MarkKO's training log

[MarkKO]

Peak week three begins.

Monday squat
3x1x379 lbs
Very, very minimal assistance. Like, almost none.



Starting to get a bit excited, which is a good thing. It actually feels like something is on the line this time. Makes for a bit of nerves, but that's also a good thing.

[MarkKO]

Overreaching hit Tuesday morning. Which is a relief really, it's essential to the peak working.

Wednesday bench
4x1x248 lbs
Minimal assistance

[zem1]

Bench looked like an empty bar, very crisp!

[MarkKO]

Bench looked like an empty bar, very crisp!

Thanks. You'd hope though

My bench is better than it was but holy hell is it still a work in progress.

[MarkKO]

Week four is now done.

As of today calories are at 4000/day. Average weight for the week is 211.2 lbs, but the average for the last four days of the period is 210.1 lbs. The writing is very much on the wall in that unless I have a cheat meal a week to bump scale weight for a couple of days, I'm going to keep losing weight at 3800 cal/day. So I'll reassess how 4000 works every week for a few weeks and then adjust as required. So far, I've gone three to four weeks between increases.

If I keep seeing sub 211 lbs waking weights this coming week, though, that reassess weekly shit isn't going to happen because I'm not going into meet day lighter than 211 lbs. I'm hoping 4000 cal/day will do the trick.

Friday deadlift
3x1x480 lbs
Minimal assistance

[MarkKO]

Meet week. Today is the last day in the gym until meet day.

Squat 5x2x297 lbs
Bench 5x3x154 lbs
Deadlift 6x1x297 lbs

Everything moved fine, and bonus: IT bands felt much better squatting than in the past few weeks. So win.

[MarkKO]

The week is proceeding much as it should. Work is busy though.

Average weight for the week is 211.2 lbs, same as last week. Had a spike across Monday/Tuesday that was just sodium retention which pushed the average up, without it I'd be looking at around 210.5 lbs. Either way, I can pretty safely say I've managed to hold above 211 lbs for meet day.

This was the first week I didn't have a dyed in the wool cheat meal - the sodium retention was from Thai food which I don't count as a complete 'cheat' as opposed to a burger and fries or similar. The coming week will be funny in terms of average weight because I'm travelling for the meet which means no waking weight for two days. It'll be a five day average, in other words, not to mention I've taken till Wednesday off work. I would anticipate I may see a higher average weight next week which will then drop again to around 211ish by the week after.

I'm anticipating that I'll need to increase calories to 4200/day within a week of going back to normal training.

[JohnHelton]

Good luck with your meet!

[MarkKO]

Good luck with your meet!

Thanks man! 48 hours to go.

[Hardartery]

Get it man. Don't break anything, lol.

[MarkKO]

Get it man. Don't break anything, lol.

I'm not putting on a skin tight onesie do do anything else than get it.

Will try very hard not to break anything, my wife would kill me.

[MarkKO]

Weighed in at 211.4 lbs, a few hours after waking at 208.3 lbs. So today I'm working on making sure I wake tomorrow at 211 or more.

The gym is small, but I like it (PTC Macarthur). Got a good dungeon vibe going. Only one monolift so I'll be warming up in a power rack and if there's only one squat bar that will be interesting but doable.

[houzi]

Best of luck today mate.

[MarkKO]

Best of luck today mate.

Thanks!

[MarkKO]

Today did not go as planned. AT ALL.

Woke up feeling ok, warming up felt fine and warmups moved well. Found a squat bar to warm up on too. Had the racks set a tad too low on the opener and wrapped my knees a tad early which combined to make my pick a bit off and my opener move slightly less well that it should - but it still moved like an opener.

Took 600 lbs as planned for my second, wrapped my knees a bit later and had the rack raised a little so my pick was better. Got past parallel and stalled. Looks like I sat back a little too far. Retook 600 lbs and stalled again, simply no juice.

Because I wasn't going to PR my bench or deadlift and without a 600+ lbs squat I needed to find an extra 70 lbs or so between them to post a decent total I pulled out. I didn't see the point in risking iniury when something obviously wasn't right. My back took some strain from the two misses, but luckily it doesn't seem to have translated into a reinjury. If I'd stayed in the meet my absolute best possible outcome would have been a 319 lbs bench and a 615 lbs pull, giving me a total in the mid 1400s. I'm honestly not interested in anything under 1540, which is what I was shooting for based on what I did in peak. Not to mention the way my back was feeling there was a good chance I wouldn't have gotten my second at 600 lbs and most likely would have been looking at a low 1400s total.

I simply did not see any benefit at all to continuing.

Why I fucked up I need to figure out.

It could simply be that the accumulation training leading in wasn't good enough. Highly unlikely though, because it wasn't hugely different to what I did for the past three years. I also went well in week two of the peak, which wouldn't have happened if the six months leading into that were shit. So that's out.

It could be the peak itself, except it was effectively identical to how I've peaked for the last three years and every other time I did well - with worse lead ups in a few cases. So that's definitely out in terms of how the peak was set up.

I've travelled for meets before and it hasn't been a problem, so that's also out.

The last variable would be my weight. Now, on the one hand, that seems unlikely because throughout the peak itself my weight has been, on average by week, the same. Except when you look at daily waking weights the story is a bit different. The trend in terms of daily waking weight has been slightly downwards, with the average being dragged up by a couple of days following a cheat meal. Meet week itself was especially bad in that respect, with some very low waking weights indeed and yesterday being the lowest waking weight yet. I don't know what today's waking weight was, but even if I added three pounds overnight it would have been still very close to the last weekly average at most. This seems to be the most likely culprit. I thought I had managed to stay on the right side of this aspect but it looks like I didn't.

It is also possible that I somehow reacted differently to the peak that the other four or five times I've done it using Greg's system. Weeks one and two went exactly as expected. So they were fine. Week three felt easier in some ways, and it wasn't until after squatting in week four that I really felt the fatigue build. That was different, because it was usually sometime in week three that it hit. So there's also the possibility that somehow my recovery this peak was better (?) to the extent that fatigue didn't hit until later, so currently I'm not fully recovered yet. Or I could have peaked early and not know it. Except if that last was the case I would have expected my warmups and opener to move badly and feel shitty. Which they didn't.

So I'm going to go with most of it being my weight, and a little being something to do with how I responded to the peak. But mostly my weight. I would assume that given my weight is still trending downwards, I'm still overall in a calorie deficit and that will have impacted my recovery enough to torpedo my performance. Except not enough to have done it until I hit my second squat.

So back to work. I'm not going to change much at all to how I train because pretty obviously it worked well. I'll continue to move calories up until I hit maintenance, and it's going to be easier without cheat meals because I won't see averages get artificially increased by a couple of high days. When I next peak in December I won't be trying to hold my weight steady because it will already be steady.

[JohnHelton]

I am sorry to hear that it didn't go as planned. Unfortunately that is how it goes sometimes. It definitely sounds like you are still in a caloric deficit and that could very well be the culprit. Keep pushing. That is all we can do.

[Hardartery]

I think you are correct in looking at calories. Did you do any kind of carb hit after weigh-in? You weren't doing any kind of water cut, so hydration should not have been a factor, but recovery on a deficit is a problem. Maybe your glycogen was low? A couple of pounds down also might cause a change in leverage or even how stuff fits. The belt feel normal? I don't know if you wore anything else or not, but it doesn't take much to kill a groove and have an off day. Knowing you have it as a lift helps with confidence next time. ou know it should have been there, so it will be there next time. It can be hard to manage everything on the day, nerves, navigating other lifters, navigating the warm-ups, getting the timing in the middle of all of the extra variables that don't exist where you train, and just plain not being able to really get your head dialed in because of the variables. It's easier when you have a coach doing that part and all you do is get your head right and go hit it. You didn't have that, so it's hard to do both jobs at once.

[MarkKO]

I am sorry to hear that it didn't go as planned. Unfortunately that is how it goes sometimes. It definitely sounds like you are still in a caloric deficit and that could very well be the culprit. Keep pushing. That is all we can do.

Exactly. Yes, it's a funny time right now because it looks like if I eat as I normally do, I'm still very slowly losing weight. So every few weeks I add calories.

Flip side, I can have one very salty meal and for a couple of days my weight is up by two to three pounds and then after the 48 hours is goes right back to normal.

[MarkKO]

I think you are correct in looking at calories. Did you do any kind of carb hit after weigh-in? You weren't doing any kind of water cut, so hydration should not have been a factor, but recovery on a deficit is a problem. Maybe your glycogen was low? A couple of pounds down also might cause a change in leverage or even how stuff fits. The belt feel normal? I don't know if you wore anything else or not, but it doesn't take much to kill a groove and have an off day. Knowing you have it as a lift helps with confidence next time. ou know it should have been there, so it will be there next time. It can be hard to manage everything on the day, nerves, navigating other lifters, navigating the warm-ups, getting the timing in the middle of all of the extra variables that don't exist where you train, and just plain not being able to really get your head dialed in because of the variables. It's easier when you have a coach doing that part and all you do is get your head right and go hit it. You didn't have that, so it's hard to do both jobs at once.

Not as such, not a carb hit. I had a decent amount of sushi for lunch, then a big dinner and an early night. Best I can gauge I took in my current usual calories that day.

Dehydration could have been a factor because I slept for a fair while and I tend to dehydrate over night.

Belt felt normal, perhaps a little easier to close so that could have been playing in too.

Outside of those variables, everything else was fine. Warmups, other lifters, the lot.

Bottom line I didn't pull it together on the day, I think I know why so I'm going to move on. Next meet is December, by which time I'll have had my calories sorted for a few months at least. I don't have a lot of experience competing not particularly fat, so I think I massively underestimated how much of an impact small changes in weight make.

[MarkKO]

Block one, week one (week one)

Well, might as well get right back into it. Or something.

I'm not going to change anything in response to what happened. Everything except meet day itself went exactly to plan, and while it might sound stupid that's just what happened. I had a bad day, I'm almost certain I know why and I know that particular variable won't be at play in December so onwards as I was.

There ARE a couple of things I'll be changing as a result of what I perceive to have been lacking results during accumulation. First off, my pecs and arms need to grow. Actually, that's first and last off. I'm still too small above the waist and despite hitting my upper body with enthusiasm for the last six months, that doesn't seem to have had as much impact as I want.

So any pec assistance is getting a three second eccentric. If that doesn't give me a bigger chest by December I'll have to add something.

I'm also going to add bicep curls twice a week on my squat and deadlift days at the end. Because I've never trained them properly I anticipate that should give me decent growth for a while at least.

I'll also add a three second eccentric to all tricep assistance work.

Tuesday upper
DB bench with three second eccentric 3x15x45 lbs
Chinups 2x8, 1x7 because I'm retrained
DB lateral raise 3x15x15 lbs
Chest supported flys 3x15x15 lbs
Alternating DB hammer curl 3x10x20 lbs