looked ‘good’, my body was screaming at me.

I picked up a posterior hip impingement through that prep and then had to deal with it (think a literal pain where my ass meets my hamstring). Which meant pulling anything over 70kg off the floor was painful. Lot’s of rehab, technique trial/error and frustrations ensued. However, after about 4-5 months, we finally got there and I began to be able to string some decent sessions together. Decent sessions were still only ending up around the 170-200 mark. A long way from my previous comp training.

A major thing that helped, was increasing my calories. It was almost instant, when I increased my calories (or my energy consumed), my pain decreased. It was like my body was saying “oh we now have enough energy to tend to that thing that has been really annoying” - thanks man. love that.

It has meant that my body weight increased, the highest I’ve seen the scale is about 89kg. But I usually sit around the 87-88kg mark. WELL WONT THIS MAKE THE NEXT COMP INTERESTING.

What it has also meant - my squat has also felt the best it ever has. I write this on the day of my last squat of prep, and it is looking like I will take around 225kg again, setting me up well to hit something great in comp.

Bench for me has been consistently improving. It really just needs to stay the course.

While I probably won’t make the u83 weight class, with my usual pre-comp weight cut, I’ll go close, so my DOT’s score won’t blow out entirely. There was a thought in the back of my head for a while that I would just go into the u93s and all my weights would go up, and then I’d have a crack at the national qualifying total (690kg) - it is now very apparent that that will not happen.

My thoughts - if I can just not go backwards, that’d be great. My squat will likely end up around the 230-240 mark, bench will hopefully be 165, but maybe 160kg on the day, and deadlift - who knows. Anywhere from 220-260kg. It be fickle like that.

My take aways - I just can’t deadlift that heavy in training, and realistically need to set a firm cap of 90ish% to aim to FINISH my block at. Most likely taking 5% jumps earlier in the block, and then 7-10% jumps later.
Bench be benching though, so I’m still hopeful of benching 170kg at Bench Nationals in December.

Also - it’s going to be hilarious to be 83-84kg at one comp, and then 4 weeks later be 92kg.

Until next time,

Coach Dyl

Edit** - Coach said no to a pre-comp weight cut. Big sads.