https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal daily 0.75 2024-01-31 https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/ai0tv2x8g638mg680q7gmkrznh88iy monthly 0.5 2023-12-29 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/25905539-2f9a-4ddf-9c86-e4350704154d/F4D54E8D-0612-4D69-9089-71133781CE53.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Ian, pictured left, with coach Zach Kang. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/eb9a3288-a367-44ee-a811-6cbd37db69b8/47846A64-96E9-4E25-BDE4-695F401962BC.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/dc99fa10-2410-42bc-a9e9-4a115f2ec054/IMG_7994.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/c0803b9d-6855-4aa7-9b89-b0d551437e28/4279FCD1-5D17-4D3F-A92F-07FB0193FE36.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Last years Rising Star Award! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/c35441a7-e917-4600-b3b0-d025d796192c/327B9E61-CC99-4019-9BA3-B31FC46BC979.JPG Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/044eb869-5c60-41d9-9a08-c5ca293f16c9/FCF9335D-1BBE-4F68-A236-558DFF63C302.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/ae39e8ee-bfd1-45c3-88f7-4a6d18db68ee/IMG_7990.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/f95cfb0e-ff61-4605-bff0-1f4db2f91b96/IMG_8016.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/a68e5988-bd81-4e81-9d01-c7abd8ed15c8/89D8C293-38D4-4ACD-8E74-79D653384464.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/93cfe522-8310-435c-ab52-7e69292575c4/IMG_8135.jpeg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/6ca10a81-4ad7-4b6c-a82d-6e61b39d9c8a/1E170443-E99B-4C9A-A73D-ACCFFD0000B1.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2023 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/panic monthly 0.5 2023-12-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/171c1cf5-dceb-4818-bee3-d5a9e907b15a/70733206434__9F77986A-435B-4AA0-A05A-BB1B291D0267.jpg Blog - Panic - Make it stand out Nothing to worry about here, this was a routine blood test, however, I took this photo to symbolize what the last few months leading up to it, ultimately manifested as and a reminder for the future of what it can turn into, if left unchecked. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/weight-cutting-for-powerlifting-an-exploratory-overview monthly 0.5 2023-12-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/6027ecfd-45a3-4adc-add6-76a58cb76039/Mc.jpeg Blog - Weight Cutting for Powerlifting: An Exploratory Overview - Make it stand out The notorious photo of Conor McGregor is usually used to highlight how drastic a weight cut protocol can be. Although McGregor certainly pulled out all the stops last minute, chances are he did not drop from his natural weight of 170lbs down to 145lbs, without additional dietary restriction many weeks out. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/7f4e648e-5208-47ae-82ef-781aaff655a2/Dickson.jpeg Blog - Weight Cutting for Powerlifting: An Exploratory Overview - Make it stand out Charlie Dickson, shown here at 2017 USAPL Raw Nationals, was known for pretty drastic cuts to make 83kg/183lbs, Charlie used the advantage of cutting to place high at nationals meets and even won a Junior World Championship. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/71522169-e689-4a23-af21-a2839f655d76/Cut.jpeg Blog - Weight Cutting for Powerlifting: An Exploratory Overview - Make it stand out Before you decide to do this with your boy, consider a few things! https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/peaking-in-modern-powerlifting-to-taper-or-not-to-taper monthly 0.5 2023-12-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/7100ad2f-40b3-4131-a540-d32138bc9a59/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+12.03.57+PM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out Dani LaMarca, featured a bit more intensity per session, coupled with lots of accessory work the final week leading into her most recent meet. We had to play safety on deadlift, as we unfortunately rolled on an SBD scheme that we thought would take, but did not have a positive effect. Much like Mike, week 1 training did not look this intense. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/e51d97b0-2099-4492-a6ca-99c8f1059b2f/Decham.jpeg Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out A golf swing, shown here by Bryson Dechambeau, needs constant technical reinforcement in order for the athlete to feel confident in it, you can grease the groove more often with this type of movement as in relative terms, it is not as destructive to the body as things such as: form tackling in football, repeat 100% effort sprints, etc… https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/86159a4a-1e30-4397-b158-af81d0c003d8/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+12.04.14+PM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out Dani’s week of the meet training is different from Mike’s in that, we kept a lot of the assistance stuff in, average intensity was much higher as well. 2 things are important to note, I don’t take “openers” for the sake of practice, it generally falls as a last heavy exposure around the 85-90% range, for the bench press at least, and the only reason we went up to that range on deadlift, was we missed out on heavier exposures so I banked on training the lift heavier, closer to the meet because a taper was only going to maladapt her. Dani went on to squat 363lbs for an all time PR, bench 192lbs for an all time PR, and deadlift 341lbs, up 16lbs from her final heavy pull, just 10 days prior. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/fe0362e6-c17e-44aa-825d-f4423a7a82b2/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+12.57.24+PM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out Our final week leading into the meet was modified only slightly, mainly to taper the deadlift more appropriately. However his secondary bench, secondary squat, and primer bench session, were identical. Michael was able to squat 474lbs at this meet, 308lbs with more in the tank, and deadlift 529lbs to secure a 1300lb total at 148lbs at the highest level of judging USAPL offers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/b7544415-2a13-4c27-b927-0523237732a0/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+11.47.53+AM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out One of my athletes here, Mike Iascone, with his one week out training. As you can see, volume is still quite high, relative to proximity to the meet, and for him, intensity pretty high as well, he was able to hit an all time PR single on squat, bench, and deadlift this week. We even exceeded our load caps a bit for bench press as he was moving incredible and adapting to training volume 1-1 each week. Now, training leading into this week was much more tame, especially early on. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/9e949e00-2176-4703-8e76-5a0cc0b595d4/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+12.56.35+PM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out Michael Beaupre’s penultimate block before USAPL Raw Nationals. For many, many months, we found that almost regardless of how weeks 1-4 went in a given cycle, his W5 would always overperform. So, we decided to go up to around 8 RPE on each lift in that penultimate block for singles, assess how they moved, and then looked to run the same progression leading into the meet itself, starting at somewhat of a higher base. As you can see, Michael’s deadlift was the variable we had to play around with, as we noticed it performed better, and subsequently his health leading into his other primary session was better, having it be further out. Notice the primary squat and bench session, is aligned with the day of competition, Thursday, we had 3 blocks before this adapting to this scheme. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/d99d2ac5-4979-4d09-9a74-856d3f3245b0/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+1.15.57+PM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out This is the week OF her meet. Yes, we want up to a PR set of 4, the week of the meet, on squat, because we had that trend. We went heavy on secondary bench, because we had that trend. Now, with her deadlifts being on Monday and Thursday, how did we taper that? We knew the 2nd deadlift session was always the stronger one, and we wanted to be strong on Saturday, not Thursday, so all we did was move the volume from the earlier in the week session, up to the normal “heavy” slot, and treat that as our “taper”. So you could make the argument, we only tapered a single session. She went on to squat 308lbs, bench 143lbs, and pull 336lbs, all with anywhere between 2.5 and 7.5kg to spare, as well as all time PRs on all 3 lifts, total, and DOTS. Grace Poirier, Jordyn Rocca, and Tayla Knapp also followed something similar and all had the best meets of their careers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/3db51b16-110e-417f-aeaf-2e30bd716b15/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+11.51.26+AM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out Here is Mike’s training a week out. For him, I noticed big disrupter assistance movements like split squats, RDLs, etc… were low hanging fruits to remove. This is not the case for everyone. You will also see intensity dialed WAY back on squat and deadlift, however, bench press only a minor drop. If you are treating all 3 lifts the same, more than likely this is because you are under the guise that more rest = stronger for all 3 lifts, when, in reality, its more complex than that. Mike went on to match his best squat in prep, taper into 5kg more than his best bench (with 5kg more to spare) and a whopping 15kg more than his best deadlift. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/495344f2-1fa5-4a88-ae0a-2fae4785f01a/super.jpeg Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out Tried and true method of preparing for powerlifting meets, apply stress, elicit adaptation, remove stress, super-compensate. As you can see however, several things have to go right in order for that removal of fatigue to elicit a supercompensation effect and not simply return you back to baseline. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/592e00cb-8333-4316-a1f3-cc8f644934ab/Screen+Shot+2023-12-01+at+1.08.54+PM.png Blog - Peaking in Modern Powerlifting: To Taper or Not To Taper - Make it stand out Brittany Boxer’s penultimate block leading into her most recent meet. With Brittany, for several blocks, we literally followed the same exact scheme going into the final week of each cycle, this being a 4 week block structure, and she would perform extremely well each time. She also mentioned with the other style of meet peaking, she would accumulate fatigue disproportionately to the work/strength she was obtaining, which is not uncommon. Much like my other female lighter weight lifters, her average intensity is fairly high the week of a test, almost across all sessions, and although maybe unconventional, the results were pretty substantial. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/feeling-good-vs-feeling-strong-mutually-exclusive-maybe-but-maybe-not monthly 0.5 2023-10-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/ee2926f2-340f-4ab0-beb6-c43f0a6f86fd/AEFEC578-E6ED-4C25-8D10-DC1CD7734F42.jpg Blog - Feeling Good vs. Feeling Strong: Mutually Exclusive? Maybe, but Maybe Not - Make it stand out Going into this meet, I had approximately one good feeling workout in the 10 week preparation period leading into it and was still able to walk away with a total that was reflective of my effort, with that said, 10 weeks was enough data for me to realize what I was doing was simply too much for me to recover from, regardless of what I was capable of in the past, this led to a breakthrough meet in the months that followed. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/how-to-be-a-good-powerlifting-client-communication-accountability-ethics monthly 0.5 2023-09-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/b95baf7f-e923-4d1e-a840-f25d81606799/Money.jpg Blog - How To Be A Good Powerlifting Client: Communication, Self Accountability, Ethics + The Other Side of the Coin - Make it stand out Johnny Manziel, a very highly touted quarterback and former Heisman winner, displayed poor accountability for his life off the field. Although Manziel played well for a 2 year period in college, his off the field ineptitude cost him an NFL career. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/9ece7829-9136-420a-a327-9a52c36cb989/Communication.jpeg Blog - How To Be A Good Powerlifting Client: Communication, Self Accountability, Ethics + The Other Side of the Coin - Make it stand out If you ever played team sports, you know that communication is an absolute factor that decides performance. If there are 2 equal teams, one that communicates incredibly and efficiently and the other is silent/ignores each other, who do we think is most likely going to perform better intuitively? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/faf0367f-78e2-4232-bf63-89ee42be0a4e/AB.jpeg Blog - How To Be A Good Powerlifting Client: Communication, Self Accountability, Ethics + The Other Side of the Coin - Make it stand out In professional sports, poor ethics outside the field of play is not tolerated. Although unfortunately this process takes a while for some high level athletes, ultimately you will end up released from your contract, much like Antonio Brown from the Raiders, Patriots, and Buccaneers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/039dc0d8-f751-4428-9d29-1e4623334fd0/Ja.jpeg Blog - How To Be A Good Powerlifting Client: Communication, Self Accountability, Ethics + The Other Side of the Coin - Make it stand out Memphis Grizzlies guard, Ja Morant, was levied a suspension to start the 2023-2024 season after exercising poor judgement off the court. Although Morant took vocal accountability, this speaks to a greater issue in that teams/coaches can only control so much and as individual athletes we need to maintain some form of accountability towards the “everything else” portion of our training. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/3f1d6a3d-f30b-4c9b-904e-ebe27f8ffbee/feedwich.png Blog - How To Be A Good Powerlifting Client: Communication, Self Accountability, Ethics + The Other Side of the Coin - Make it stand out Generally speaking, people tend to respond best to the approach of something they did well, something they can improve upon, then summarizing on a positive value. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5c612fa7-8b1a-4f13-ae14-745f8f97eec7/getty_533501064_2000135520009280186_398446.jpeg Blog - How To Be A Good Powerlifting Client: Communication, Self Accountability, Ethics + The Other Side of the Coin - Make it stand out For years, Lance Armstrong deceived the public and the greater cycling community with PED use and lying and dodging tests. Although that is not the point here, the main issue is what he did directly effected everyone involved and his ethical decision of deciding to do so, was a reflection on those around him and undeservingly so. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/ascending-sets-vs-top-sets-vs-straight-sets-when-why-and-how-to-implement monthly 0.5 2023-08-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/48a02c68-ba77-4462-adfd-f4afb8cd6dbd/Screen+Shot+2023-08-22+at+5.42.02+PM.png Blog - Ascending Sets vs. Top Sets vs. Straight Sets: When, Why, and How to Implement - Make it stand out One of the most popular beginner strength programs is the Texas Method. It enacts the same weight across a set amount of working sets, with no variation up or down. If you are a barebones beginner, sometimes this is more appropriate than anything, however, you quickly realize it’s limitations as you get higher and higher towards 1rm with a given rep range. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/0691a35b-faf4-45c9-9b6b-4c6a7af66032/Screen+Shot+2023-08-23+at+2.42.06+PM.png Blog - Ascending Sets vs. Top Sets vs. Straight Sets: When, Why, and How to Implement - Make it stand out This athlete of mine enacts ascending sets and top sets within his programming for barbell lifts, his accessory work many times will be straight sets. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/42fb240f-555f-4b09-92e5-c46049795d5a/Screen+Shot+2023-08-23+at+2.44.21+PM.png Blog - Ascending Sets vs. Top Sets vs. Straight Sets: When, Why, and How to Implement - Make it stand out Another lifter of mine has top sets, ascending sets, and straight sets in his programming for barbell lifts. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/37f4618a-ff68-4a19-8a1b-bca9e048ecb4/Screen+Shot+2023-08-22+at+3.09.07+PM.png Blog - Ascending Sets vs. Top Sets vs. Straight Sets: When, Why, and How to Implement - Make it stand out A somewhat typical top set scheme with backoffs. One of the limitations this method has is “sand-bagged” back off rep work that is either too light for stimulus, or not treated with intent necessary to develop good habits for successive sessions. Although this athlete has a percentage of their top set for backoffs, this is not the only way to program in backoff volume. Though multi-factorial, this athlete squatted a 22lb all time PR with this method. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/4cf77094-1d9b-4711-836c-38ecf99ff747/Rela.jpeg Blog - Ascending Sets vs. Top Sets vs. Straight Sets: When, Why, and How to Implement - Make it stand out Although not correlative 1-1 for everyone, relative intensity stays fairly constant for the average lifter. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5b024ebc-db39-46ce-bf64-e1abd3a20ad1/Screen+Shot+2023-08-22+at+11.23.48+AM.png Blog - Ascending Sets vs. Top Sets vs. Straight Sets: When, Why, and How to Implement - Make it stand out My own personal training block here, I have never ran SSB as a main movement, so for me to take guesses of where I should be for 5 reps per set based off percentage is going to be drastically off in either direction. Ascending loading allowed me to feel out the first 2 weeks of where my limit was while learning the bars natural sway. After 3 weeks of ascending volume, I switched to a top set, backdown scheme. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/coaching-the-teen-and-junior-powerlifter-long-term-athletic-development-burnout-and-reaching-the-ceiling-faster monthly 0.5 2023-08-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/38611c86-9a21-432e-a467-083e50829b5a/Sev.jpg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Seventh Woods raised signs of being the next great prospect at the age of 14, although eventually finding his way, he never materialized into the player he was projected to be at a young age. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/cb80fc5f-c66e-474c-bdd8-314d68637e9f/Screen+Shot+2023-08-18+at+3.43.42+PM.png Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Although we are further along, we actually trimmed off a training day, introduced load caps, but still are featuring a very low total weekly set count. We also are not biasing a ton of volume to lower body pressing movements as we identified the fatigue debt associated. This plan came about after dealing with hip injuries in his nationals prep and we have been fortunate enough to PR virtually every block since then, with this approach. Prepping for meet #5. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/dd37458e-21bf-4cdd-8e51-b4b537d75a30/IMG-5405.jpg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Haley-Jane Tuplin and Grace Poirier competed in their first meets as teenage lifters earlier this summer. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/445d0d5f-e3b6-4d38-a02d-d03a007166f2/Briggs.png Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Sam Briggs, won her first CrossFit Games in 2013, at the age of 31. It was not uncommon to see winners and podium members be in their late 20s, early 30s. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/243b3a3e-2815-4652-9be5-75bc1c359b25/IMG_5979+%281%29.jpeg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out In just one year, Logan Allaire has set an unofficial American record, put ~94lbs on his total, lifted in 4 meets (only peaked for 2 of them), and competed nationally. After meet #4, we extended his off-season. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/003f5621-79ad-467c-bdb1-4c5949afbcc9/Luka.jpeg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Luka Doncic, although only 24 years old, is coming up on year 9 of professional basketball. Starting at the age of 16 for Real Madrid, it makes sense why he was not like other rookies during his first year in the NBA. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/774ebc34-d6f8-4d06-a25d-d0d86853aa80/Lawson.jpeg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Emma Lawson, in the most recent CrossFit Games, was in the lead for the majority of the competition and ended up in 2nd place at the age of 18. Mal O’Brien did the same the year before. This is becoming the norm. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/ebe151d2-1bbc-4df0-a36d-dd7b507fbb51/Knighton.jpeg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Erriyon Knighton won bronze in the 200m at the age of 18 at the 2022 World Championships, since then, he is has become the 5th fastest in history over that distance, however, is this indicative of him eventually being the fastest ever when he reaches his mid 20s? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/b2bbb61e-0b5b-450c-9de1-e468cd394396/Screen+Shot+2023-08-18+at+3.42.53+PM.png Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Although this is not the entire program, you will see there is a precedent on variation. His frequency is somewhat atypical of someone that age, however he was used to it coming to me. This was in prep for his first meet, you will notice the total set count is very low on most days, with no barbell lift exceeding 3 working sets, and there is lots of movement variation: pauses squats, close grip benching, RDLs, machine work. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/e040e778-a82b-4ecf-a06d-b8094a6f9afa/Rog.jpeg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Pictured left, a young Tiger Woods, to the right, a young Roger Federer. David Epstein cited their development and their stark contrasts in his book, “Range”. He cited the fact that Tiger fell into the camp of early specialization, Roger fell into the camp of wide variety as an adolescent that streamlined into a singular focus when he entered his late teens. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/34ffb1d1-ce29-4ccc-a525-6a30d61bdb60/Strugg.jpeg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Kerri Strug, who competed in two Olympics before the age of 20, is remembered for her heroic performance in 1996 in Atlanta, vaulting on a severe leg injury to help the Magnificent Seven team take Gold. Strugg retired shortly after the ‘96 Olympics and exited to a “normal” life. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/449a1def-4932-48a9-bf7c-d0f52e78fec6/Norris.jpeg Blog - Coaching the Teen and Junior Powerlifter: Long Term Athletic Development, Burnout, and Reaching the Ceiling Faster - Make it stand out Perhaps the best example of precocious ability in powerlifting, at least in the modern sense, is Jesse Norris, who competed in 20 meets between ages 14 and 23, culminating in a 2033lb total at the age of 22. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/powerlifting-pressure-and-the-alter-ego-effect monthly 0.5 2023-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5fcaa2d0-886b-45b1-b90d-cd8ce11e0d22/Ankiel.jpg Blog - Powerlifting, Pressure, and the Alter Ego Effect - Make it stand out Rick Ankiel’s career as pitcher was destroyed as a result of mind-related limitations colloquially known as “the yips”. Ankiel, a lifelong pitcher, all of a sudden could not throw a strike consistently and would often times violently miss the strikezone 15-25 feet in each direction. He reported this feeling as hopeless and it forced him to change positions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/a91c7809-8059-4e40-bcb5-236070370771/Mamba.jpg Blog - Powerlifting, Pressure, and the Alter Ego Effect - Make it stand out Many athletes adopt an alter ego in order to perform, the most recognized most likely being Kobe Bryant’s Black Mamba persona. By all accounts Kobe was reserved and very pleasant in everyday life, but in sanctioned basketball games, he became ferocious, cantankerous, and boisterous. This is where he needed to go in order to perform. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/57865481-dcd8-4464-a511-849da4db1e84/Syd.jpeg Blog - Powerlifting, Pressure, and the Alter Ego Effect - Make it stand out Sydney McLaughin-Levrone, an ace 400m hurdler and recent open 400m runner, has overperformed at virtually all events she has participated in over the last 3 years. Although a sentiment some athletes share, she believes pressure is an illusion and only what we make of it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/0a89f14d-0f4b-4312-8f95-3605066549a9/Fraser.jpeg Blog - Powerlifting, Pressure, and the Alter Ego Effect - Make it stand out Mat Fraser, who was 2nd in 2014, 2015, and placed 1st in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 in the CrossFit Games, was borderline maniacal when it came to making sure all variables in his control, were accounted for. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/7cd3af01-fa50-419b-aa99-86acc262747d/Wilder.jpg Blog - Powerlifting, Pressure, and the Alter Ego Effect - Make it stand out Deontay Wilder, and many boxers for that matter, adapt an alter ego in order to tap in to a side of their brain that is less forgiving, less empathetic. For Wilder, who is a mild-mannered and polite person outside the ring, when he enters the ring to a fight, he has described it as similar to a caged animal being freed. Wilders then becomes the, “Bronze Bomber”, a fighter that boasts a record of 43-2-1 with 42 wins coming from knockout. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/08f9237d-6136-4d1e-9908-139926bc0fd1/Knight.jpeg Blog - Powerlifting, Pressure, and the Alter Ego Effect - Make it stand out Bobby Knight, former head coach of men’s college basketball teams such as Indiana University and Texas Tech, adhered to a negative reinforcement model that created fear and perfection in his teams. Although Knight won 3 national titles in 29 seasons at IU, he created controversy for physically assaulting his players, belittling them, and being generally unpleasant. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/peaking-strategies-concepts-and-practical-examples monthly 0.5 2023-07-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/637ff850-11a3-4a7b-b29b-5401e6be89d9/image0+%282%29.jpeg Blog - Peaking Strategies: Concepts and Practical Examples - Make it stand out Brittany Boxer is a 60kg lifter who, on paper, might seem like she would benefit from a shorter meso-cycle, however her last meet we prepped for 7 weeks, with the first week being an intro cycle and this yielded all time PRs on squat, bench, deadlift, and total and +17 points to DOTS. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/6acf0f99-654d-4f81-bebf-23c27d05d5b4/X-KFP-5609+%281%29.JPEG Blog - Peaking Strategies: Concepts and Practical Examples - Make it stand out Andrew Graves, 82.5kg, needed a revamp in his peaking approach and although the block structure was similar, the layout and technical adjustments led to maladaptation in one try, and a breakthrough in the other. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/f3f8d4fc-089d-424c-86d9-5e6733fdcb9b/IMG_5580.jpg Blog - Peaking Strategies: Concepts and Practical Examples - Make it stand out We learned the summer before that Evan Larsen, 110kg, cannot feature heavy singles or doubles, for too long leading into a peak cycle. So for his most recent meet, we did top sets of 3-4 the block before, and only added singles the last block leading into the meet and he was able to hit his first PR total in 5 years and improve his DOTS while moving up a full weight class. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/2b05c812-f29d-4003-a5ec-f49ff15c62e2/IMG_5979.jpeg Blog - Peaking Strategies: Concepts and Practical Examples - Make it stand out Logan Allaire is a 90kg lifter in the T2 division, for his first High School Nationals prep, we used a 5 week prep, one that included: changing secondary squat variations 3 weeks in, a “tune-up” meet on week 3, and then a change to an SBD day from week 3 on. He went on to hit all time PRs in the squat, meet PR bench (tied all time PR), deadlift, and total while placing 11th in the country. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/usapl-maine-preview-storylines-to-follow-in-2023 monthly 0.5 2023-02-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/3b9d5e2c-f3eb-4ffc-aa3a-2d3467c0c36d/IMG-4288.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine Preview: 2023 - Make it stand out Ely Yang, 90kg, placed 2nd overall in only his second career meet and has been on a warpath since this competition with his training. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/7dd5e858-48ac-414a-a71e-ef8509f88d2f/IMG-0498.jpeg Blog - USAPL Maine Preview: 2023 - Make it stand out Andrew Graves, 82.5kg (USAPL ME State Chair) recently competed in Philadelphia, PA putting up a 451 DOTS. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5fce0823-4bac-4845-8704-3b04bacab3f4/IMG_4283+%281%29.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine Preview: 2023 - Make it stand out The 2023 Maine State Championships features the most loaded roster USAPL ME has ever seen. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/c1a48b86-c829-4206-a7b0-b2e4e18d4bca/IMG-4290.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine Preview: 2023 - Make it stand out Jon Lavoie, 82.5kg, has been Mr. Pine Tree USAPL every year sans one, since 2017, will he continue dominance in the year of 2023? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/0ef368c2-8e8c-406f-b143-3ac639e758d3/DSC07815.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine Preview: 2023 - Make it stand out Logan Allaire, 90kg, had one of the most explosive debuts in recent memory. Who will emerge as the breakout performer of the year in 2023? https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/usapl-maine-end-of-the-year-awards-2022 monthly 0.5 2022-12-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/b23e0baa-7a3e-4b43-b90c-2f5c7b580983/IMG_3410.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/aad59d42-8073-425a-8fb5-4b5482422cb1/IMG_3404.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/b7198e7f-7775-470c-90f0-7d77b04e8455/6DC4649C-B459-4F98-9F6A-245C1574D317.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1327b7f3-bd43-48ed-b1bb-5e75bb3acaa4/IMG_3403.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/e186fad4-6327-4209-bbe0-c20d36c90ab1/IMG_3401.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/cc6881e7-ffbe-4eca-a8a8-bed3f561a969/DSC07815.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/805c9bc1-af23-4168-adf2-b88636b5177f/IMG_3405.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/d464ba64-eb7f-4aa6-9289-1edf61777915/IMG-5824.jpg Blog - USAPL Maine End of The Year Awards - 2022 - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/emotion-amp-powerlifting-beauty-behind-the-madness monthly 0.5 2022-12-16 https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/am-i-regressing-or-is-it-just-fatigue-the-accessory-work-paradox monthly 0.5 2022-11-02 https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/remembering-my-first-meet-september-8th-2018 monthly 0.5 2022-10-27 https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/journal/am-i-doing-too-much-work-maybe-but-maybe-not-how-to-trouble-shoot-your-meet-peak-and-taper monthly 0.5 2022-10-25 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Mr. Pederson here, is a lifter who, up until a few weeks ago, was a foreign-exchange student from Norway. At this moment, he is back in Norway enjoying his summer. In order to put this performance into perspective, we have to first highlight where he’s come in terms of progress. Meet #1 for Tony, he registered a total of 0kg due to unforeseen issues with deadlift lockout. This is when we started working together. Meet #2, he totaled 420kg/925lbs, with room to spare on each lift. This was done on purpose as I wanted him to experience what 9/9 felt like and how rewarding it can be to leave on a perfect day. Meet #3, we set to make his final meet in America (at least for a while) a great one. This prep for Tony, to be honest, was as perfect as it could possibly be in terms of performance, even when his consistency was up and down due to circumstance out of his control. From what I have observed, Tony trains HARD. I don’t know if I can quite do it justice in what I mean by that, but what I am trying to say is there is training with purpose and then training hard and trying to get every last kilo you can out of your plan, that is Tony. We found a good scheme for him that seemed to really do well on every lift and we pretty much ran that iteration back with tweaks after each block ended. This meet was phenomenally ran and was reminiscent of USAPL Regional meets I attended in the past, which was pretty cool as I like that atmosphere. What I really enjoy on meet day, is when an athlete trusts my calls, and just executes what I ask. Eat now, drink now, do this in 5 minutes, do that in 10 minutes, be back in 20 minutes, etc… When things are streamlined like that, it really makes my job easy. Squat started off pretty strong, we built solid momentum on attempts 1 and 2 and took the top end for attempt 3, which was 145kg/319lbs, which was a good lift and a +10kg/22lb PR and an all time PR! Bench was where I thought we’d lag a bit as I did not see his last heavy bench and with how wide his set up is, I feared butt-lift would be an obstacle. Crisis averted, we made it 3/3 on bench as well with 102.5kg/226lbs, which was a +5kg/11lb PR! Lastly, deadlifts. Man oh man, deadlifts were on fire going into this meet. Tony was exceeding pace every week and finally I conceded and allowed him to push progression a bit faster. He has a very classic sumo where he is able to get close to upright and apply vertical pressure down into the floor, less hinge-driven and more lever-driven. The only issue with this type of pull is you need to be ultra patient off the floor or lockouts will always be wonky. Deadlift 1 was effortless and sealed a PR total. Deadlift 2 was a meet PR, so I allowed Tony to make a call on what he felt he was capable of that day. We decided on 215kg/474lbs. Before he went out, I said something I like to tell all my lifters. Make or miss, you owe it to yourself to enjoy this moment. We train too hard and too long to not enjoy the 9 minutes we have on the platform and with that, I can see the fire ignite in him. He went out, executed, good lift! Full disclosure, I think this lift could have gone either way as he did receive a red for hitching, I believe, and it would have been a fair call. Sometimes you get the bright side of things however and I am not going to argue with that. This was a +27.5kg/60lb PR and an all time PR. All in all, Tony is a warrior and has really only scratched the surface of his potential. He is the second career athlete I have coached to a national qualifying total, with him hitting this total, he qualified for USAPL Teen Nationals. At the time of me writing this, we are preparing for his next meet in Norway in which he will be attempting to break the teenage national record deadlift, a weight class down. Ambitious, but doable. We will make sure he has every opportunity to do so. To Utopia. Results: Squat: 145kg (319lbs), +22lb PR Bench Press: 102.5kg (226lbs), +11lb PR Deadlift: 215kg (474lbs), +60lb PR Total: 462.5kg (1020lbs), +95lbs PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/ab02b47c-8bbb-46e7-aee0-8173617bf977/IMG_0268.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Andrew Graves - USAPL New Hampshire State Championships 82.5kg class, (23 April 2022) The Team Hogan OG, Andrew Graves took the platform for this 8th meet, our 8th working together in some capacity. Before I get into the performance, I want to lay the foundation of why I think this was Andrew’s best meet yet, not only in performance, but overall as an athlete. Over the last year, Andrew has taken on a lot of responsibilities that he does not use as excuses or crutches, but are absolutely variables to consider when preparing for meets. First, Andrew works full time as a construction manager and I have been in the car with him as he fields calls on weekends where he is not in the office. Andrew was also elected state chair for USAPL Maine and has put his heart and soul into making the state of Maine a force in the New England local meet scene, another time commitment that is very understated. Beyond this, he is also a meet director, something we have done together over the last year, but I have no ego in saying he deserves most of the credit for the logistical things we provide at our meets, such as the livestream he taught himself from scratch to create and the tunnel we set up for our last competition. You see, all of this takes time and effort away from lifting, for our last meet we were setting up for 6-8 hours counting the commute to Augusta, with very little sleep. If we want to go back to January, set up was 10-12 hours in total in a snow storm. Lastly, Andrew has been traveling like crazy this year to extend his services to referee meets in the New England area AND to handle other lifts, myself included. To give you a synopsis, in a 3 week span, he was out in Rhode Island with me handling 3 Team Hogan lifters, the week after that was out in Springfield, Mass handling me to my best meet yet, and the week after that was directing the Maine state meet and the DAY after flew to Chicago to handle one of my lifters Josh Dang, at his first national meet… This was all in meet prep and he did not miss a single training session. For those of you who say you do not have time or use the excuse of being tired from school or work, consider what other people are going through and ask yourself if you really want to be a good lifter or if you just kinda wouldn’t mind it if it happens but certainly do not want to put in the effort year round. Now, to the performance. This was easily his best prep yet and the beauty of doing multiple preps together is you have data and with that data, you have trust. I can write the best plan on paper, but if you do not trust my plan, this is rendered obsolete 10/10. To save the extreme detail, I feel as if we know the winning formula to peak, the building blocks at this point are what is most valuable for Andrew as he is very sensitive to certain intensity zones and rep ranges, for instance I recall a time where we did sets of 5 for a cycle on deadlift for top sets and his deadlift fell apart. That is individualization for you. Coming into the meet, I think something that is so understated, is having a plan. This was to our benefit on this day in particular because with the wrong attempt selection, we probably lose out on 5-7.5kg on his total by taking the wrong attempts. Our top end range for the day on squat was 240kg-242.5kg. To have a chance at that number, we had to be around 235kg for a second attempt, which was already a 5kg meet PR and all time PR, and we paced back the opening attempt from there. Having attempt #2 be a 5kg meet PR opened the door to take a risk on a 3rd, should we have to. You see, it does not always work out this way, but I pride myself in making sure my lifters get credit for their hard work during a cycle and if we can have a safety attempt to fall back on, I am planning for it. With 235kg made, we made the call to go 242.5kg. Was just too heavy on the day, which to me, is a good thing, he was falling a bit forward which we can chalk up to mis-grooving, but overall I’d rather a miss be on it not being there than technicality. This was the first real grind from Andrew in a while and I wanted to reward his prep with a bug number, 240kg was there with 95% confidence, 237.5kg was there with 100% confidence. This is why we do meets, everyone can do it in the gym, but what are you putting up after a weight cut, rehydrating, with timed warmups, strict judging, etc… We shook this off and were on to bench, Andrew’s best lift. We had the conversation that although we were still on pace for a total PR, we were going 3/3 on bench regardless. 165kg was our planned heavy third, and to be honest, it was there, but again, we take what is there based off the prior attempt and this is where maturity really set in and why I think Andrew has really grown as an athlete. We opened open at 150kg, moved great. We decided to go 157.5kg, which in hindsight I am still glad we did as he had a gnarly miss groove that made the rep harder than it had to have been and with anything heaver MIGHT have been too much to come back from. We were forced to go up 2.5kg to tie a PR, something that killed me, but I wanted this kid to walk out with the biggest total possible and I knew based off the 2nd, 2.5kg up was the right call. Of course, he blew up 160kg at 7.5-8 RPE, however, he said straight up, it was the right call based off the second and sometimes hearing that as a coach validates your ability to make a call. In the past, I think both of us would have lamented in the fact that he had more in him and I think over the last few years we have both come to a realization that we are in this game for the long-haul and sometimes giving up 2.5kg-5kg for the sake of a make and positive momentum leading into the next lift is as valuable as anything. Had he have hit 242.5kg on squat, or even 240kg, I would have had no problem going 162.5 or even 165kg on bench, even with the misgroove, but context is everything. Now, on to deadlift, this was a breakthrough. At the last meet he did, we left with no deadlift PR and frankly took something a bit too heavy for the third as we had already got our goal total, on this day, I told him again, we are leaving with a deadlift PR (PR being 250kg), so unless we have resounding proof that it is there, 252.5kg will be the goal. He agreed. We opened up at 235kg and it was absolutely smoked. Over the last few months, Andrew has had some grip troubles and a lot of it stemmed from overthinking, as his grip is actually quite strong but in my experience, with some people, myself included, the more you think about grip stuff, the more likely you are to fail on grip or neglect other areas of the pull. He enacted chalking up certain spots of his hand and adopting a very quick set up, 2 things I thought were really important for him moving forward. After 235kg, we opted to take our top end of 247.5kg, 2.5kg under his meet PR. Before the attempt, we talked that we can change the attempt after we put it in, so let’s not waste time deliberating when we can extend the pros and cons in the waiting area. 247.5kg moved great, so I said I’ll put in 252.5kg (top end was 255kg) and we can talk about it. We did some math and this is where you as a coach need feedback from your athlete, we weighed out the pros and cons of taking 255kg and missing, it meant no deadlift PR for the 2nd consecutive meet although we would still have a small total PR. This is about as far as the conversation went, he said he’s fine with that outcome should he fall short, and that he wanted to try 255kg, I obliged and honestly, I am glad he went with it because that was the limit for the day 100%. He went out, the crowd was losing their minds, he pulled it and gave me heart attack and PTSD from the Team Hogan curse (getting your third deadlift turned away 2 to 1)… Good lift, 2 whites to one red. 255kg, all time PR deadlift and secured a monster 650kg total. All in all, Andrew is only going to continue to get stronger, certain things I cannot trust with some lifters, he gets the green light because he is always communicative with me, extends his concerns, trusts me, and trusts the process. When he qualifies for his first open nationals outright, I will most likely lose my mind. The best is yet to come, but for now, this was pretty cool to see 8 meets and 3 years into this sport. To Utopia. Results: Squat: 235kg (518lbs), +17lb PR Bench Press: 160kg (353lbs), Deadlift: 255kg (563lbs), +11lb PR Total: 650kg (1433lbs), +33lbs PR 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/2780adce-270c-43a1-a665-cbe999460612/IMG_5915.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Joshua Dang - USAPL Collegiate Nationals, 75kg class, (27 March 2022) Hey everyone, this is Erik. I was not able to attend this meet and Team Hogan OG, Andrew Graves, handled him on the day. Josh here was kind enough to write up a meet report for me from his perspective, I’ll give my thoughts on it at the end, but for now, here is his experience at his first national level meet. Josh Dang, 75kg: Although I performed on Sunday March 27th. There was a lot of prep involved in getting everything together for the day. I got to the hotel a couple of days early just to be able to get my bearings and a feel for what a national event would be like. That and giving myself time to get everything together I wanted a couple of days. Since the timeline was so short I only took a single carry-on to Illinois and that meant I would essentially need to get everything I needed to eat and drink for the meet out there. Although a Target was located right next to the hotel, I had a feeling that many things would be out of stock, things such as Pedialyte, Gatorade, essentially anything that contained electrolytes. When I got there my suspicion was right, low stock on Gatorades, and little to no Pedialyte. I was lucky enough to get an Instacart order and get everything I needed for meet day. Some other nice things that was offered to athletes was being able to check in early with registration and to check equipment the day before. This meant I would not have to get my equipment checked the day of the meet and one less thing I needed to worry about. Everything, including the OG Hogan cropped shirt was approved. One thing that I noticed during this was that some but not all stickers were allowed on the lifting belts. Meet day started off at 8 AM. I wanted to weigh in early and be able to portion out my meals as I was in third session of the day meaning my lifting was going to start at night. I weighed in about 2 kilos under and knew that I didn't need to put much effort into watching my weight, really what I needed was to be eating calorically dense foods so I had enough energy for the meet. At around 4 PM I stepped on the scale at 73.03 KG. Just about 2 kilos under the limit. At around 4:50 PM Andrew and I came down from the room and waited in line to the warm-up room to begin getting ready for squat. When I stepped into the warmup room I can say that with confidence that it was the most hectic and chaotic warmup room I had ever seen. Luckily Andrew and I were able to find a platform relatively early. We shared the platform with some of Rondel Hunte's lifters. I have to say after that things become a little blurry as everything happened so fast. One brief moment that brought me back to reality was Andrew taking me out to the platform to show me exactly what I was about to walk out to. I opened squats with 182.5 and I have to say it felt heavy on my back. I knew it moved and I really had the intention of breaking into the 200's for squats so I opted for the higher jump. Second attempt of 190 had the same feeling, it was heavy but it moved and with feeling my momentum pickup I wanted that 202.5/446lbs for the third. So I told Andrew to load it up and give it to me. Him and I both knew it was there. I took 202.5 and got 2 white lights to 1 red for depth. In all honesty I was a little sad however on a national stage with the highest level of judging I really was not going to argue. (Erik’s commentary here, weak call but I am glad it counted, the kid’s stomach was below his knees) Bench took a surprising turn in my favor for the day. All through warm-ups I was feeling really smooth. Something just felt right that day. With deadlifts not feeling so hot I knew if I wanted a PR total that I would need to squeeze as much out of bench as I possibly could. I opened with 115 and got a very quick press call. Good lift. We went up. My second attempt was at 122.5. Once again a very quick press command from the judges and it moved incredibly well. Although Erik, Andrew, and I planned to match my bench PR of 127.5. I think both Andrew and I knew that today was a PR day. With loading 130 for my final attempt I once again was able to successfully complete the lift with 3 white lights. 6/6 for the day so far. (More Erik commentary, Andrew and I were in contact this whole time and agreed that we would stray from the plan if 122.5kg moved insanely well, this is the 3rd straight meet Josh has all time PR’d his squat and bench press) Then it came down to deads. Now through this previous prep I really did struggle with my confidence on this lift. Although this used to be my best lift in my opinion, with the two failed attempts the week prior I had a lot of worry on how these would end up. Originally the plan was to open at 217.5 however with some quick thinking Andrew and I agreed to increase my opener by 2.5 kilos to 220 to therefore allow a higher second attempt which would give me a PR total without having to rely on my third pull to complete this. First attempt moved, nothing much more than that. I lost contact with bar on my body about halfway up my shins and required alot of my strength to successfully pull it back in and lockout. Second attempt Andrew called for 232.5, the weight I had failed twice before and I honestly had a fear of. How would I be able to pull it today if I had failed it twice before? At that point in time I remembered the words Riley Hennessy said to me when I told him I had failed the lift in training, "f#ck that, let it be fuel for meet day". That combined with Erik and Andrews positive reinforcement, I let go of my emotions and pulled 232.5 for my second attempt giving me a total PR of 565 on a national stage. My third attempt on deadlift was not a successful lift. Much like my previously failed pulls in training, my hips shot up and back rolled forward. I can't say I'm proud of it but I am happy to walk away with my head high. 8/9 on the day, on a national stage, 16 weeks of nonstop work and back to back meet preps, I can finally say I finished the mission. (Andrew posed me with the dilemma of adjusting attempts since he went 130kg on bench press and I said there were 2 options, open 2.5kg heavier or open the same and take a bigger jump. Either would have been valid but we go with what the athlete is confident with on the day) All in all, this experience of competing on a national stage has given me a lot of fuel. I was able to see just how far I can take this, and what it takes to compete at the this level of competition. I still have a lot of growing in this sport and this will not be the last time I step foot on a national stage. To the Teen Titans thank you for always bringing the hype everyday in the gym. I'd like to thank Erik who turned me from a 20 year old hot headed 5/9 lifter, who would have most likely have burned out by now to being able to qualify and compete on a national stage. You lead from the front and I admire that greatly. And finally to Andrew Graves, the man who went out of his way in 2020 to get me into this sport, coach and handle me for my first powerlifting meet, and then come out to Illinois and once again coach me on the biggest stage I have ever been on, thank you. Erik’s commentary: This was nothing short of an amazing stretch of weeks for Josh. As someone who is in the game, competing myself, and has down a meet 9 weeks after coming off of one, I know how difficult it is to not only eek out more progress, but make sure you end up injury free. You see, when we prepare for a meet, ideally we want to plan out the 2-3 blocks before that before we peak off that base, when you do back to back meet preps, you are really re-peaking off the same base and as such, anything more than 5kg PR should not be expected. Some things I feel Josh does very well: Effort: This is something you can’t coach. I cannot make you want it more than you already do. This is a breath of fresh air as when I create a program structure, I do not have to worry about effort being a limiting factor. Trusting the process: This being our 4th meet together (wild) we have a great depiction of how Josh tapers into meets. We are always good for 2.5-7.5kg more than his best training squat, 2.5-5kg more than his best training bench, and ideally, non back to back meet preps aside, good for 2.5-7.5kg on his deadlift on the day. This makes planning so much easier and although Josh has a tendency to doubt himself, he will never flat-out say he cannot do something out of fear. Executing on meet day: Again, this is something you can develop to an extent but you largely cannot coach. Josh is a gamer and clearly gets a lot out of something being at stake and performs better with adrenaline. This is well established and makes me ALWAYS feel confident in numbers that might seem outlandish based on training. Some things that I think we absolutely need to address and that we agreed upon. We need to get bigger: Josh’s weigh ins have always been low, low 160s give or take and as such, he is giving up anywhere between 5 and 10lbs of possible leverage/mass he can carry to make the 75kg/165lbs class. He will be tracking calories and we will be adding in more traditional bodybuilding work so the next time this kid takes the platform, he will look Cyborg from Teen Titans. Re-working the deadlift: I think we really “ran-out” of strength for his pull. Good technique aside, there is certain traits all good deadlifter’s have in terms of general strength. Very strong upper backs, quads, and adductor/abductor muscles. I think he first needs to get stronger for this region overall but then apply this to his pull, re-working it from the ground up. This will be a work in progress but he does not plan to compete for a while so we have plenty of time. To summarize, proud is an understatement. Josh is the first Team Hogan lifter to represent on the national stage and I could not name someone more qualified and that I would rather send out there first. It pains me I could not be there but I had the person I trust most besides myself there in Andrew and I am more relieved than anything that things ended up working out. Coming from someone who, again, has been out on the national stage, it is different. You know how they say it is different doing it in the gym when compared to a meet? It is the same deal from a local meet to a national one. The judging is more strict, the schedule is concise, everything is more hectic, etc… And despite all that, back to back meet preps, having to go 9/9 to scratch together a QT just 16 weeks prior, he had 3 all time PRs? I cannot ask for more and I truly believe this is only the beginning for him. Josh sir, well done, you went to Utopia and will have this memory for a LIFE time, enjoy it please as moments like this are fleeting. Results: Squat: 202.5kg (446lbs), +11lb PR Bench Press: 130kg (286lbs), +6lbs PR Deadlift: 232.5kg (513lbs) Total: 565kg (1245lbs), +6lbs PR 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/8b79ca6e-0cd8-46d1-aa1b-9eaea68867fd/IMG-5829.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Team Hogan @ the USAPL Maine State Championships (26 March 2022) 3 weeks of euphoria! It’s funny, I did not plan for March to be this way it all just kind of happened. 3 meets, 3 separate states, 14 different Team Hogan lifters and every, single, person… had their best meet of their life and/or a tremendous debut. That, I won’t lie, brings a tear to my eye. So, about this meet, directing meets overall is very fun but also takes a lot more effort than maybe people realize. Friday, we initiated packing up the truck at 2:30pm and arrived at the facility at 6:30pm to unpack. We did not leave until 10pm that night, I had a few more warmup plans to write and did not get to sleep until 12am or so. The next morning we were up at 5am, registration at 6:30am, meet all day, clean up around 6pm or so, then I did not get back to my house until 11:30pm after clean up. So, my whole point is if you do a meet, please be respectful to the meet directors (we have not had any blatant disrespect, just as a call to attention to lifters) as they probably are running on fumes by the time the actual meet rolls around. On this day, I performed a ton of weigh ins, a drug test, and most importantly, handled 9 Team Hogan lifters, with some help of course, to insane performances. Here was how everyone did! First, we had Evan Larsen, who ended up winning best lifter for the second meet in a row! Evan and I have only been working together full-time for 3.5 months as he was working with another coach and in between had some pretty severe shoulder injuries that were suppressing his bench strength for quite some time. My work for him focused mainly on control and building muscular strength in the squat, rehabbing to pain-free status on bench press, and getting back to his old numbers on conventional deadlift, as he was messing with sumo for a while and had not pulled heavy conventional for a spell. Evan is an athlete who knows how to channel his energy for ONE big attempt, so my attempt selection for him features 12.5kg-15kg attempts, so his opening attempts end up being glorified last warmups for most and that is intentionally done for momentum purposes and to save energy for one big grind. This is high risk, high reward for sure, luck was on our side this day. Winning best lifter on this day meant $250 cash, gift cards to SBD, gift cards to a supplement company, as well as 2 medals and 2 banners, so there was actual stuff on the line here! Proud of this man, first proper water cut and he rehydrated and re-fed perfectly. Great work sir. Results: Squat: 257.5kg (567lbs) Bench Press: 140kg (308lbs) Deadlift: 267.5kg (590lbs) Total: 665kg (1465lbs) 8/9 on attempts, best overall lifter Next, we had the other Evan on the day, Mr. Evan Wright. Now, I train with Evan once a week on Saturday’s and as such I knew a bit better than some distant remote clients what he was capable of. He trained the ENTIRE prep to comp standard, especially on bench press and I think that really bled into his performance in a good way. He also agreed to move up a weight class and I think we both will be the first to say this was a game changer as with weight classes changing, he would simply be too tall for 90kg and long term, 100kg would be the move, this re-assured this. So, to make this one simple, Evan was one white light away from a supernova, 9/9 performance. So yes, this was 3 weekends in row a Team Hogan person got his 3rd deadlift turned down 2-1… I’m the common denominator here haha, so maybe I need to go back to the drawing board. I have zero ego when it comes to giving credit where it is due, on his squat I thought he should go 2.5kg lighter based on his 2nd and he told me straight up, he had this today, and I am glad I trusted him as he certainly did and that was the right call. A coach-athlete relationship should NEVER be one-sided, this was an example of that flexibility. Evan placed 2nd overall and I could not be prouder at this moment. The man only trains 3 days a week, y’all really don’t understand! Results: Squat: 237.5kg (524lbs), +44lb PR Bench Press: 140kg (308lbs), +16lbs PR Deadlift: 250kg (551lbs) Total: 627.5kg (1383lbs), +55lbs PR 8/9 on attempts Next in line, we had Mr. Chris Couillard. Chris was the wild-card of the day as there is some data we pull from previous meets that support that certain lifts SHOULD be there, but it is always a risk as should we miss, Chris goes from a PR total day to -12.5kg on his total in an instant, and I refuse to let my lifter’s regress from meet to meet if I can help it. To make it short, Chris got hurt and could not deadlift for essentially a month straight. After than we did not go over 440 for 8 weeks after that and we only went over 500 I think once, maybe twice since then. Chris’s best lift is his deadlift, so that threw a wrench in things. However, his squat was rising and we were able to keep his bench afloat so I knew we had a good shot on the day to still walk away with a PR total, albeit small. Chris, flat-out, is a meet day lifter. He performs better when there is something on the line, I think should we have a stretch of no set-back, productive training, he will do the following in his next meet: Total 1200lbs Squat 200kg/441lbs Deadlift 250kg/551lbs Just watch. Results: Squat: 190kg (419lbs), +16lb PR Bench Press: 105kg (231lbs) Deadlift: 237.5kg (524lbs) Total: 532.5kg (1174lbs), +6lbs PR 8/9 on attempts Next, we had Mike Iascone, doing his first meet and man, he might have had the performance of the day in my book when you lay out the circumstances. As with Jordyn who will be covered later, Mike has really only been powerlifting for 12-15 weeks. You read that right. Although he had been training in general, he was very much not used to heavy, heavy singles, especially on the squat and deadlift. Mike, to me, is the model when it comes to being coachable. On the day, tell him what to do, he will do it to the best of abilities and that’s where the discussion ends. He really over-performed in every capacity of that phrase as with a first meet, you deal with so many other things besides the lifting. You have nerves, possibly their first time lifting on comp equipment, not knowing the rules, etc… Mike familiarized himself very well by attending a bunch of meets over the last few weeks and really, if you told people this was his first meet, no one would believe you. Mike set 3 all time PRs in his first career meet. ALL TIME PRs, meet PRs are every lift in your first but to hit the heaviest weights of your life in your first ever meet is just so unlikely, it is insane. Very proud of him and his effort, next stop, total 1200lbs. Results: Squat: 185kg (408lbs) Bench Press: 127.5kg (281lbs) Deadlift: 202.5kg (446lbs) Total: 515kg (1136lbs) 9/9 on attempts Lastly for the men on the day was Tony Pederson. Tony is one of my most recent acquisitions on Team Hogan and he has been an absolute blast to work with. He is extremely coachable, very strong just genetically without training, and is a great kid, which I really like as at this point I want to work with great character individuals above all else as reputation is something that I care about, quite a lot actually. To put it short, Tony did our first meet, the USAPL Maine Event: Winter Open, and bombed on deadlift as he could not lockout clean/opened a bit too heavy. This was actually an easy fix and man, the sky is the limit for this kid should he commit to himself to this for the next 5 years. We had good grinds on squat and bench and had a decent bit left over for deadlift, which just means next meet we will have something to go off of! Results: Squat: 135kg (297lbs) Bench Press: 97.5kg (215lbs) Deadlift: 187.5kg (413lbs) Total: 420kg (926lbs) 9/9 on attempts Now, to start off the Team Hogan ladies was Ms. Amanda O’Connor, or AmandaLifts as she is known by most. Amanda was coming off of a long lay-off from her first meet, which was in a different federation, and coming back from a pretty long lifting hiatus, at least in terms of specific training, as she joined the US Army and attended basic training. With Amanda, most of the training we do is for confidence building as she is a very mental lifter and having specific milestones to call back on seems to really keep her spirits high. She had a tremendous day and made every single lift move like an opening attempt AND some of these lifts were pretty big time! If and when her next meet roles around, she will be in line for a truly special performance. Results: Squat: 95kg (210lbs), +12lb PR Bench Press: 42.5kg (94lbs), +6lbs PR Deadlift: 110kg (242lbs) Total: 247.5kg (547lbs) 9/9 on attempts Next, we had Carlee Cummings, who is another recent client of mine who, by all means, over-exceeded expectations across the board. Carlee is in a unique scenario as she has zero variables that scream success in this sport on her side as she is the mother of a young child, was on the mend from fairly recent health battles, AND her gym is a basement/living room set-up with squat stands, a barbell, plates, and that is pretty much it. She also trains very late at night as that is the only free time that she has. I know a lot of people who would just simply bow out if that was the hand they were dealt, but not Carlee, she clearly thrives on it. This also happened to be her first meet since 2019, which, is a win in itself in my book. She has only scratched the surface in terms of what she can do, I am thinking she will blow this out of the water in her next meet! Results: Squat: 130kg (286lbs), +16lb PR Bench Press: 67.5kg (148lbs) Deadlift: 142.5kg (314lbs) Total: 340kg (750lbs) 8/9 on attempts Second to last, we had someone do their first meet, in Ms. Jordyn Rocca. Jordyn has actually only been powerlifting for 12 weeks and she really impressed me with her work ethic, ability, and also her attention to detail. Jordyn is someone who is very coachable and has no ego in the sport, which is a breath of fresh air as most hold themselves up to a very unrealistic standard, a standard that is only there because they placed it there. I tell Jordyn do X adjustment, she does not say why can’t I do Y instead, and that makes my job so much easier. For all these people, it was really best case scenario for them as the staff were Team Hogan athletes, the spotting and loading team were Team Hogan people, and it was a very lifter-centric atmosphere, something we do intentionally so first time lifters are completely comfortable on the day. Jordyn had a tremendous first meet and I think if she wants to, she can really do some damage in this sport. Results: Squat: 100kg (200lbs) Bench Press: 42.5kg (94lbs) Deadlift: 110kg (242lbs) Total: 252.5kg (557lbs) 8/9 on attempts Lastly, I wanted to cover what was the largest 1st to 2nd meet improvement I have ever seen in Rebecca Labitt, Bex as she is known to her friends. Bex I think sometimes loses track of how much and how rapidly she has improved which is a double-edged sword in that that means she is never complacent but can also be frustrating for her when that very, very rapid progress slows. I will let the cat out of the bag, she added 105lbs to her total in 12 weeks. For reference, I added 16lbs to my total last weekend and I was pretty ecstatic about it. Her super-meet is coming, I think if she sticks with this, she will most likely add another 80-100lbs to her total her next meet. Results: Squat: 65kg (143lbs), +49lb PR Bench Press: 32.5kg (72lbs), +12lbs PR Deadlift: 72.5kg (160lbs), +45lbs PR Total: 170kg (375lbs), +105lbs PR 7/9 on attempts All in all, this was a truly euphoric day and a stretch of weeks I will remember for a very long time. To Utopia! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/97d161c3-d077-405a-b9f8-2671e1912449/IMG_5704.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports - Erik Hogan - USAPL Massachusetts Spring Classic, 67.5kg class, (19 March 2022) Yo, it is me again! Crazy to think, this was meet #8 for me. Now, that might not sound like a lot, but in this sport, I cannot recall where I saw this info, but the average number of meets a lifter does in their lifetime is around 3-4. Shows that there is a high turnover of lifters every 5 years or so. I truly don’t like talking about me, but there were a couple cool things about this meet that I would like to share. The first aspect I will touch on is my prep into this meet. It was borderline the most euphoric but also chaotic prep I have ever done. This is why I have so much respect for each lifter who gets on the platform as you truly do not know what they went through to get there. As most of you know, I commute a total of 2hrs each day to and from New Hampshire, so on average I am driving in the car about 10hrs a week and then add 3-5hrs to that every few weeks to handle people at meets in New England. This, along with programming for just over 30 athletes and fielding their questions on top of prepping each week for my first year of teaching in a school system, my time has been spread thin for a while now. Now, I am not someone who likes free time, but I won’t lie, I do miss having lots of energy without copious amounts of caffeine haha. Many days, I am up at 5am, get home, train for 2-2.5hrs, come home and work for 1-2 more hours and finally get to sleep around 11pm. Some might think teaching is easy, weekends off, holidays off, well I am here to tell you I have never been working as much as I have in life! Monday through Friday I spend my time in the classroom and commuting, Saturday my workouts typically take about 3 hours and on Sunday I complete programming for clients and plan out the week for the classroom, something that I am afraid to admit takes around 5 hours minimum each time. Now, this is not to say my life is so hard, look at what I can do despite it. Rather, it is to show that what you see on Instagram is only 5% of the actual performance. Next, the weight cut. I feel very strongly that 90% of people should NOT cut. Most people do not do it right and it usually turns into an “I cut X amount bro isn’t that crazy?”, instead of actually prioritizing lifting well. So, the 67.5kg class benefitted me in that an extra 3lbs really was a game changer for me and will make this class much more sustainable for me in the future. As such, I trained heavier this prep and used my data from my 7 previous cuts to figure roughly where I would be to make the class while being able to rehydrate up to a sizeable leverage advantage weight. I won’t go over my protocol, but I will highlight this. 6 days out: 152.0lbs 5 days out: 153.5lbs 4 days out: 153.5lbs 3 days out: 153lbs 2 days out: 151lbs 1 day out: 150.5lbs Morning of meet @ 6am: 149.4lbs (class is 148.8lbs) Weight in around @ 7am: 148.3lbs I have learned that since I keep carb intake very high, I hold on to a bit more water and anything north of 4lbs of pure water loss is not possible, but this is also why I think my performance has never suffered from a cut. Do not panic if you are heavy the morning of. Lastly, the meet. This was the best meet of my life! Squats are cool for me in the sense that when I am peaked, every weight feels the same from 265lbs on, I am just a hair less stable as I add weight, hence my slower walkouts. I squatted 210kg/463lbs for an all time PR with a decent left in the tank! Bench press, I will admit, I have become a decent bencher. I am closing in on a 2x bodyweight bench which is wild as my first meet, I benched 214lbs and it should not have counted due to downward motion but it did, haha. I benched 132.5kg/292lbs, which was an all-time PR, and had a lot left in the tank here, I think had I planned for it, 303lbs was there! This was also my first ever state record bench press. Deadlift was literally an out of body experience. I literally feel as if I could have pulled anything I wanted on that day, which tells me the protocol I used to peak will be what I use next time. I walked away with a meet PR of 240kg/529lbs! However, this is where things kind of fell through in the sense that I was a white light short of a supernova day. I put in for 247.5kg/546lbs for my third attempt, which would have been a 10kg meet PR deadlift, an all time PR, and locked in what was my main goal on the day, a 590kg/1301lbs total. I made the lift, was incredibly pleased with how well it moved, got the down command, waited for what seemed like an eternity annnnnnd… 2 reds, 1 white light. Side ref said shoulder was not back far enough, center judge called downward motion. As mentioned previously, I am liberal with calls and although I was disappointed, it is the name of the game. As objective as I can be, I reached out to a few people, both state and national certified refs, and asked them what I could do next time to make it more convincing, not for validation on it was a bad call, but quite literally so it never happens again. What all of them, literally all of them, said, was sobering but also frustrating in that they could not see what was wrong with the lift aside from maybe one soft knee, something that I was not red-lighted for. Oh well, refs are human and make mistakes, I know I am a god-awful referee myself so I have no room to talk in regards to this stuff. The opportunity was there and that is what I wanted, I will total much more than this over the next 5 years and I will make sure to be even MORE convincing in each successive meet I do. To Utopia. Results: Squat: 210kg (463lbs), +6lb PR Bench Press: 132.5kg (292lbs), +6lbs PR Deadlift: 240kg (529lbs), +6lbs PR Total: 582.5kg (1284lbs), +16lbs PR 8/9 on attempts At the time of this post, this is the #13 total in the USA for 67.5kg lifters out of 252 lifters!!! I truly think I can medal in the open division at nationals in this life time. I will work for that. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/efaa891d-3124-4efc-a6e3-ab8901879d7c/IMG_5728.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Rob Rose - USAPL Massachusetts Spring Classic, 110kg class, (19 March 2022) This was a fun meet, I had a blast handling Mr. Rose here. Robbie is actually (skip this part if you read this Robbie….) the oldest member of Team Hogan, but you would never be able to tell this based upon his intensity and disposition. We have only been working together for a few months now but I feel we really hit our stride during this meet prep. To put it simple, Robbie has a tough schedule and one that is not conducive to becoming as strong as possible, but he would be damned if that was going to hold him back. Having to commute 3 hours a few times a week to Western Mass on top of his military requirements, his plate is full already, throw in an actual adult home life and a child (something we underestimate as younger lifters in terms of impact to recovery), I can tell you straight up, some of my young guys would call it a day and give up on competing altogether. Robbie is literally not built like that. I want to say that he is easily, easily the most coachable athlete I have ever come into contact with, I have noticed that the older my clients get, the less they fight back and trust my decisions. This could have something to do with Rob’s military background for sure, but if I make a call, he trusts it and that is that. That is a breath of fresh air for me as usually every call I usually make with a lifter is met with pushback, even if it is objectively the right call. This was a weird meet in that some referee stuff was very clearly emphasized, not that that’s a bad thing, just wish it was a bit more consistent from lifter to lifter. Things like excessive pre-squat knee lock, excessive knee lock on deadlift lockouts, etc… But despite catching a few weird reds, Robbie was 3 whites or 2 whites on every lift this day. Now to the fun part, Robbie hit an all time PR on all 3 lifts and PR’d his total on a 9/9 day, you cannot do much better than that. Plus, he was on vacation 2 weeks out, meaning no lifter for 7 days, who can do that? Truly incredible and I am proud to have this man on my roster, representing Team Hogan. Results: Squat: 200kg (441lbs), +6lb PR Bench Press: 122.5kg (270lbs), +16lbs PR Deadlift: 230kg (507lbs), +6lbs PR Total: 552.5kg (1218lbs), +28lbs PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/9c52872a-7bdf-4aeb-9219-f20a8a848239/IMG_5613.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports - Team Hogan @ the USPA Rhode Island State Championships (12 March 2022) The USPA crew, minus Dave, plus Bobby. This day, man, it was truly euphoric. We had 3 guys compete at this meet with 3 very different back stories leading into it, I want to do justice to each. First, let’s talk about my most consistent, drama-free, and most reliable athlete, Mr. Tyler Hill, Seamus as he is known to the ones who value him. Seamus was primed for a great meet for a while, it was simply when and where, which was cool. What I admire most about Seamus, he is extremely amicable and willing to voice his opinion but also open to hearing mine. When an athlete shows confidence in himself in a certain direction, has data to back it up, and listens to my counter-argument, I am more than likely going to meet them more than halfway on their request, and with Seamus that happened a few times during this prep. First off, he went up a weight class, something I suggested and he agreed and I think he will co-sign this was the best decision for his strength. Seamus is always there for others and sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle when it comes to times like this where it is better, in my opinion, to be a bit more selfish. At this meet he was helping people like he was handling, not actively competing! That just shows you what kind of person he is. Seamus honestly was one lift away from his super meet and I find solace in his miss, it was not on grip, not on technicality, just wasn’t there on the day. USPA meets are rough in that there was easily 1-2hrs of downtime between each lift, from first squat to last deadlift easily 8 hours had passed haha. 1300lbs is in your near future, sir. Results: Squat: 207.5kg (458lbs), +29lb PR Bench Press: 137.5kg (303lbs), +6lbs PR Deadlift: 227.5kg (501lbs) Total: 572.5kg (1262lbs), +39lb PR 8/9 on attempts Next, Kyle Kable. The alpha dog of Team Hogan and our largest lifter, that man just turned 30 as well, a true silverback. To put it short, this would have been a great meet for Kyle but he was victim of a very egregious call on deadlifts. Kyle, in my opinion, had the most uphill battle to a great meet for many reasons, so the fact that he came in and did what he did, really leaves me wondering what this guys top end potential is if he had a single year dedicated to ONLY powerlifting, he is also a national-caliber strongman. Here are some things that I think really effected Kyle leading into this meet: He went on vacation 2 weeks out. This was out of his control and not something I would ever hold against him. However, I would be lying if I said it didn’t effect his progression/momentum leading into the meet, especially on bench press. Kyle was in the 4th flight of a 4 flight, single session meet. These were full flights too, 13-15 lifters per flight. It was a long day for him and I would not be able to perform as well as he did, straight up. We had 2 people in flight C, more like 3 and another we were helping in flight B. So, most often, Kyle got no help in the warmup room and this is on me, I should have had someone assigned to him to help him time his warmups because for at least one lift he warmed up way too fast and had to go back down in weight to stay warm. Needless to say, Kyle makes no excuses and can really call upon some serious power for a single attempt, hence why we take huge jumps on attempts for him. His final deadlift of 287.5kg/633lbs, which would have been a 2.5kg PR and locked in his first total over 1600lbs, got called 2 reds to one white for hitching. I am liberal when it comes to judging, in fact most often I take the judges side over my lifters, this was not one of those times. I felt so bad for him as it truly was a missed call. Oh well, I told him I counted it, he counted it, next time we will pull 650 and forget this whole thing even happened. Results: Squat: 277.5kg (611lbs), +11lb PR Bench Press: 167.5kg (369lbs) Deadlift: 272.5kg (601lbs) Total: 717.5kg (1582lbs) 7/9 on attempts Lastly, the guy who went to Utopia and lived to tell the tale, one Robert Dortona, straight outta Salem, New Hampshire. Let me tell you, this was a full-circle moment for me. Bobby was one of the guys who indirectly got me into the sport at the tail end of 2017 and was someone I really looked up to in the game. Not that I don’t anymore, but I won’t lie, it really hurt to see him on hiatus for so long, knowing what he could do if he committed himself. It was a shock when he reached out to me, telling me he was 6 weeks out from a meet and was requesting my services to help him get there. I put full effort into all programming but man I put easily 2.5hrs into his plan because I knew how important it was to him. For someone who is as strong as he is, he really listened to my suggestions, which were minor, but minor changes usually lead to big outcomes in my experience. Less reps per set, more sets. This essentially solved his depth issue along with a few weeks of high bar, beltless work. When reps are very high in a set, it makes it hard to go to comp standard depth by virtue of fatigue on a lift like the squat. A bit more of a pacing approach, not just simply taking what is there on the day. Although we exceeded that pace, we did not fall off it, which was crucial and elicited an actual peak at the meet, and not a week or two out. Based on his training, I issued him a challenge, be the first Team Hogan lifter to total 1700lbs in competition. He agreed, and we designed a plan to do just that, we adjusted it heavily based on training but that is the beauty of prioritizing the total as the biggest variable, it allows you a ton of different ways to get to the same outcome, our plan coming in was WAY different from what manifested on the day, yet got us to the same outcome. That is called being flexible as an athlete and being flexible as a coach. I could go on and on about this, but Bobby showed everyone what we already knew, he’s a strong guy who has a tremendous mentality when he locks in. In is first meet back in just under 5 years, he not only got that 1703lb total, but he won best overall lifter for the ENTIRE meet. That my friend’s, is Utopia on Earth. So happy to be in your corner sir, was fun crunching numbers on the day to make this happen. *since this is his first in 5 years, please take the meet PRs for a grain of salt, they are a little outrageous* Results: Squat: 287.5kg (633lbs), +99lb PR Bench Press: 177.5kg (391lbs), +66lbs PR Deadlift: 307.5kg (678lbs), +77lbs PR Total: 772.5kg (1703lbs), +243lb PR 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/e855309d-7fbf-47d9-9c7d-c1871cadcf51/IMG-5027.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Connor Winslow - USPA New Hampshire Lift or Freeze, 75kg class, (22 January 2022) Mr. Connor Winslow and I had been working together for a few months leading into this meet here and to me, he did phenomenal for only his second career meet, something I remind him of all the time. Connor and I had a bit of a learning curve in terms of learning each other, much like any other client I have, but I feel as if we were able to meet halfway on a few ordeals that paid off when it came time to perform. I could be misremembering here, so don’t quote me on this, but Connor was running template programming before we started working together and made a ton of progress with them. The issue with this is not what most people say, “you would do BETTER with a coach”, but more so, it skews the perception on how you actually build strength. Despite being mature beyond his years, Connor has only been a competitive lifter for under a year and only heavy training for half a year (or so) more than that. Starting together when he was 17, this meant that he was succeed in spite of his program because his body is not fully developed yet. This is cool and all, but I have noticed this is where a lot of young guys build bad habits that drive them out of the sport by the time they are 21. That being the following: Going too heavy, too often. Not enough emphasis on developing muscle mass. Too much specificity, too soon. This is where a lot of our disagreements kind of manifested, as my approach is not similar to template-based programs. He felt many times that he was not going heavy enough to be ready for gameday, which, believe me, I totally get it. At one point in my lifter career, I thought I needed to lift 500lbs in the gym in order to have the confidence to attempt it in a meet. However, I think we had a breakthrough after some conversations on why we do things and why we want to peak at the meet itself and not 3 weeks out and just try to hold on. Basically, you don’t need to hit a weight 3 times in a peak cycle in order to be in shape to take it on the platform. Eventually, I think he saw on the day how powerful this is. Some things we will be working on is getting bigger overall, bar-none. His squat is money, we will return to the approach that got him to 182.5kg for next prep, his bench will benefit from more accessory work and simply putting more emphasis on it, and lastly, some careful technical changes to his deadlift are going to limit lockout issues that have kept him away from a very heavy pull (at the time of me writing this, his deadlift has been on fire). To summarize, Connor had a great day but his best days in this sport are in the future. When this kid fills out completely, has a few 9/9 meets under his belt, and does a USAPL meet (Connor bro if you’re reading this, meet July 30th in Maine with all your teammates on Team Hogan………) good luck. The sky is truly the limit for him, if he wants it and is patient. Results: Squat: 182.5kg (402lbs), +28lb PR Bench Press: 97.5kg (215lbs), +6lbs PR Deadlift: 202.5kg (446lbs) Total: 482.5kg (1063lbs), +27lb PR 7/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5c747491-09ca-427d-baed-661e8cf4f831/IMG_5726.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Team Hogan @ the USAPL Maine Event: Winter Open (8 January 2022) Meet # 2 as a co-director, meet # a million as a coach. For these multi-lifter meets, I have decided to lump them altogether as I have lost more and more free time with intense training myself AND working essentially two jobs 6 days a week. Oh well, I have time now and I want to talk! I will break down each lifter’s performance at this meet as each lifter has a pretty cool story about how they got to where they are in the sport. First up, Ms. Rebecca Labitt, Bex for short. Bex is actually the lightest lifter on Team Hogan and this was not only our first meet working together but it was her first meet overall! The way I have Bex train is a bit different compared to conventional training styles due to a few reasons but mostly since she is so new in training age to the sport but also because I have learned lighter weight lifters (me included) are super-sensitive to de-training, meaning taking away too much work, too soon, leads to a degradation in strength similar to over-training which is an interesting phenomenon. For this being her first meet, she did incredible and I am very proud of her effort, I am now months in the future writing this but let’s just say she is opening around 10-20kg (44lbs…) ABOVE some of her meet PRs at this next meet she is doing, I expect something incredible. Results: Squat: 42.5kg (94lbs) Bench Press: 27.5kg (61lbs) Deadlift: 52.5kg (116lbs) Total: 122.5kg (270lbs) 6/9 on attempts, first career meet Next up, Ms. Meg Frangione. Meg was competing in her second career meet and her second under my services. Meg was fortunate enough to place 3rd overall this meet and really improved a ton from meet #1, which is what the goal should ALWAYS be in this sport, improve on your performance from last meet. Any time you can go 9/9 with meet PRs on every lift and total is a good time and Meg is a very good meet day lifter in that she takes constructive criticism well and applies it to each attempt, something you cannot teach. Although she is a programming-only client, she has phenomenal technique on every lift and that alone carries her in terms of her training. Interesting to note, she is also a full-time art teacher, which I know now since entering the teaching profession, eliminates all your free-time. Teaching is unique in that you are expected to work overtime and on weekends essentially without pay (not contracted pay that is) and throw full-time training on top of that, you are left with maybe an hour or two of decompression time each day, so with that said, this makes her performance even MORE impressive. Very proud of her efforts, next meet will be a supernova, I can tell. Results: Squat: 112.5kg (248lbs), +6lb PR Bench Press: 62.5kg (137lbs), +16lb PR Deadlift: 125kg (275lbs), +11lb PR Total: 300kg (661lbs), +33lbs PR 9/9 on attempts Next, we will talk about Nate Hilton! Nate, flat-out, is a work-horse. I’m sure he is tired of hearing it but I wish some of my younger guys had his work ethic. This man sometimes is up at 3am, yes, you read that correct, in order to get all of his training in as he works full-time and is raising his young son in his free-time. Training in his home gym, by himself, 4-5 days a week, he is always incredibly steady with his effort level. Nate is a somewhat curious case in that his performance really seems to flat-line with a taper, meaning the traditional aggressive drop in volume and intensity really zaps his strength. I theorize this has to do with his background in distance running, meaning the stimulation of the slower twitch muscle fibers keeps him strong and by virtue, his reps per set and overall volume is a lot higher than most of the people I work with. For this meet, we pretty much pulled back workload 5 days out and for the next one, I am honestly thinking we pull back 3 days out. After this meet, we committed to really making an effort into growing into the next weight class and so far, it has been a game changer for his leverages, I expect next meet will be the meet he goes over 800lbs on total. Results: Squat: 110kg (242lbs) Bench Press: 95kg (204lbs), +6lb PR Deadlift: 147.5kg (325lbs), +6lb PR Total: 350kg (772lbs), +12lbs PR 8/9 on attempts Next, the legend in the making himself, Elliot Woznica. Elliot has been my de facto training partner for close to a year now and to see his progress in this sport in that short a time is nothing short of amazing. Elliot is one of my younger clients, sitting proud at 18 years young but his maturity is well beyond his years when it comes to the process of getting stronger and performing in meets. This meet, we had a deal, go 8/8, we will send a huge 3rd pull. More than fair and his training supported that something big was in the tank. Elliot’s peak cycle was absolutely money, I think he hit some sort of squat PR pretty much every week, made strides in his bench consistency (no butt lift!!!), and really improved upon his deadlift execution. This being his 3rd meet, he really showed and solidified who he will be in this sport and that is someone who really performs on meet day. He put over 100lbs on his total this meet, wild, but I would not be surprised if he put another 100lbs on it this summer. Results: Squat: 170kg (374lbs), +50lb PR Bench Press: 130kg (286lbs), +22lb PR Deadlift: 182.5kg (402lbs), +22lb PR Total: 482.5kg (1063lbs), +111lbs PR (Lmao) 8/9 on attempts In our penultimate recap, we have the return of Michael Beaupre. Mike has been a friend of mine since we were very young, 2nd or 3rd grade I believe. To make a very long story short, Mike was (and in my eyes still is) a very high-level lifter at a very young age. He has competed and won a National meet, competed at the IPF World level, and set tons and tons of records since his first meet in 2014. When I first got into the game, Mike was actually the one who was kind of coaching me and teaching me the ropes, so it was surreal to be on the other side of the spectrum all these years lately. This meet was special for a few reasons. The first, this was Mike’s first meet since 2018. Yes, close to 4 years. Burnout, injury, etc… all play a role here but any time you take 4 years off from something and return, that is a hard thing to do. The second was Mike was in real contention to win the lightweight division at this meet, which would be pretty cool in your first meet back. His training was absolutely incredible, blowing everything up like a mad man. Although he did well here and did end up winning the division, I really think this is only the beginning, feels good to have my partner in crime back on the scene, setting the standard for the 67.5kg class in Maine and eventually in the Northeast. Mega Nationals 2023??? Results: Squat: 190kg (419lbs), +16lb PR Bench Press: 125kg (275lbs) Deadlift: 217.5kg (480lbs), +16lbs PR Total: 532.5kg (1174lbs), +22lbs PR 8/9 on attempts Lastly, we will end with what ended up stealing the show, Joshua Dang. This meet was an emotional one for Josh and to me, told me all I need to know about who he is as a competitor. Let me give y’all a rundown on the stakes of this meet for him. Needed to go 9/9. When I say need, I mean if he missed a single lift, his goal of making the qualifying total for Collegiate Nationals would be virtually impossible. We trained to hit exactly the QT with relatively no room to spare. Josh had an unfortunate run of deadlift issues leading into the meet, culminating in him initially failing his last heavy dead that was around 7.5kg lighter than what we needed on the top end. This was most likely his only chance to do this. All the other meets in the area fell too close to CNats and would make prepping for the meet very dangerous in terms of injury-management. Next year was not an option as he is in his final year of school. With all that said, how many people would rise to the occasion? Not many, Josh, he is different. Each attempt built upon the previous lift, culminating in what might have been my most emotional moment as a coach to date. 237.5kg/524lbs on the bar. Make the lift, go to CNats, miss the lift, the window is closed. Nailed the lift, the roof came off the facility for a bit, and we did what we came to do. Will fully admit I was as close to happy tears as I have ever been in my life and I am NOT an outwardly emotional person. So proud of you man, first person ever to represent Team Hogan at a national meet (I don’t count) and I could not think of anyone else I’d rather bestow that title to. Results: Squat: 197.5kg (435lbs), +16lb PR Bench Press: 127.5kg (281lbs), +6lb PR Deadlift: 237.5kg (524lbs), +16lb PR Total: 562.5kg (1240lbs), +40lbs PR 9/9 on attempts, Collegiate Nationals Bound https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/0a9a38b2-556b-4d6c-81a5-9c5e011ef4c8/IMG-4240.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Andrew Graves - USAPL Odyssey Barbell Club Classic, 83kg class, (30 October 2021) Where to start, this was a euphoric day, but to get to this point, it was NOT all sunshine and rainbows. To set some background for you all, there were actually a few things we changed leading into this meet that in my opinion, were game changers. The first of which, was changing from high bar squats to low bar squats. Since Andrew has been powerlifting, and even as far back as to when he started lifting in general, he has squatted high bar. Due to injuries, set backs, and general staleness, Andrew’s squat had been stuck at 479lbs since July of 2020. Think about that, he went over a YEAR with no PR on squat and he competed twice during that time span. Before I even continue, this separates the people who love this game from those who are in it for instagram notoriety. I know not many people would be willing to stick it out but Andrew is different and that is why what occurred at this meet was so special to me. Back to the low bar switch, we had the idea that it was probably worth it to finally dive in head first to it as we messed around with it in the past AND had exhausted every other programming option before it. One thing I will say, when you make the switch, there should not be a ton of difference between the two in terms of technique but you can really screw things up if you add too much volume, too soon. The thought process for most is hammer it down with 8s for multiple sets to get the reps in, I do not agree with this notion. We pretty much went right into heavier 4s and simply built up organically and allowed his stabilizers and all the ancillary muscles adapt 1-1 instead of FORCING the issue, and I think that paid off. The next biggest change was enacting percentage based bench work. Although these had an RPE cut off, I have noticed that with his bench, it just flat-out gets stronger with a ton of sub-max volume (think RPE 6 and below), accessory work, and 1 heavy exposure a week. Instead of putting load selections in his hands, I put it in my hands because I knew what was needed to get to the end goal and I am glad he trusted that. We also had a pretty successful couple of hypertrophy-based blocks that I really allowed him to stack on the size necessary to push his bench heavier. This prep honestly was the perfect storm of everything coming together at once. This was our 4th meet together as coach and athlete but I have been at every competition of his either handling or competing myself before that. Having data on what works is so, so crucial because if we have a good pre-meet block, we pretty much can plug and play what has historically worked with minor refinements and are off and running and this was much of the same. The goal for 7 months was to total 1400lbs, which might have seem aggressive at the time but I knew in my heart that if we picked the right numbers (notice I said we, not I), we would be able to do that. We paced out that he would have to hit an all time PR bench a week out and pretty close to his meet PRs on squat and deadlift if we wanted a chance to taper into a 1400lb total. Thankfully, we were able to do just that, ending the prep off with a 215kg/474lbs squat, 157.5kg/347lb bench press, and a 245kg/540lb deadlift. This is where we had a breakthrough, he approached me a few days out saying that he felt capable of going a little bit heavier on the squat and as such, wanted it to at least be on the table. If you have a track record of making lifts and I know you as a lifter, you 100% have that leeway to negotiate with me, so we met halfway, as you should. The thing I think we do well on Team Hogan is have a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, for every step of the way. We knew what Andrew had to bench and pull if he missed his 3rd squat, what he would have to make up on pull if he missed his third bench, and then of course had our ideal, dream goal on the day. Fast forward to the day, things started off pretty smooth. Warmups moved nice, opener, although it didn’t move lighting fast, moved “strong”, if you have been around long enough you know what that means. Fast does not always equal strong! We called for 220kg/485lbs on his second, which was a 6lb all-time PR along with a meet PR. It is always nice when you have a PR to fall back on should you miss a third but it does not always work out like that. That moved flawless and I told him hey, if you feel like you have it, I think it’s there today, and we loaded it up. 227.5kg/501lbs, sunk and moved insane. He had another 5kg left! The same person who did not PR his squat for a year just tapered 27lbs up from his best prep single. This was emotional and the right call, I can’t take credit as he convinced me that he could do this, and when someone is that confident, I listen. Bench, to be honest, was on fire for months leading into this meet. I pretty much knew he was going to hit a bench PR but did not know by how much. We ended up hitting 160kg/352lbs, which was our planned heavy 3rd, and were right on pace for the plan we had to get to 1400. Deadlifts moved good in the back and ever since moving to conventional, his deads are a lot more predictable. We figured out that his deadlift style just does not lend itself to heavy rep sets, so moving forward we are going to alternate between doubles and singles for our heavy sets. The goal now was to secure 1400 on the second pull and then see what was there for a big 3rd deadlift. The opener of 232.5/513lbs moved insane, so we went for 247.5kg/546lbs on the second to secure 1400. I was informed after the fact that he has never taken this big a jump in comp, to me, for deadlifts I think it is important mentally to just get one on the board, because you never know what wacky stuff can happen on meet day that cause you to have a slip up and you don’t want to double down on that slip up with too heavy an opener. We get to 247.5, he makes it with room to spare, 1400 = secured. Now, we had a little fun and I pretty much let him pick the top end of what he felt capable and that was 260kg/573lbs. Just was not there on the day, no big deal as we got the goal we wanted. I think if I HAD to do it over again, I would have just gone up 5kg to 252.5kg/557lbs and not only do I know he would hit that, it would have given us all time PRs on all 3 lifts and added an extra 5kg to his total, oh well, there will be more meets and we kept the goal, the goal which I am proud of. I am so thankful to have this man in my corner, what’s interesting is he handled me to my best ever performance a few months prior and come full circle, we are in the same gym in different roles, and I handled him to his best performance. The Dream Team man, Maine drug-free powerlifting is in good hands with us at the helm and leading the charge. Results: Squat: 227.5kg (501lbs), +22lb PR Bench Press: 160kg (353lbs), +11lb PR Deadlift: 247.5kg (546lbs) Total: 635kg (1400lbs), +34lbs PR 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/7b9aeba4-90c1-4698-8542-e1dd7678c473/IMG_1460.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports - Axel Ramirez - USPA Drug Tested Hoosier State Championships, 67.5kg class, (23 October 2021) The following was written by Axel himself as I was not in attendance for this meet out in Indiana. He was gracious enough to create a meet report through his eyes for me that I will comment on at the end! This was my first time working with Erik. I had just finished up my first meet by myself and knew I could perform a lot better if I had help. I hired Erik a week after my first meet and 14 weeks out from my next. Meet prep went amazingly. I have a home gym and Erik was able to work around my equipment to make a very effective program. Erik was super detailed with everything from my training to my diet to meet day warmups and attempts. He also helped me with my first water cut and explained how much to eat, drink and even how to refuel after! I am in a completely different state and Erik was not physically present, but it sure felt like he was there. Every single jump was planned out by him. From the bar all way to my last attempt including a plan on what jump to take if I was not feeling at my best. My friend who was handling me for the second time was able to follow Erik’s plan perfectly. My first attempt at 364lbs/165kg on squat moved like an empty bar so I was able jump up to 386lbs/175kg. To me this felt light but thought it moved slow. My handler said it was just mental and that it moved well to him, so we decided to go for it and jumped to 402lbs/182.5kg. Now I’ve been trying to hit 400+ for a whole year and had attempted and failed it 3 times. This time though I was able to hit it and it moved better than my second attempt. 3/3 for squats skyrocketed my confidence and I knew it would be a good day. Bench is the lift that I think is my worst lift mainly to injuries. My shoulders tend to act up sometimes and cause me to have stop my progress to nurse it back to health. During prep Erik gave my exercises to do helped my rotator cuffs stay health and thus my bench progressed better than I expected. I started off with an easy 215lbs/97.5kg that moved like air. Second attempt was 231lbs/105kg which tied my best bench and it moved awesome. Now I was nervous for my third attempt because I had never hit anything above my second attempt, and this was uncharted territory for me. However, during prep everything I did felt light. I trusted the plan and selected 242lbs/110kg. Off the chest it moved awesome, and I was able to lock it out without too much trouble for a huge PR for me. So far 6/6 and not a single red light. Deadlifts are my favorite. I actually hit a small PR during prep, so I knew I was going to end up with nice PR. I started off with 424lbs/192.5kg that felt like nothing so I went up to 446lbs/202.5kg. This would tie my third from 3 months ago. Moved like air. This had me super fired up so we went with the planned third of 463lbs/210kg for a huge PR that moved great. Now at this point I was allowed a fourth due to it being a state record. We decided to take a small jump up to 468lbs/212.5kg. This moved like fourth attempt but was able to get it without too much problem and finish out my day with another PR. 10 successful attempts. 30 white lights. 6 state records. first place in the open and junior 68.5kg weight class. I couldn’t have asked for a better day. Erik: Axel was a dream to work with and never once questioned my plan for him. Although I welcome athletes being skeptical of why they are doing certain things, there is also something to be said about those who will run through a brick wall if I said it would add 5lbs to their bench, and Axel is that type of person. His prep was fairly straight-forward as I knew with the block we ran before-hand, some big numbers were there. Off the top of my head I think we finished the prep off with last heavy singles of 385lbs on squat, 225lbs on bench press, and 450lbs on deadlift. So that means he tapered into +17lbs on squat, +17lbs on bench press, and +18lbs on deadlift. I don’t always nail a taper but right here, I will say I nailed it but it was not just me, Axel is so meticulous that in many ways, my job was actually quite easy. I pride myself on my lifters making lifts, making PRs, and always leaving with a huge PR total and this was no different! Moving forward, if he wants to continue to push that total deep into the 1100s and into the 1200s, we need to put more muscle on, flat out, non-negotiable. We are working on that now and I expect this big of an increase for his next meet whenever that may be. Results: Squat: 182.5kg (402lbs), +31lb PR Bench Press: 110kg (242lbs), +11lb PR Deadlift: 212.5kg (469lbs), +23lb PR Total: 502.5kg (1107lbs), +59lbs PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1635103242096-XVHE1SSNPBQ2COQGMJGE/IMG-3990.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Jess Lawrence - USPA United We Lift, 75kg class, (9 September 2021) This write-up has taken too long to get up but finally my schedule has somewhat normalized, so nonetheless, here we are! This was an interesting meet for sure. More on that later. I would be doing her a disservice if I did not commend Jess on her effort this meet. There were several things that occurred that honestly I would not have faulted her for had she decided they were too much to compete with. Not in her style to go against a commitment, she finished off this prep as strong as she possibly could and gave it her all on the day and for that, I cannot stress enough how proud I was of this alone. As a side note, this was my first time traveling to Vermont, I left just outside of the Boston area at 3:30am to make it on time for the 8am start time… That did not end up being at 8am. Vermont was cool, a more country version of Maine I was in a trance looking at the scenery on the way back. Back to the meet, I had some major issues with how this meet was run. As a meet director myself, I 100% sympathize with meet directors as I know first hand the amount of obstacles one has to go through to actually have the meet, let alone run it smoothly. So the following are suggestions for next time, NOT attacks or critiques. The first issue was the board was not up for order of flights in the morning as well as the expedited flight sheet. We did not know where we were in the flight and despite the 8am start time, we did not actually start the meet until 8:10am. You may be saying, does 10 minutes really matter? If you want to warm your athlete up optimally, hell yes it does. 1 or 2 minutes is 1 thing but since we were 4th in the flight, we finished at 7:59am and did not take the platform until 8:14am. The next time you take a heavy single, I want you to wait 15 minutes between the last warmup and the top single. Thinking on the fly, I resorted to waving back up in weight AND keeping loose with rear foot elevated split squats. We got off to a semi-rocky start with her missing her opener on commands, which, I hate to be this guy, the ref messed up on. She signaled rack but did not use her voice until AFTER the fact. Staying on the safe side, we re-took it, made it, and then made the 3rd at 110kg/242lbs. On to bench press, this was the lift I thought we had a fighting chance with and I think I was correct in this assumption. We went 50kg/110lbs to open, 55kg/121lbs for the second, and then had the grind of the century for the third of 60kg/132lbs that got turned down 2-1 for butt lift. I was proud of this grind because for her, that was something I needed to see. However, I won’t be making the same mistake twice, the data is overwhelming that the most missed lift in all of powerlifting is the 3rd attempt female bench press and that jumps over 2.5kg are really risky. This is on me more than it is on her. Lastly, deadlifts, her bread and butter. We flat out balled on deadlifts this whole cycle so I knew something heavy would be there and it was. We were able to take 155kg/341lbs for an all-time PR, meet PR, and break a state record she wanted to hit for a very long time. This meant the world to me as I knew she was capable of it, perfect execution on her part. We did have her take a 4th, which again, was ridiculous as I called for it immediately after and was told repeatedly I needed to wait and that I can just chip it by 0.5kg. I wanted to do neither and she was forced to wait 2 minutes AFTER the flight had ended with the bar loaded before attempting it. Again, this is not on her and most a call to action to maybe ask for some additional help to manage the meet better, again, I know how hard it is to run a meet and could not imagine doing it alone. Nonetheless, we have some valuable data for Jess in many avenues. The biggest is to stop cutting down into meets. Physiology dictates we cannot perform optimally in a calorie deficit and net-loss of energy, this coupled with leverage (being too tall for a particular weight class serves no advantage and Jess is probably too tall for the 75kg class, all her best numbers were at a light 82.5kg lifter) makes it very hard to progress. The next is to experiment with a lower bar position, Jess’s strength is her back and we cannot use that in a high bar, upright squat. When you are not built for high bar (very short femurs, very long torso) it is extremely unforgiving, meaning any degree you tip forward increases the risk of missing as you cannot center yourself with the bar up that high. Lastly, and we had this conversation so I feel comfortable posting it, make sure we are okay overall before we decide on a meet. Prepping for a meet is emotional in itself if you care and at the end of the day, I care about my lifters as people first and if they are not okay, I can care less about their powerlifting numbers as I do not attach ANY of my lifters worth according to their numbers. Some things are in our control, others are not, and that is okay if we can distinguish things as such. If I can ever get this girl to compete in the USAPL, I think she would like it a lot better. No squat bar, 2 hour weigh ins, drug-testing, etc… but baby steps… Results: Squat: 110kg (242lbs) Bench Press: 55kgkg (121lbs) Deadlift: 155kgkg (341lbs), 2.5kg PR Total: 320kg (706lbs) 7/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1629229109980-RKGIUR7YRGY3UXPPGQLQ/IMG-2714.JPG Athlete Meet Reports - Kyle Kable - USPA Greater Boston Championship, 140kg class, (14 August 2021) Rounding out the USPA trio, the only lifter on the team I trust with 17.5kg and 20kg jumps, and newly 140kg lifter, Kyle Kable. In the first meet Kyle and I worked together, he was coming off a very long lay off so I wanted to do what I always do with new lifters or people coming off long lay offs, go 9/9 and leave some room for next time and we did exactly that. This go around, Kyle informed me he was probably going to focus a bit more on strongman in the coming year and that if possible, he’d like to be a bit more aggressive this go around, which I obliged within reason. To be truthful, Kyle’s prep started off slow but anecdotally speaking, most of the time guys in the heavier weight classes have a “late peak” in that they do not need that heavy an exposure, at least not frequently, to taper down into a big lift. Fast forward to the meet. So as a little background, Kyle cannot physically fit into a standard combo and as such requests the the racks in. For some reason, on his opening squat his rack height was high and thank god Andrew Graves (who came up to help and was invaluable on the day getting everyone warmed up) caught it that his racks were not in. I was at an angle and did not notice, as Kyle stumbled out of the rack and it made his opener a little off-balanced. Still moved good (245kg/540lbs) so we went with the planned heavy second. With Kyle, we take big boy jumps to conserve energy so the planned 2nd was 260kg/573lbs and it moved good but I noticed something crucial that made it move a little worse than we may have anticipated, he did not brace at all. Like, he literally did not take a breath he just went down with it after getting a start command. He came into this meet wanting to achieve a lifetime goal of squatting 600lbs and despite the second not really warranting a 12.5kg jump, we went for it because in my heart I believed if I had him take smaller deliberate steps and get tight on the unrack and before the descent, it would go. And man, did it go. 272.5kg/601lbs to great depth for a 7.5kg meet PR and an all time PR to boot! Crazy what small changes can make in terms of the big picture. On to to bench, this was the lift I think we got a little greedy on. Kyle wanted a shot at the Mass state record and truth be told, it was probably a reach on the day but I wanted to give him the opportunity even if it was halfway there. We went 155kg/341lbs on the first, which moved good honestly, then 167.5kg/369lbs on the second which moved good but was kind of misgrooved. We jumped to 177.5kg/391lbs which to me was 2.5kg to heavy. I don’t think this was technical thing but rather strength and he even said after the lift it just wasn’t there on the day. This is the game you play with big jumps as this effectively cost Kyle 7.5kg on his total, again, I was okay with this as the constraint he laid out before made it more reasonable. With the squat we hit, we were still on pace for a good total but we had to play it smart. Deads for Kyle taper HARD and based on his warmups, we knew deads were on this day. We opened up at 252.5kg/557lbs and it was a glorified last warmup. We went with the planned 2nd of 270kg/595lbs which moved insane and was given 2 whites and 1 red. When this happens, to me you tell the athlete to put it on the judges and do exactly what you did before as it passed and the last thing you want to do when attacking a third pull is worry about technique. We went with 282.5kg/623lbs which was our conservative third because it secured a PR total, a deadlift PR, and was well within reason on the day. This moved incredible, I mean, literally insane! After this we decided to chip the state record of 285kg/628lbs with a 285.5kg/629lbs 4th attempt and he locked it out but it was turned down 2 to 1 for hitching which may have been fair in hindsight. All in all, we left with PRs on the squat, dead, and total and crossed off some very important milestones. So proud of this man and really cannot wait to see him level up into that next stratosphere. Results: Squat: 272.5kg (601lbs), 7.5kg PR Bench Press: 167.5kg (369lbs) Deadlift: 282.5kg (623lbs), 2.5kg PR Total: 722.5kg (1593lbs), 2.5kg PR 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1629224255160-L0JI6N4H2FPBDPTW1FXI/IMG-2615.JPG Athlete Meet Reports - Tyler Hill - USPA Greater Boston Championship, 82.5kg class, (14 August 2021) Keeping the theme going, another former Wentworth Men’s Rugby standout, Tyler Hill, was also in attendance to turn up this weekend. Seamus, as he is known, had a day that I only can describe as gritty. He earned everything this day the hard way and I would be damned if I said his final pull didn’t make me a but emotional. This was about as good a prep as we possibly could have asked for. We paced him a bit better this time around to the point where I think all the lifts were there on the day but more to that later. A couple things I noticed for Seamus this time is his physique has improved big time, he was a bit heavier this prep but substantially leaner. The other thing is his mindset is a lot cleaner, I say cleaner because his goals are very concise now and not just the lowest hanging fruit. So to start, we have a plan on this team, from warmups to attempts, we are ready for everything. This, to me, is where we have an advantage at meets and things that seemingly should be a death sentence to overall performance for others, are things we can brush off rather easily. Again, more on that in a bit. Seamus started off hitting his first 2 squats at 182.5kg/402lbs and 192.5kg/424lbs (which was 2.5kg below his meet PR) and they both moved stronger than he moved them the entire prep. We paced this whole prep out for a 200kg/441lbs third and I think he will agree to this that we do not regret taking this at all. There are “good” misses and “bad” misses. This was a good one, I say that because he stalled out literally as high as one could possibly stall out and I think maybe if he had a touch more impulse out of the hole it would carry him to lockout. A bad miss, to me, would be something that was overzealous to the point where you do not make it an inch out of the hole, pretty much failing the eccentric. Was 197.5kg/435lbs there? Easily. We could have taken the 2.5kg PR but with the attempt we took before being 2.5kg under his best, we had a safety net of sorts to be a bit more aggressive, next meet, 200kg will fall, bar none. Bench is the lift that Seamus really attacked this prep and I honestly feel, again, his heaviest 3rd was there but we had a little bit of a technical groove issue that will be an easy fix. Still, we tied his meet PR on his second, at 135kg/297lbs, effectively putting us 2.5kg back on his subtotal but I knew he was in line for a 7.5kg meet PR on deadlift which would also PR his total based on his training so I assured him we would be alright. On to deads, Seamus has improved his technique big time and to me, has a very technically sound conventional pull. Historically a sumo puller, he put his ego aside and made the call a while back to go with what is strong and it has paid off. I may be misremembering but I believe we ended this prep at 220kg/485lbs or 222.5kg/491lbs which ties or exceeds his meet PR and it moved insane. I knew we had something heavier on meet day. We opened at 212.5kg/469lbs and it moved better than it had the entire prep, from there we jumped to the planned heavy second of 222.5kg/491lbs and again, best it had moved all prep. Circling back to having a plan, I wrote this out so if he did not make his thirds on squat and bench, he would still bare minimum tie his total with only his second deadlift. Is it always possible to construct a plan like this, no, but when it is, I will make sure we walk out of that venue with a PR total come hell or high water. So the dilemma was do we go with the planned heavy third or the conservative 3rd. To me, I believed in him to hit the heavy third as did he so I rolled the dice and put in 227.5kg/501lbs. He nailed all the positions off the floor, was patient almost like a sumo pull, and locked that pull out smooth and when he got 3 whites, man I lost it. This sealed a deadlift PR, a total PR, and encapsulated everything I respect about this man, he does not quit. It’s one thing to say that but it’s another to see it. Again, I am so proud of this day and that we salvaged it, proper planning and trusting your athletes goes a long way! Results: Squat: 192.5kg (424lbs) Bench Press: 135kg (297lbs) Deadlift: 227.5kg (501lbs), 7.5kg PR Total: 555kg (1224lbs), 5kg PR 7/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1629219796777-YUN6TDXJCKDV9PRV8YE0/7C65B7D4-610A-41A7-BEAF-192D039CFE21.JPG Athlete Meet Reports - Dave Cailler - USPA Greater Boston Championship, 100kg class, (14 August 2021) Starting off with the man, the myth, the legend, one David Cailler, former Wentworth Men’s Rugby standout and local hell-raiser. This is Dave and I’s second meet working together and this one was a bit different as we had some circumstances to deal with that we did not last go around and his life was changing and very hectic as close as 2 weeks out from the meet. To make it short, I believe 3 weeks out, maybe 4, he came up to the meet myself and Andrew Graves co-directed and spotted and loaded all day from 8-5pm plus helped with the takedown. Anyone who has spotted and loaded at a meet, it is ROUGH. Tyler Hill, who I will be covering later, had to deal with the same and I am very thankful these guys came up to do this because again, 24hrs post, it is ROUGH. Coupled with this, Dave was moving and starting a new job, he won’t make the excuse but anyone who is trying to peak for a meet, I dare you to coincide it with a major life change, and see the results. Dave never complained once and many times he would have to move things around workout wise to get everything in. Squatting fairly heavy 2 days in a row, pulling a couple days after that, etc… There is a point to having a dedicated split but at some point when you have to adjust, you cannot overthink it and I think Dave does a great job with this. Dave usually does all his off-season work on his own and we come together to prep which has worked well in the past and this honestly was nothing different. He gives me very good feedback in terms of exercise selection and I listen to that and we fine tune each go around to the point where I think we have the timetable to peak him down to a tee. Weight cut was easy and I think he came in as prepared as we possibly could have been. I think the thing I respect most about Dave is when we have the conversation about attempts, they are always realistic and not outlandish. Being not attached to arbitrary numbers is generally the route to best performance. Because what is so special about 200kg or 300kg really when you think about it? Squats started off hot, we went 255kg/562lbs to open and it looked like he was shot out of a cannon. We jumped 12.5kg to 267.5kg/590lbs and again, smoked it. We went with the planned heavy 3rd of 277.5kg/611lbs and honestly, I feel it was there but when weights get THAT heavy, any minor miss-step will cause a chain reaction. He made a comment I feel that is fairly prevalent in that he has a hard time getting a good shelf with the thick squat bar. Bar rolled up on him a bit and it was just a little too much to grind. Bench, was bench. We were conservative with it as his opener was easy, but on his second attempt of 152.5kg/336lbs he got about a 3ct pause for some reason which made it a bit harder than it normally would have been. We hypothesized the head ref could not see the bar touch his chest as he lifts his head during the bench, but to me, this is fairly common in USPA and I reviewed the video and he did not hover or have the bar moving at the chest, we decided to jump 2.5kg to 155kg/342lbs for the third and just expect a long press command, he hit it and honestly had another 2.5-5kg to spare but I have learned that after missing a third squat, mentally, you need momentum of going 3/3 on bench to have any hope of “making up for it” on deadlifts. Going into deads, I will be honest he was moving weights in the back like I have never seen them moved before in person. I knew this was going to be a good day for pulls and it was. We opened at 282.5kg/623lbs and despite a little turbulence at the top from that whippy DL bar, it was unreal how it moved. We took our planned heavy second of 295kg/650lbs which I think caused most people in the crowd to gasp because it moved faster and smoother than the opener. From there we made the call to end with momentum and took the lighter of the 2 options, 305kg/673lbs. This moved insane still but he knew he would hit this and so did I so there was no need to get greedy. We debated taking a 4th attempt for another record but emotionally it is very hard to go to that spot twice in a row and that is usually when injuries occur so I am glad we lived to fight another day. I don’t know if this surprised him, but it certainly surprised me, this performance won Dave Best Lifter in the afternoon session, the first Team Hogan athlete to do this at any meet. I would be curious to see how close it was as at the time of me writing this, the results are not posted to openpowerlifting and there was not a way to check in real time. Drives home my entire point I preach to people that usually your best performances against others come when you worry about yourself. The only thing you can control on meet day is what you do, you cannot control what others do, so why worry? This was well deserved and I could not be prouder to be associated. Next time we circle back to the platform, I would expect some next level numbers. Some numbers that put him up there with the best in the nation. Results: Squat: 267.5kg (590lbs) Bench Press: 155kg (341lbs) Deadlift: 305kg (623lbs) Total: 727.5kg (1604lbs) 8/9 on attempts, #32 total in the nation for 100kg men out of 454 lifters (at the time of this post) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1628259413274-7WCJ8XZWC3WQFVOSWH0Q/IMG_3109.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports - Erik Hogan - USAPL Odyssey Barbell Club Summer Open, 66kg class, (31 July 2021) Yes, it is I. I already spoke about this meet ad nauseam but this is my website and I shall write about what I please!!! So, to give a bit of backstory, I had my first “down” meet back in April at the Junior and Collegiate Nationals. I say it in quotations because in the grand scheme, it wasn’t a down meet. I was just dealt a poor hand and some unfortunate things occurred that limited my top end strength. Not an excuse at all because I knew this and still chose to compete. You can go back and read that meet report to see what went wrong. Long story short, I failed to PR my total for the first time on the biggest stage. In hindsight, I was able to set a bench press PR in the strictest of standards, I came back from a bizarre squat call, and was within reach of winning my class had my final deadlift not been redlighted. Despite all that, I still was within 5kg of my best total ever. I get that now, but at the time this kind of crushed me. Yes I was injured but that meant nothing, yes it was my first time competing outside of New England and having to fly to a meet, and yes, it was my first time not competing as a big fish in a small pond. But all I saw were results. 557.5kg/1229lbs total. 5kg/11lbs less than my best. However, I was made aware that for all day 1 men, with a total that was less than my best, I was 8th overall out of around 55 total competitors. I signed up for this meet within days after Nationals. I am not one to really care about Junior credentials but I did know I did not want to go out like that as a junior competitor. I was lucky for a few reasons this meet fell when it did. First, I think most people by now are aware I was a co-director for a meet the week before, so any competitions on that date were out the window. Secondly, my birthday is August 1st, so naturally I needed a meet before that. Enter, July 31st at Salem, New Hampshire. I have sent lifters to Odyssey meets before, I think 5 total lifters across 3 meets but never had done one myself. As a side note, within New England I have been fortunate enough to travel to meets in Maine, Mass, New Hampshire and a bit outside of that in Connecticut and New York. Eric Lapointe and Odyssey by far run the best meets, just my opinion. As mentioned before I had roughly 18.5 weeks to prepare for this meet and I was still very injured at this point. I could not squat 135lbs with my regular stance, regular tempo without severe pain in my left knee. Many days I would be in tears thinking why me, why does it still hurt. But that was neither here nor there, I decided to be proactive and use my resources. My protocol to rehab was simple, mundane, but effective. I was to perform 3-5 sets of 30-45 seconds on isometric leg extensions each training day (5x per week) with a higher rep set at almost no load to promote blood flow to my quadriceps. This last part is not rooted in science but allowed me to placebo myself into thinking my quads were being used in the squat. Along with this, I performed a ton of unilateral calf work for the gastroc and soleus and most of my accessory work was unilateral. The longer duration, iso lunge was also my best friend. I kept up with this protocol all the way until I was about 3 weeks out where I finally felt comfortable to not do such a long and mundane warmup. In terms of squat training, I made some amendments to my stance, my sequencing, and then my approach. I brought my stance in about 2-3 inches and committed to a more knee-forward position. You might think this would exacerbate knee pain but quite the contrary, it was almost therapeutic for it. My squat used to be fairly wide and use a ton of hips and glutes, if you look at my build, you can see that I am definitely lower body dominant but my quadriceps are by far my strength and I should have been using them the entire time. Less hips back, more sit down and it really paid off for me. In terms of programming I established a 2x per week frequency with one day being beltless and the other being belted. Both days were with a strict tempo and both were in ascending sets. As mentioned in Evan Wright’s meet report, the thought process was to continue loading the tissue but with the pre-fatigue constraint that would force me to adapt at a rate I could maintain. It worked very well, I lifted the tempo first and only until about 4 weeks out lifted the ascending sets. Between the process of coaching 9 lifters for 1 meet and another 4 in meets before or after it, planning/setting up/reffing a meet I was a co-director for, AND prepping for a meet myself, I would be lying if I said I was 100% confident I could pull it off but I will say I was certainly 90% sure I could do it as I have always thrived when my back was against the wall. Fast forward to one week out, I was feeling the best I had in quite some time. The theme for this meet was, “save some for where it matters” something I preach to my own athletes but really something I got from Andrew Graves, who time after time peaks perfectly and all his best lifts are in a meet where it actually counts. I ended my prep with a squat of 440lbs at 8 RPE, a bench press of 280lbs at 8 RPE, and a deadlift of 520lbs at 8 RPE. In prior preps I have gone slightly heavier but did not quite have the taper effect you would think. Momentum is EVERYTHING in a meet prep. This is where I started my water load in which I was the heaviest I have ever been a week out from a meet. I was 68.3kg/150.7lbs, with the weight class being 66kg/145.5lbs. Now, you might say isn’t 5lbs nothing? Maybe for you, but the lighter you are the bigger 5lbs is proportionate to bodyweight. Now this was not done recklessly, I have so much data from prior cuts (I even did a cut for a mock meet and this was actually my saving grace) that I knew I could push heavier. Why push heavier? Well when you are in a light weight class, there is a distinct advantage of being heavier than the weight class in terms of true weight rather than being lighter. All variables being equal, being 150lbs under the bar serves way more cushion and leverage than being a true 144lbs. 6lbs of leverage can go a long way, especially when you break it down in terms of percentage of total bodyweight. I need that leverage for the squat and bench press. I did my normal protocol and knew I was going to be heavy in the morning so the night before, I spit out about 0.5lb with jolly ranchers and cut off all food and water 17.5 hours out from weigh ins. I woke up the morning of the meet 66.55kg/146.75lbs. Which is right on par with what I expected, I lose about 4lbs with water/sodium loading alone. This is where I overestimated myself. I began to work on spitting, knowing I would have to fill an entire 16 oz bottle. So I did just that. I threw on a hoodie with layers and created a make-shift steam room in my bathroom with the shower on as hot as possible and spit into the bottle and would get up and move to elicit some sweating, nothing strenuous. I did this for about 1 hour and left my house weighing 66.30kg/146.1lbs. This was the first time I left my house above weight, did not panic at all really. It was about an hour and half drive to the venue and I filled the bottle completely but ran out of jolly ranchers so I had my handler on the day, Andrew, grab me a huge pack of mint gum. When I arrived to the facility, I began going into overdrive. I knew I was in the back of the lot numbers so I used that my advantage and pushed it literally all the way until I had my name called. Stepped on the scale, 65.9kg/145.3lbs. I won’t get into rehydration but this is my thing, I know how to rehydrate. It is never easy but by the time I was on the platform for my opener, I was 152lbs. Side note, do not cut weight if you are going to be an idiot about it. I did this for a reason and this was meet #7 for me with plenty of data. Weight cutting is not bad or dangerous but it CAN be, be smart and reach out if you are in a situation where you have to. On to the meet itself, it was a dream. I opened at 190kg/419lbs, killed it. Jumped to 200kg/441lbs, killed it. My dilemma was tying my meet PR or going for an actual PR. My goals for this meet were simply to go 9 for 9, PR my total, and secure an open raw nationals qualifying total. My handler Andrew and my close friend Bobby both assured me 207.5/458lbs was there so I trusted them and attacked it. All time PR, meet PR, and man did it feel good to come full circle with all that rehab work I did. 3/3, state record. Closed the flight too for the first time, that was cool. With bench, this was the lift that was there all prep. I opened at 120kg/264lbs and killed it. On my second attempt of 127.5kg/281lbs, which tied my meet PR, I got a little forward with it and it had some turbulence but it felt insane. My top end was 132.5kg/292lbs but Andrew told me that my goal was to go 9/9, I had a great start on squat, why risk it? Take the meet PR. So I did, and I do not regret it. This was an all time and meet PR and the first time I have ever closed a flight on bench press. I was 2.5kg away from my first 2x bodyweight bench! 6/6 so far. On to deads, this was the lift I was 100000% confident in. I knew what I had to hit to ensure a meet PR total, a nationals total, and a deadlift PR. I switched to mixed grip this prep because with hook grip I kept running into the same issue of not being able to lock my shoulders back at weights above 500lbs. I worked hard on this and it showed. Opened up at 222.5kg/491lbs and it was @ 5 RPE. Moved to 232.5kg/513lbs and killed it, I planned for this to ensure me and PR total. This is where my experience and having a good handler showed. My deadlift PR is 235kg/518lbs, and I only needed that to ensure a nationals qualifying total. However, my planned top end for the day was 242.5kg/546lbs and honestly, it was probably there. I have not gone 9/9 since 2018 so I wanted to load something that killed multiple birds with one stone. We went with 240kg/529lbs as a placeholder knowing we could change it. I thought about it and was like why would I risk potentially the best meet of my life at this point, so we bumped it down to 237.5kg/524lbs to give me a further PR total, a deadlift meet PR, a nationals total, and ensure me a 9/9 day. This was surreal, I blew it up and jumped out of pure reaction. It moved insane. 9. for. 9. 575kg/1268lbs total. I needed this day to prove to myself that I am a high level lifter and that my best days are in the future. I left this meet with momentum and I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep the goal, the goal and to not move goal posts as you get caught up in the day. From Maine, with love. Thank you for reading. Results: Squat: 207.5kg (458lbs), 2.5kg PR Bench Press: 130kg (286lbs), 2.5kg PR Deadlift: 237.5kg (524lbs), 2.5kg PR Total: 575kg (1268lbs), 12.5kg PR 9/9 on attempts, #7 total in the nation for Jr 66kg men out of 85 lifters (at the time of this post) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1628101985871-BPDQK87RYE52IRBQYOMD/IMG_3767.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Evan Wright - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 93kg class, (24 July 2021) Last but certainly not least, Big E himself, Evan Wright. I wanted to save Evan for last because I wanted to write in depth about what this guy had to go through to even make it here, let alone finish 4th overall. Rewind a couple of months back, Evan was struck with some pretty serious injuries to his hamstring that rendered him unable to squat or deadlift for very long periods at a time. Literally we were just benching at one point. How many people would have just pulled out of the meet at that point? Christ, I think even I would have heavily contemplated it. Now, this is where I had to get very, very creative in terms of prepping him for this meet. These are the dilemmas I had and for the most part I think we addressed this dead on! The first, most pertinent thing was we needed to deliver him to the platform healthy and in a position to actually show what strength was there. So there was some rehab stuff put into this approach. Secondly, we needed to be in shape for the meet. Therefore we could not afford to get too distant from comp movements because we would be running into lack of practice at that point. Lastly, we needed to make sure we did not burn out too early, in meets in the past Evan would be way too overreached 1 week out and would not get much out of a taper going into the meet, this time around I think we got everything down to the point where we had a HUGE supercompensation into the day. Here is an example of how we approached squats: ascending sets from bar to “working” sets on the secondary day in sets of 5. Meaning he would take the bar for a warmup set then every successive set after was for 5 reps. You might say, well wouldn’t that fatigue him for the heaviest sets? Yes, that is the point. What this did was allow Evan to heal 1-1 as he adapted to the training stimulus and really kept absolute load in check for the primary day. On said primary day, I enacted for something that I knew in theory would work but I don’t think I have EVER seen anyone use it, I had him take a top single AFTER ascending volume work. He would follow that same squat protocol as the secondary session except with 3s instead of 5s and after he reached a threshold RPE for the day, he would then take a single around 6% heavier than that. I could not have him enter a meet without doing singles but I also needed to make sure we were not biting off more than we could chew, too fast. We only took a “top” single with no pre-fatigue work, 1 week out in which he hit a little over 205kg/452lbs with ease. I knew we would taper well but he exceeded my expectations. So, at the meet, this is where I knew we were locked in. At Maine State 2020, he came out of the gates way too hyped and missed his squat opener on balance at the top in which we had to make a risky call about going up. This meet, man, he was so in control and focused it was almost robotic. I think this is the mindset he performs best at and I hope he recognizes that. He actually lobbied for a heavier squat attempt than my initial plan because he knew he was good for it, this was aggressive (so I thought) but I was flat-out wrong. Evan went on to take 217.5kg/480lbs @ 8-8.5 RPE for a 10kg meet PR. Yes, his best squat in training was 454lbs or so, and he blew up 480lbs with I would say 15lbs left in the tank. You do the math, that is crazy. However, I think this is where I failed him. I should have had the foresight to trust his instinct and let him attempt something heavier but I will do better next time, if he is going to taper like this, man, 500lbs is gunna be here sooner than we think. Bench has been his bane for a while now. He has long arms and has never really felt strong on it in terms of executing to comp standard, I think if it was touch and go and but lift was not a thing, he could do 315 right now no problem. We were able to tie his meet PR here, and that was a win in my boom since we set the tone with squat. Deadlift is where I think the injury and lack of pulling kind of showed. This was also a meet Evan had a chance to podium at so I took a 3rd attempt for him I thought was 2.5kg too heavy but figured it was time to roll the dice. I do not think he regrets it, just was not there on the day. Some cool things to note is Evan placed 4th overall with a total that was less than his best and going 7/9. Still, he was only 5kg off that! We could have gone conservative on deads to chip a small PR but that was not his goal. However, now I owe this man a 9/9 meet with a PR total now and I will do everything in my power to do that. It really is scary as along with a few other people, once they put it altogether in a meet, they’ll see what I see potential wise. I am not one to be arrogant EVER, but I will speak it into existence NOW, Evan will either WIN or at the very least podium at this meet next year. I’m thinking somewhere around a 1380lb total will be in the cards, just watch. Results: Squat: 217.5kg (480lbs), 10kg PR Bench Press: 132.5kg (292lbs) Deadlift: 247.5kg (546lbs) Total: 597.5kg (1317lbs) 7/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1628099552967-FDUKHVK51WSVD485C8GM/IMG_3706.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Conor Silkey - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 83kg class, (24 July 2021) Next up, we have the man, the myth, the legend, Conor Silkey. This was Conor and I’s 2nd meet together and his day was lukewarm in that he was strong enough and peaked perfectly but some very minor things held him back, in my opinion. So to preface, I held Conor back in his first meet with me because it was his first after a long lay-off. Despite it, he left with a 25kg PR total in a federation that is objectively more strict than the previous federation he lifted in. This meet, we agreed we would be a little bit more aggressive as his training reflected it being appropriate. Conor is someone who has it all in terms of technique, it is quite literally flawless on all 3 lifts, but he is victim of confidence issues from time to time (something him and I can relate to) and sometimes is prone to being hypercritical of himself. To be honest, my approach with Conor is more mental training than physical. I try my best to let this guy know he is capable of the things he is doing and reassuring him every step of the way and for the most part I think that is something I have done a good job with. I really think he turned the corner this prep in this regard too because towards the end he was flat out ready and chomping at the bits to get under some heavy weight. Training this prep was good in my opinion, bench lagged a bit but squat was on fire and deadlift, after a bit of a lull really gained steam when he let go of hookgrip and stuck to mixed grip. Now at the meet, this is where I thought things kind of effected him, whether he “felt” it or not. Conor handled Team Hogan lifter, Emily Silva, all morning before his session. Now, you might not think this does much but standing around and loading weights for 2 hours probably was not a net positive for his performance. However, you roll with the punches. He did not complain once but I want to make it known that he had no choice here, I don’t fault him as I would have done the same thing. The next thing is he weighed in super light at 179lbs, if you have not been able to tell by now, I am a stickler for weighing in too light. I think Conor by default, is a 93kg lifter in an 83kg frame as of now but we will be addressing that this off-season. Getting into squats, we had 1 goal and 1 goal only, finally cross 200kg/441lbs off the bucket list. We did that and with room to spare in my opinion, sunk depth and took it confident. It was awesome to see. Bench, was bench. This is where we got aggressive, 122.5kg/270lbs was just not there and 120kg/264lbs was probably the better call. On to deads, this was Conors first crack at over 500lbs on deadlift. I saw a lifter that was attacking the pull, not someone who was apprehensive. Everything we have worked on showed, he was patient as hell off the floor, maintained his positions perfectly… All to JUST miss it by inches at lockout forward. This was not a strength issue, Conor will tell you himself he was peaked and ready to go, just a slight balance issue. I take solace in the fact that now I think he realizes what he is capable of. I would not be surprised if this was a 2nd attempt next meet! To summarize, Conor was able to leave with a squat PR and despite 2 misses left with 2.5kg under his best ever total. This guy will be WELL into the 1200lb range next time we do a meet and it will be awesome to see. I am so proud of him and am very happy to be a catalyst in him beginning to love training again as he said in the past motivation has been an issue. Onward we must go! Results: Squat: 200kg (441lbs), 2.5kg PR Bench Press: 117.5kg (259lbs) Deadlift: 220kg (485lbs) Total: 535kg (1179lbs) 7/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1628096665784-4BQO2DN3G5VGQJAXE4E4/IMG_3808.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Chris Couillard - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 83kg class, (24 July 2021) First in the “Veterans” three part series is CJPowerlifts. This is the meet Chris has been ready for for a while now. Straight up, I knew this would be his day in terms of PRs and increasing his total. Crazy enough, this is Chris and I’s 4th meet together and 3rd prep together. This is so crucial because I have so much data to draw from to formulate a plan that “works” for him. In the past, we have always peaked about a week to 5 days too early, with him either hitting his heaviest lifts 2 weeks out and actually failing lifts 1 week out OR we went too light and did not get the momentum needed to kind of boost confidence going into the meet. This time, I think Chris will agree we nailed it on the head in terms of his peak. The theme of the prep was, “save some for when it counts”, and I really feel like we did just that. For his squat and deadlift, he is fairly intensity sensitive so we only touched an 8-8.5 RPE (around 91-93%) once this entire prep but gained solid momentum in terms of workload. Thankfully, this is the first prep we were able to train bench press without injury and this gave us a good total boost as despite his true strength being much higher, he has only been able to match his PR each meet, many times not comp benching until the week of the meet! Like I said, we nailed everything this prep and it showed on the day. Chris ended the prep with lifts of 177.5kg/391lbs on squat, 110kg/242lbs on bench press, and 232.5kg/513lbs on deadlift, all on calibrated plates and comp equipment. Fast forward to the meet, I knew we were on one from the get-go. We nailed a huge milestone of 182.5kg/402lbs on the third attempt with more to spare! Did he have more, yes, but I have come to learn you do NOT get greedy with meet PRs as this was a substantial one. Bench press was the only blip on the radar on this day yet he still left with a PR. He hit 107.5kg/237lbs on his 2nd attempt but it did not move how we thought, so we only jumped 2.5kg and it just was not there on the day. I am okay and not okay with this for a few reasons. I am okay with it because it was on strength and not technicality, which is good because that means thats an easy variable to address. I am not okay with this because I believe I failed him by tapering him too fast. With his history of injury, I opted to take a fairly aggressive bench press taper but I knew in my heart that it was probably a bit too much and it led to a bit of detraining. I am not perfect but I am glad we finally moved the needle on bench. Next meet, I will fix this and he will bench closer to 250lbs, watch. Deadlift, this is the lift I “trust” the most with Chris. Why? Because of the fact that I have data on him. His dead is very brute force and not overly technical and relies upon a ton of back rounding for leverage. You might be saying why not fix that but this is his strength! We just have to dose it properly. Chris knows how to grind a heavy pull and he will keep pulling on a bar until he passes out, so I am totally okay with loading something heavy on the day as he ALWAYS tapers perfect for the meet. He was able to hit a PR of 240kg/529lbs and end the day with a nice PR total. All in all, this was 1 lift shy of being his super meet. He has done all of this despite dropping 14lbs from his first meet! If that is not getting stronger flat-out, I do not know what counts as that. The goals for him moving forward are to put on more size and density and fill out the 83kg class, his weigh ins the last 2 meets he has been 3 and 4lbs light, weight that will aid in his leverage for the squat and bench press. Beyond all this, Chris is a tremendous asset to the Maine powerlifting community and you will see him at these meets encouraging people he does not even know all the same as his teammates, that energy is always reciprocated. Hell of a day Chris, you continue to amaze me meet after meet. Results: Squat: 182.5kg (402lbs), 10kg PR Bench Press: 107.5kg (237lbs), 2.5kg PR Deadlift: 240kg (529lbs), 2.5kg PR Total: 530kg (1169lbs), 15kg PR 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1628013540601-RR8Y5T7C3B63JKNTGBFE/IMG_4236.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Nathan Hilton - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 74kg class, (24 July 2021) Last in the Newcomers series is a lifter I admire a lot, Mr. Nathan Hilton. To make it clear, all the people I work with are phenomenal people, however, Nathan is in a league of his own in terms of the respect he gives me and trust he puts in me. To make it frank, Nathan’s first priority is not lifting. He provides for his family, is raising a very young child, and has other interests outside of lifting like running. Nathan trains most days between 3:30am and 4:30am down in his basement and most mornings I wake up to 3 or 4 videos from his session. If that is not dedication, than I am not sure what qualifies as dedication. Day after day, week after week he chips away at small milestones. You see, Nathan’s limitations are not strength related but execution related. Most of the first 2-3 months of our working relationship were spent addressing squat depth, making sure pauses and holds on bench were up to snuff, and locking deadlifts out without hitching or shelving. I am very happy that we addressed ALL of these issues to the point where I do not view any of these things as limitations anymore. Nathan had done one meet before in the APF, which, if I am being objective, has a lower standard of lifting than USAPL. The lifts he hit at that meet, he would agree, would not fly in a USAPL meet, so I did not even look at his results from that meet as a standard to work towards, this meet was a blank sleight. As I mentioned with Nick Taylor, Nathan was one of the people who suffered with me not being able to handle him like I usually do. A lot of his warmups were compete well before his opener, meaning he spent 8-12 minutes doing nothing which does not bode well for executing. Squats were good for the most part! He was not able to hit his third but more on this at the end when I circle back, I have some theories now that I have had some time to reflect on everything. Bench was the lift that really surprised me, Nathan was projecting for something around 102.5kg and a week out was moving weights like this with ease, so to see him struggle with 97.5kg initially puzzled me. Again, I have a theory on this. Like with Nick, I told him straight up, we are going 3/3 on deadlifts so we can end this meet with momentum and we did just that. He nailed 145kg/319lbs with more in the tank! In regards to his squat and bench not being there on the day, 100% this is on me. I should have gone with my gut and used a taper I use for my other people who are “slow twitch” and have endurance training backgrounds. I took away too much volume and it had an adverse effect to his performance, next meet, I will keep volume high pretty much until 4 days out because all his best results are with a ton of volume during the week. I will also take blame in that I should have made smarter attempts for him realizing this was his first USAPL meet and he does not train on competition standard plates or equipment. Sometimes as a coach you have to swallow your pride and admit when you messed up and I did here. The beauty in it all is I have concrete data now and I know for deads, what we did worked. For squats and bench, it did not. All in all, this guy had a busy day. He had to leave early to go to a wedding for crying out loud! I am happy he came out and competed and if I can convince him, in November I want to make things right by executing a 9/9 day. Also think he is a candidate to leave the 74kg weight class and allow himself to fill into his frame and compete as a light 83kg lifter but that might be a harder sell. So proud of you Nate, 99.9% of all people would bitch and moan if they had the schedule you did, you never do, and for that you will be rewarded. I am sorry it did not show this meet but I promise you, it will! Results: Squat: 110kg (242lbs) Bench Press: 90kg (198lbs) Deadlift: 145kg (319lbs), 2.5kg PR Total: 345kg (759lbs) 6/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1628009410594-B4706NA86OY649EC3NC9/IMG_3834.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Teejay Itchkawich - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 120kg class, (24 July 2021) Teejay! Man, where do I start with this individual? My second oldest athlete, Teejay is unique in the sense that his training age and his competition age is extremely low. Now, he has been in the gym, do not get it twisted, but in terms of training specifically for powerlifting, he is still very raw, which is scary because everyone at this meet I think was blown with away with ease at which he took some heavy weights. I want to lay it all out here to make it even MORE impressive. So, to rewind, Teejay and I have been working together for roughy 5-6 months now. He has some unique restraints as his gym does not allow chalk and is not really equipped for powerlifting in the classic sense. As such, all of his heavy deads were with straps. With 2 weeks to go, Teejay expressed that he wished he could lift at this meet for his first one and I told him, hey, registration is still open. We had a conversation that hey, we are in the middle of a hypertrophy-focused block but we could be ready in 2 weeks. Ready in the sense that we could deliver him to the meet feeling good and execute the sport aspect to gain the experience for a meet in November in which I will open up the flood gates for him. I told him since this was his first meet, I do not care about what you hit in terms of weight. I want to see you execute the commands, execute to comp standard, and walk away with a ton in the tank and experience with how a meet works. So to prep we went, with 2 weeks to prepare I went with a “better safe than sorry” approach in that we could not to a typical phase linear periodization model, we literally went as specific as possible. We took comp singles twice a week and did something I would NEVER do in a typical prep, we did a bit of a “mock meet” 1 week out to base his attempts. Teejay being new to the sport, I sent him a TON of resources with how to execute commands, what to expect on the day, how to warmup, etc… and man, this guy just put his head down and did everything I asked of him and more. Fast forward to this meet, he severely exceeded my expectations and in hindsight I was a little too conservative with his attempts in which I kind of, “made up for it”, at the end. I saw everything I needed to see from Teejay from a competitors standpoint, he flat out has “it”. Not only did he execute, but he was coachable, he even made a comment that although his attempts felt like air, he wanted to stick to the plan. Squats he blew up 197.5kg/435lbs, bench was an easy 125kg/275lbs, deadlift our planned top end was 207.5kg/458lbs but he was making things look way too easy at this point so I broke the cardinal sin of taking a bigger jump from attempt 2 to 3 than 1 to 2. He ended with 212.5kg/469lbs and honestly had I think 10-12.5kg more in him hahah. All in all, I hope he does not view this experience as a waste of time because when I unleash this beast in November, again, everyone should be on watch. Give me a year with him and Maine State 2022, he will be on the podium for overall men. Results: Squat: 197.5kg (435lbs) Bench Press: 125kg (275lbs) Deadlift: 212.5kg (469lbs) Total: 535kg (1180lbs) 9/9 on attempts, 27/27 white lights https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1628006021984-WZC1P09V7K9HYG0LNEKL/IMG_3155.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Emily Silva - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 84kg class, (24 July 2021) The first of the “Newcomers” series, in which three of my athletes either did their first meet in general or first USAPL meet, Emily and I have been working together for a few months at this point. Coming into things with a phenomenal base, I will be honest, she has been one of the easier people to coach in terms of approach and work ethic. It also helps that she had competed before, albeit a while ago, so things came back to her very fast and I think she will agree with me in that the rate of which she progressed surprised the both of us. My approach with people who are coming off a long layoff and/or switching federations is always the same. We go conservative and try our best to go 9/9 and enjoy the day, leave the meet with a good experience and not a sour one. Too many times I see people go H.A.M. their first meet back and go 5/9 and honestly have zero motivation to get back on the horse and build for the future. You see, a lot of the stuff you do as a coach is setting up for the future. It is hard to drill into someone that there will always be another meet but once it clicks, that is when the consistent and steady progress occurs. Emily got this from the jump. Prep was pretty good, I can’t think of anything aside from a one-off shoulder injury that occurred that set us back at all. There were days mentally it just was not there and I trusted her judgement when she felt she needed to take a rest day. During this prep, she hit lifts of 295lbs on squat, 305lbs on deadlift, and 150lbs on bench press, all with a ton in the tank. Like the other Team Hogan women, Emily’s reps per set on average are about 2-3 reps more than most of the males. Partially research driven but mostly because it is a fairly accepted anecdotal take that woman can handle more volume and respond better to higher reps. The week of the meet she was doing 9s on bench press and 6s on squat, deadlift I wanted to address starting position so we did 6-10 singles per deadlift workout. Fast forward to the meet, I had to step in and ref last minute so I could not handle her like I normally would, that is where Team Hogan member Conor Silkey stepped up and made perfect calls for her, I take not credit for that. Emily, much like myself, is fairly reserved and does not need to outwardly show “hype” to get focused. Her performance was quite literally perfect and I don’t know if maybe I underestimated her or what but next meet look for this girl to total well over 800lbs. In a 9/9 day, Emily went 137.5kg/303lbs on squat (literally 7-7.5 RPE and it was an all time PR), 70kg/154lbs on bench press, and 145kg/319lbs on deadlift (again 7-7.5 RPE) en route to a 352.5kg/777lbs total! In hindsight, were these attempts very, very conservative, of course. However, unless there is stakes at hand, it is pretty cool having the best meet of your life AND it being a breeze in terms of effort. Very excited to see where she goes as I know I keep saying it with most of my people but the sky is really the limit for her. 800lb total next meet, calling it now! Results: Squat: 137.5kg (303lbs), 6kg PR Bench Press: 70kg (154lbs) Deadlift: 145kg (319lbs) Total: 352.5kg (777lbs), 10kg PR 9/9 on attempts, 27/27 white lights https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1627932841638-YG5LDRKW2G1VM8J228PU/IMG_4266.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Nick Taylor - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 83kg class, (24 July 2021) The last of “The Kids”, Nick is a gahdamn warrior man. So, before I get into it, let me preface all this with the fact that Nick did not come into this meet 100%. 95% of the things that led to that point were NOT his fault. He is very busy and has many different responsibilities and I cannot think of a single time where he made an excuse or asked for sympathy. There were many times he would be training at 10:30pm and finish at 12:30am. Still, he put in the work. As close as 4 weeks out he was dealing with a very nagging and painful quad pull that made squat training (arguably his best lift) very hard to get through. We were doing tempo squats and backing off of a lot of accessory work just to give it enough stimulus to maintain at best. Bench training however was solid! I was really pleased with the strides he made on bench as all of his heavy, heavy benches were done at a much heavier bodyweight. Deadlift, was eh, I think his pull is limited by a few things but mostly fatigue. His style of pull is incredibly fatiguing so as a result he is very sensitive to intensity on pulls. Of the 5% of things that were in his control, I think the biggest is his weight. Nick weighed in at 175lbs bodyweight (the weight class is 183 mind you) and shredded to the gills. He got away with this his first meet but we had a discussion that he is just simply too light to support his leverages. It was not necessarily the being light it was the consistent calorie deficit through peaking training that zapped him in my opinion. The next meet he does, he will be a 93kg lifter where I think he will do the most damage. Out of all my athletes at this meet, there were 2 I think the suffered the most from me not being able to time their warmups and Nick was one of them. He informed me he took his last warmup on squat RIGHT before his opener which, understandably, he was gassed for and missed. This was alarming to me but when I knew the backstory, I was like okay, you are fine. We retook it, he hit it just fine. This showed me this kid knows how to bounce back and this experience here will pay off down the line cause it WILL happen again in some facet and he will remember that he is capable. His third I thought was there but the bar began to roll up his back and anyone who has had that happen knows, it is a death sentence. Bench press, I really thought was going good. Nick has a very hard sink into his chest with a close grip which is notorious for causing a long press command, so I think that really threw things for a loop. This one however, was on me. I should have been more conservative on his third here and settled for a 2.5kg meet PR but we went for 5kg and he was probably one inch away from getting out of the sticking point and locking it out. Scary, he is hitting right around 290 at 175lbs bodyweight, when he is 195lbs I think he will press WELL into the 300lbs range with ease (as well as bringing his grip out a hair) so this is promising to me. Again, I could do better here. Next go around, I am not making the same mistake. Lastly, for deads, I kinda put my foot down and made it known, we are going 3/3 on deads and are exiting this meet with some type of momentum. His deads were smooth and he really showed me how coachable he is because he did not object once. He ended the meet with a nice 225kg/496lbs and lived to fight another day. What is cool to note, Nick did not perform at his absolute best and he STILL placed 5th overall at this meet. Had he hit even just his planned 2nd attempt squat, it would have landed him on the podium. Like my other 2 young guys, the sky is truly the limit for this kid and I cannot wait to handle him for real and get him a 9/9 meet and take the total he has earned through all his hard work. Out of all my lifters, Nick is the most raw. When he kinda figures out the sport aspect of this stuff, the state of Maine better be on alert because when he has his super meet, it is going to turn some heads. Results: Squat: 195kg (430lbs) Bench Press: 125kg (275lbs) Deadlift: 225kg (496lbs) Total: 545kg (1202lbs) 6/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1627930784128-XEAGONFYAEESCMHATRKE/IMG_4269.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Josh Dang - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 74kg class, (24 July 2021) The second of “The Kids” on this day, Josh is the most senior of the group at the ripe age of 21. This young man had the meet of his life and checked off some major, major boxes in terms of milestones. A little backstory to his background and our time working together. This is our 2nd meet together, however we have been working together for substantially longer than that, coronavirus threw a wrench in most of 2020s competition plans. To put it frankly, Josh has a lot of commitments. He works, is finishing college, plays rugby at a fairly high level, dabbles in grappling and BJJ, AND trains the powerlifts. As a coach, my approach with him is essentially, “do what we can until PL becomes the sole focus”, which usually falls between 4 and 6 weeks out for him. At times, he get frustrated but by now I think he understands that when the other stuff isn’t in the picture, it literally takes him a month to get up to peak strength. Josh is also the most critical of his technique out of anyone around him, objectively, his technique on every single lift is phenomenal and I even have people messaging me just to say that, which I always send to him so he knows I am not blowing smoke. This prep started off slow but man did we gain momentum. Each week you could see him gain more confidence and it was a true “momentum peak”, where by the time the meet came around, I think he was chomping at the bits to get after his heavy attempts. When you work with someone through a bunch of testing and meets, you can pull through data and see what works historically and what does not. For Josh we do a ton of unique things. His ace card for his pulls is easily the wide stance snatch grip deadlift, I only program these for him in meet preps because I do not want the stimulus to go stale as it is so potent for him when we go to it. He was taking 160kg/352lbs for a set of 5 at one point on these! Truly incredible on a variation like that. His sumo pulls are also high rep the entire time, this entire prep we did not dip below 7 reps on backdowns. He also does well with 2 top sets a week on low bar squat but again, I only do this during preps because it is not sustainable with how beat up it makes his elbows. Lastly, much like myself, we keep his bench press volume high and even the intensity high pretty much until 5 days out where we pull it back and it’s yielded an all time PR each time. Getting into the meet, I knew flat-out this kid was ready from the jump. Josh is what I refer to as a true competitor, when it is time to throw down, mentally he just has “it”. He has the unique ability to block out everything around him and focus for 1 minute on ONLY the task at hand, sounds simple but I know it is not. I pump this kid with as much confidence as possible as I know if he believes, it will happen. Much like Elliot, Josh came out of the gates swinging with a 190kg/419lbs squat which was an all time PR and 7.5kg more than his heaviest single of the prep! Honestly could have squeezed out 2.5-5kg more but we kept the goal, the goal. Next, on bench press, straight up I was not sure if we would PR this go around, I was planning on him matching his meet best because leading into the meet his bench singles did not really move that great, I still had a PR built into the meet day attempt sheet because calling on data, it should have been there and I am glad we had that option available because after his second, it was apparent he would be able to grind out a PR. He took 125kg/275lbs and I think this was the only lift he did not have a ton of room to spare on, this was an all time PR as well and was again, 7.5kg more than his best single in training. Lastly, deadlifts. Man, I knew this kid was going to pull something insane. I’ll save the build up and just say it now, he made 230kg/507lbs look like a light second or heavy opener. Not only was this his first time ever attempting anything over 500lbs, but it was another all time PR but a whopping 12.5kg heavier than his heaviest single of prep! What a taper and peak man. You cannot ask for better results than this when preparing for a meet. This final pull secured a couple things, some I was aware of, some I wasn’t. It secured a 9/9 day, a deadlift PR, a total PR (his first 1200lb total), AND finally got him his distant goal when we first started together of a 400 wilks! I really was at a loss for words here because we have now put 117lbs on his total in a little over a year and he STILL has so much in the tank. This to me is how you attack local meets, you build momentum from meet to meet and when it’s time to really empty the tank, we can and will know how to prepare. Hell of a day Josh, so proud of you. Results: Squat: 190kg (419lbs), 2.5kg PR Bench Press: 125kg (275lbs), 2.5kg PR Deadlift: 230kg (507lbs), 5kg PR Total: 545kg (1202lbs), 10kg PR 9/9 on attempts, 27/27 white lights https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1627920715044-3LGB7356PFVOKNVG4UER/IMG_3585.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports - Elliot Woznica - USAPL 2021 Maine State Championships, 83kg class, (24 July 2021) The first of 9, yes, 9 athletes I had lifting on this day, a meet I was also a co-director for. This was a lot of work and very stressful but I would not want it any other way. This was Elliot’s second career meet. We went down to Massachusetts for a warm-up meet to give him some experience about 6 weeks before this one and I really think it paid off as he had a base to build from and he learned the sport aspect of powerlifting, something anyone who works with me knows I am a stickler for. You can cut it any which way you want, lifting on the platform is just different so I am glad we got one under his belt before this day as I knew I could not give him the attention he needed and it would be irresponsible for me as a coach to send a lifter to a meet not knowing stuff like how to warmup, when to warmup, etc… Elliot has also been my training partner for the last couple of months and one of the few athletes I get to work with in person which is pretty cool as he is very malleable and very open to improving and trusts my judgement. His prep was nothing short of awesome for this meet and I want to give him credit as he did literally everything I asked of him the entire time. I held him back a lot and now I think he understands why because he had an insane peak/taper leading into this competition. Since he was close, we made the call to have him go 83kg for this meet, however this will not be his long term weight class as he is well above 6 feet and if there is one thing I know, you should not stifle someone in a weight class not meant for them, especially early on in their training career. 93kg will be his weight class for the forseeable future. I think we only had 1 roadblock this entire prep, which was his last heavy pull. This circled back to something I think we know he needs to work on moving forward. His final heavy lifts of the cycle were 295lbs on squat, 265lbs on bench press, and 380lbs on deadlift. I constructed his attempt plan to yield as close to or slightly above a 1000lb total, I feel like we were right there for it too, here is how it played out. He lobbied for heavier squat attempts, for the majority of this prep he trained on a whippy commercial gym bar with non-calibrated bumper plates so I was hesitant but I met him halfway. Elliot came out of the gates absolutely maniacal and BLEW up 147.5kg/325lbs for his third attempt squat. Yes, his best in training was 295 and he squatted 30lbs heavier 7 days later with more to spare. Ah, to be a teenager again. This was a huge meet PR. Bench press is arguably his best lift but oddly enough, this is the one that give him some problems and you know, you never want someone to struggle but I am glad it happened NOW because it is a great teaching tool for what to work on. He blew his opener of 112.5kg/248lbs up with ease but it was turned down 2 to 1 for butt lift and it was noticeable. We did the smart thing and retook it and he got himself on the board. In hindsight, I should have taken a smaller jump to ensure he got a little more out of bench but we went with what was the planned 2nd attempt initially, which he hit, but was turned down 2 to 1 for butt lift. Not the result he wanted, but this is the sport aspect of the game! On to deads, this kid has come such a long way on deadlifts. For someone who had apprehension attempting 315lbs on a stiff bar (he has his 405lbs with straps on a deadlift bar aka he has not hit 405lbs) a couple months ago to now someone who’s last warmup was that weight, he has improved a lot. However, again, this is where we can improve. His first 2 attempts went up very easy so the obvious call was to go up to the heavy option for this third, which was 182.5kg/402lbs. He showed insane patience, staying on the bar for a full 2 seconds until it broke the floor, got ALL THE WAY TO LOCKOUT and just could not stay balanced and lost it forward. He was inches away from pulling 22lbs more than his last heavy pull! All in all, he had a stellar day. We had a talk about expectations going into this and to not shift goal posts, so to speak, in terms of being “let down” with some made up number that was arbitrary going in, you’ll see what I mean by this when I lay out his results. The sky is truly the limit for this kid, we talked about it briefly, but my goals for him are to get him a collegiate or teen nationals qualifying total within the next 2 years. The next time he steps on the platform it will be a brand new lifter. I am very excited and thrilled to be apart of this young man’s career. Results: Squat: 147.5kg (325lbs), 22.5kg PR Bench Press: 112.5kg (248lbs) Deadlift: 172.5kg (380lbs), 5kg PR Total: 432.5kg (954lbs), 20kg PR 7/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1625233266636-214UC19J2CKMV11N0X7K/IMG_2536.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Salvatore Bozzuto - USAPL CT Summer Showdown, 83kg class, (26 June 2021) Man, what a day. Before I get into the meet, I want to provide a little back-story. Sal and I have been working together since January of 2020 where I went out to a meet in Connecticut to handle him. Ever since then, to no fault of anyone, we actually have not had a meet with a coach/athlete relationship, at least in person. Coronavirus happened and put all meets on pause, when we finally could compete, the meet he picked was not allowing spectators or coaches. Although it was streamed, it pained me to not be there because, as like any coach, you want to see it through that someone who invested into you sees the results they are capable of. Nevertheless, this prep was a whirlwind for a few reasons. First, we were on a roll. In the block before prep we had a breakthrough in his squat and deadlift training with some all time PRs on both with relative tweaks to the programming that really seemed to do wonders. Essentially, we relied on one heavy exposure a week (single) for squat, with the other day being volume driven with intensity restraints (ascending sets). On deadlift, we had 2 heavy exposures, one primary and the other for reassurance as Sal is a lifter that really thrives when he is confident in what he is doing, the second single kind of reassured him that he was as strong as he thinks he was. Singles are useful for so many reasons but equally as detrimental if you don’t control expectations for them. Second, we ran into problems on bench press. Now this next portion is anecdotal at best so take this from a grain of salt as this is mainly my own personal belief. Bench press, in my opinion, is Sal’s best lift. With an all-time PR of 322lbs, he certainly has a very technical groove with a wide grip, high arch set up. Common thought is these type of benchers do not get “carry-over” from traditional bodybuilding movements that promote hypertrophy in the prime movers. I disagree. Maybe the gains made are not mutually exclusive with the bench single going up, but I think in my experience, those who can train in multiple planes/ROMs, benefit from the aspect of staying healthy and strong in those ranges. In essence, those movements aid in keeping you healthy which means you can train the comp bench for more volume with less chance of overuse or overcompensation. Sal, again to no fault of his own, trains in a home gym where he does not really have access to anything other than his barbell and plates. The variations we can use are somewhat limited but the accessories we can use are extremely limited with this set up as everything has to be bilateral. We cycled through a ton of different set ups with only one of them really leading him to pain-free, no hiccup bench training. We tried to go back to 3x per week comp benching, manifested in injury. We kept up with 2 comp sessions, 1 variation, injury. Finally we settled into just 2 comp bench sessions a week, something that you don’t usually do with a bencher the style of Sal. We actually ran pin press pretty much exclusively until 2 weeks out where we lifted restrictions. The thought behind it was train in the ROM that does not hurt and load it fairly heavy (as we were close to the meet itself) and supplement the ROM we did not get through light dumbbell pressing at the gym. This worked wonders as the heaviest free ROM bench Sal hit in training was 281lbs, with a 265lbs opener feeling eh 5 days out, and we nailed 292 at the meet with room to spare. Now, on the day, I feel like we were both in the zone and firing on all cylinders. It was otherworldly humid and we had Sal mildly dehydrate to sneak under to make 83kg (no more sub 180lb weigh ins!!!!) so it was crucial to make sure we mitigated any dehydration-driven performance loss, which we did to a tee. Gleason Performance is a state of the art facility, never have I ever seen a warmup room with eleiko racks/bars, calibrated plates for 30+ people, etc… it was incredible. Squat warmups went well, we timed everything perfect and took attempts at 167.5kg, 177.5kg (to ensure a meet PR), and finally 182.5kg, or 402lbs. This one was special as this has been his goal since he started competing and I knew it would be there on the day, frankly we could have gone 185kg (408lbs) and it would have went up to. Very emotional, the culmination of so much effort, finally paying off where it matters. Bench, was bench, we knew that in order to PR his total we needed bare minimum, 130kg, so taking 132.5kg was really insurance should deads suffer from the heat. Honestly probably had 135kg here too. Lastly, deads were the one that we knew would be there, because to no avail, Sal always tapers well for deadlifts. Again, I think in hindsight we had a bit more but at this point we wanted to secure a perfect day, 9/9 and walk away with a deadlift PR, no matter how small. We went 190kg, 200kg, and then finished with 205kg (452lbs) as that was the attempt he was more comfortable with on our list of planned thirds. All in all, this was the meet this man deserved. He pours himself into his training and is easily one of the most dedicated individuals I have ever encountered. I think we agreed that he would compete one more time in 2021 and then go into the hyperbolic time chamber for a longer off-season to fill out a bit more and make some gains that can only be made with time. Hell of a day, congrats man. Once we get your bench back, 1200 incoming, no doubt in my mind. Results: Squat: 182.5kg (402lbs), 7.5kg PR Bench Press: 132.5kg (292lbs) Deadlift: 205kg (452lbs), 2.5kg PR Total: 520kg (1147lbs), 7.5kg PR 9/9 on attempts, 27/27 white lights https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1625237112684-J3U6E1E7PWFQNNTNH5LH/IMG_2496.jpg Athlete Meet Reports https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1624475489340-SHWE7U7ELM3GPEUBSAH2/IMG_2323.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Elliot Woznica - USAPL Ryan Moore New England Open High School Championships, 93kg class, (12 June 2021) Aside from Andrew Graves back in 2018, I think this is the only other time I have had a competitor do their first ever meet under my services. Could be wrong on that but I am fairly certain those are the only two people. This meet was really cool for a couple reasons. The first, Elliot, who actually is my closest in proximity client (by a hair), and actually trains as the same gym as me, is the youngest athlete I have personally worked with. At only 17, turning 18 very soon, there are a couple considerations I take with him that I do not take with others. Stuff like specificity continuums, weight manipulation, etc… go out the door as it is my belief that not only are you responsible for development at this age but you are also responsible for getting young athletes off on the right foot. This essentially means you don’t send a young athlete to a meet alone, you don’t have them “send it”, you don’t even necessarily need to peak for it. First meets for everyone should be about one thing and one thing only, experience. Elliot had signed up for the meet I am co-directing next month, a meet I could not handle him at as I will be busy with directing duties, so we both agreed it would be good to get him in a meet that I could be at ASAP for the experience aspect. Searching around we stumbled on this meet here which was really a perfect storm for a multitude of reasons. First, USAPL Mass always runs GREAT, professional meets and I will always support them where I can. Secondly, this meet was high school and teens ONLY, which, although maybe not that important, is a cool way to get a young person into the sport, competing with and against people of your own age who are probably also doing their first meet. Sometimes it is jarring and frankly intimidating competing with seasoned lifters for the first time and you panic and overthink things, I think we will both agree this was literally just another training day. Lastly, it was far enough away from the goal meet that it really would not mess with progressions leading into it, so we simply did a mini-taper, by mini I mean we dropped intensity on the bench session leading into the meet (thursday) and did the same with deadlift (wednesday) as a way to not come in completely fatigued. Meet was very smooth and I can tell this kid is a gamer. This was the first time he lifted on calibrated plates, a nice bar (OPB is good but Eleiko is Eleiko), and was judged on his lifts and despite all that we went 9/9 and 27/27 on white lights. We were conservative on squat, bench press but turned it up a little on deadlift, which ironically “backfired”, as he made his third attempt look like an opener. I think he enjoyed the day, got the experience he needed, and is eager to turn it up a notch for this next meet. I can see this kid making teen nationals/collegiate nationals as soon as next year with the path he is on right now. Results: Squat: 125kg (275lbs) Bench Press: 120kg (264lbs) Deadlift: 167.5kg (369lbs), Total: 412.5kg (910lbs) 9/9 on attempts, 27/27 white lights https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1621371114903-8JVFMP8N8QK285WNOJI6/image0+%281%29.png Athlete Meet Reports - Tyrell Sykes - USPA Vermont State Championships, 100kg class, (8 May 2021) Much like the previous write up, this will be half Tyrell’s perspective, half my perspective as I was not there on the day. Before the explanation, I just want to say first and foremost this guy is a gahdamn fighter and he earned EVERY kilo on this day in the truest sense. Tyrell: This is my second meet working with Erik. Opening with squats I was pretty nervous due to the way squats had been feeling leading into this meet. Luckily, Erik makes a spreadsheet for his guys with all the attempts for the day, and in either direction should a certain number feel better or worse than anticipated, so I didn’t really have to think about that. I stuck to the plan we had in place and made it work. I played it safe on squat only taking 245 on my third to ensure going 3/3, really was chasing that 9/9 day. On to bench, we opened with a smooth 152.5kg, then went 162.5, that moved just as good as the opener. This gave me the confidence to take the heaviest comp bench of my career and it moved great, 170kg with room to spare. This gave me a comp bench PR and put me 6/6 going into deads. This is where we knew we could make up some ground from squat lacking this prep and boy did we execute. Moved all 3 attempts with relative ease, ending with 295kg for an all time PR. Secured the goal, which was my first 9/9 day and left with a PR bench press, deadlift, and total. Erik: What Tyrell had to go through to get here was nothing short of amazing. This being our second meet together, I had a good idea of what to expect in terms of performance and we know each other well enough by now to where if something comes up, we can roll with the punches and make due with what we got. We had to do that a fair amount this prep, as Tyrell had to switch gyms halfway through this prep cycle and as such did not have a lot of continuity when it comes to his training environment. A miscommunication on his final heavy squat day set him back a bit mentally but I feel like we had a breakthrough conversation that really made the difference this meet. A squat PR, was going to be very hard to achieve, especially since his last meet he thought he was lifting 5kg less and by the grace of God made the lift, it was not until months later it was found out that every squat attempt was 5kg heavy. His final heavy squat did not go well and he will be the first to admit he lost confidence and was doubting himself. However, and this is where we had the breakthrough, powerlifting, the sport of powerlifting, is the total, and there are many ways to achieve a big total. We really made strides on bench press and deadlift this cycle and I crunched some numbers so we could get all we could out of squat with minimum, medium, and maximum options to account for the bench and deadlift I thought he would bring. Truth be told, I think he had 247.5kg MAYBE even 250kg on the day but I am never going to be mad at going 3/3 into bench, especially since that option still projected us for a PR total. Bench was incredible, pretty substantial meet PR to boot! Deadlift is where I really thought he over-performed in some aspects. With all the up and downs this prep, the fact that this meet was outdoors and subject to the elements, and it was the end of a long day, I am surprised at how well his final pull moved. This pull of 295kg is an all time PR and cool to note it was 25lbs more than his heaviest single in prep, that Team Hogan Taper though!! This secured a PR total and a 9/9 day, won’t lie, when I got the video of his 3rd pull I got a little emotional because I knew how much this meant to him. Special thank you to one of my lifters Jess, who made all of this possible, being an extension of me on the day and making sure Tyrell was good enough to perform. Hell of a day. Results: Squat: 245kg (540lbs) Bench Press: 170kg (375lbs), +16lbs PR Deadlift: 295kg, (651lbs), +11lbs PR Total: 710kg (1567lbs), PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1619547042646-HOWL20RVV7RNKJ8DZQ71/IMG_1820.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Sam Peterson - USAPL Minnesota State Championships, 74kg class, (25 April 2021) Little bit different write up, the following will be written through Sam in the first person as I was not at this competition. Will highlight some cool things afterwards. Sam Peterson: Meet went super well after a really successful prep. Cut from 170 in January to 162 day of competition. Squats felt very light day of after very shaky 350 on last heavy squat day during training. In prep had issues with bar rolling up back but no problem at meet. Bench was great as well. Only real issues were slippery bench and one red light for heels. Hit grinder 250 week before and 248 was heavy but smooth. Deadlift felt rough in warmup room so lowered opener 7.5kg. Still ended up hitting planned top end with 474. Erik: These meets are always tough for me as a coach as there was no livestream and my only updates were via liftingcast. However, having a plan going in is so crucial as well as plan Bs or even plan Cs, should something come up on the day. Training into this meet was money, we pushed him hard and pulled back at the perfect time in my opinion, as highlighted by what he his on the platform. One week out, he his some grindy lifts on squat and bench but I assured him that based on prior data, it will be there on the day. What I have come to notice about Sam is he is a gamer, meaning when the pressure is on, he can mentally frame the mindset necessary to attack heavy third attempts, something that is very admirable. Since he does not train on all calibrated equipment (he does have a comp spec bar and bench), I am always airing on the side of slightly less or matching what he hits in training, and for the most part I think that was a great call. I reckon we had 2.5kg more on squat, maybe 2.5 on bench, and honestly up to 5kg on deadlift which is crazy to me. Can’t stress enough how proud I am of this guy. He came to me with a 904lb meet total and we have since added 165lbs to that and in my estimation that number will be into the 200s in meet #3. Hell of a day! Results: Squat: 157.5kg (347lbs), +16lbs PR Bench Press: 112.5kg (248lbs), +11lbs PR Deadlift: 215kg, (474lbs), +33lbs PR Total: 485kg (1069lbs), +61lbs PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1618322020717-MNIPAWTRD403S5UC9QT5/IMG_1711.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Erik Hogan - USAPL Junior/Collegiate Nationals, 66kg class, (8 April 2021) Yup, it’s me writing in the first person for this one… I will say straight up beforehand, this was so awesome. Being able to share the same warmup room with such high level lifters was incredible and something I cannot wait to do again. A little backstory, my final year of college I was signed up to do this meet and of course, this was when corona first hit. Naturally, the meet was “post-poned” and there was no way for me to be able to tell my schedule at that point so I elected to get partially refunded and sign up for a local meet instead. As you can probably guess, that local meet was canceled shortly after. So I went a good year without a meet and when I was finally able I had somewhat of a breakout performance in which I added 40kg to my total. Fast forward to now, when the USAPL announced Juniors could attend this meet, I signed up instantly. I actually found out the night before if you graduated in 2020 you could still register as a collegiate lifter and and place in the collegiate standings but more on that later. This prep was awesome for this meet until it wasn’t. For the first time ever I think all 3 lifts were clicking and I found a split that worked very well. However there were 2 things that I think really effected me negatively. Due to schedule and access, I could not do any pulls on comp equipment until roughly 4 weeks out. For me, pulling on a 28.5mm bar with bumpers easily adds 10kg to my pull simply for the fact that I can grip the bar better with my hookgrip. I kept running into the same issue the last 4 weeks of my thumb skin being destroyed after every heavy pull on a comp bar to the point where I went into the meet with a slight tear that I just knew would tear open at some point. The other factor is 3 weeks out I was hit with the worst bout of quadricep tendinopathy I have ever experienced. I did not want to make a big deal out of it because that is not who I am. Mornings after a squat workout were brutal and I had to back of squats substantially to keep everything under control. For 21 straight days I followed Jake Tuura’s patellar/quadricep tendon rehan protocol of heavy isometrics on the single leg leg extension and longer ones in a lunge position as well as a fair amount of single leg full ROM work. Thankfully, by meet day I felt like a god and every weight was feeling crazy. Adrenaline certainly helped and I am one to go numb when it is time to compete. Weigh ins were alright in the sense that this was the least stressful cut of my life despite traveling for an entire day and having to buy groceries the day before and being on my feet all the day before. Woke up 65.9kg on my calibrated scale, went to the venue and checked on the check-weight scale and it said 66.2 but I had my necklace and my pants on. So I just popped a few jolly ranchers in and spit to be safe (hindsight I wish I spat some more). Weigh Ins were supposed to be at noon. I was last in my lot numbers and was not weighed in until 12:40. Thankfully the meet director extended the start time to 2:30 which honestly was a blessing because that gave me the time I needed to rehydrate. Cutting at this point is easy for me and I will actually start my next cut 1lb heavier. Squat was moving great in the back, every warmup felt great and I honestly was not nervous at all. We took the mile long walk to the platform (hyperbole but anyone there can attest the walk was easily a 3 minute walk or 2 minute trot) and I settled in for my opener of 187.5kg (413lbs). I had hit well over this virtually every week in prep and was considering opening at 190kg but wanted to drop 2.5kg to account for judging at a meet of this level. 187.5kg was a good lift, but I was redlighted by the center judge for soft knees at the lockout. Never in my life have I been called for that, but it felt INSANE so we took the jump to the planned 2nd of 197.5kg (435lbs), a number I had hit again multiple times and a week out hit 2.5kg more. This is where things kinda got tough and I will let y’all be the judge as I personally do not agree with it but I am not so brash to think I am above anyone else’s opinion. I took my second out of the rack and was held in my stance for a good 7-8 seconds. Confused, I was praying to get a start command because I was quite literally going to cramp severely with how hard I was flexing my knees. I was told to rack the bar with 10 seconds on the clock, which I did and the bar was placed so far to the left that the right side of the bar was partially not in the rack. Panicking at this point I dove under the bar and unracked it within about 4 seconds, got a start command with 1 second left on the clock and missed it due to my legs feeling like jello. I retook it, made it with ease and moved on. I will include the still pictures of squat 2 and 3 and if you see a distinct difference I trust you, it could 100% just be me being salty but part of me thinks maybe there was a crease in my knee sleeves that made it look more egregious. Bench was fantastic, however after every warmup I was seeing stars so I just continued to eat pretzels and drink liquids and that cleared it up well for attempts. Was extremely exaggerated in my start and lockout to avoid the issue I had on squats. Went 117.5kg (259lbs), 122.5kg (270lbs), then finished with 127.5kg (281lbs) for a 5kg meet PR. This was pretty cool as my first meet my bench 3rd attempt was 97.5kg (214lbs) and it was an all out, max effort lift. I have taken my grip out substantially over the years and took the time to gain more upper body size and it 100% has paid off. That, and weekly singles. Lastly, deadlift. Deadlift has been my lift so to speak for the last year or so and I really felt good warming up. Doing lots of back work and actually less deadlifting brought my training pull from 520-540lbs and although I was not aiming this high due to both of those being on bumpers and a 28.5mm bar, I felt very good on the day. My best training pull this prep on comp equipment was 235kg (518lbs) and it moved easy. I made the mistake my last meet of opening too high and taking too small jumps, so I actually brought my planned opener down 2.5kg to get myself on the board, made a 12.5kg jump and then had a range for thirds. My opener I was red lighted by the center judge (again) because he said I hitched and my foot moved (upon replay it did not). My second moved easy but I started to bleed in my hand and just knew it was going to explode during my final pull of 237.5kg. Much to my avail, it did and although I did not drop the bar, both the center judge and the left judge did not think my left shoulder was far back enough and it was a no lift. Needless to say, this was disappointing in the sense that I trained very hard for this meet and it was not the outcome I wanted. I placed 2nd in the juniors and 8th overall (55 total lifters) for Day 1 lifters (men 66kg and below) with 5kg less than my best total ever. This meet really made me feel like I belong in this sport as a less than my best day yielded me top 10 which was crazy to me. Funny how expectations change because a year ago I would have been ECSTATIC to total 1200lbs on the dot at this meet. That is just the game. One last thing to add, about registering as a collegiate lifter. I was lukewarm on that for 2 reasons, one legitimate and one petty. I could not do that as I was in real contention to place had I made both my thirds and to take a medal away from a kid who is actually in college going to classes, busy as hell, and still training would be selfish, that is not why I do this and the overall results speak for themselves. Next, it would mean I would have to represent Springfield College, an institution who helped me 0% in my powerlifting career and when I reached out to club sports for funding last year I was told, “unless there is a team of 5 or more we can’t help you”, never mind the fact we did not even have 5 competitors and these meets (despite the low qualifying total) are not easy to qualify for a barebones beginner. I could get into it but I would take negative pride in representing them, so I didn’t, and I do not regret it in the slightest. Just to be frank, I do not agree with the squat calls BUT at the end of the day, that is on me, I need to make everything undeniable and although I know now that executing at a big meet like that is different, I should being holding myself to a standard like that year round and that is exactly what I will do moving forward. Also will be trying some new things in terms of deadlift grip. I will be competing one more time this year, July 31st in Nashua and it will be my final meet a junior (not that anyone should care but it’s actually one day before my birthday) and you will see a totally new lifter on that platform. I already said thank you to those who needed to be thanked so if you took the time to read this, I truly appreciate it. I will be back! Results: Squat: 197.5kg (435lbs) Bench Press: 127.5.5kg (281lbs), +11lbs PR Deadlift: 232.5kg, (513lbs) Total: 557.5kg (1229lbs) 7/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1618325805475-33MIRGA2JZLLY0PUBEPU/IMG_1662.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports Tough one. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1618325871477-DH57T2CU7CCZEGTKIU5Z/IMG_1663.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports Again, a tough one. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1618326015419-7JNT5V2Q7GO27VG26NUX/63962314301__AAD61816-4371-464E-90F3-A3379D511C4E.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1618262423196-LFPLXTOGO79D4WQLJXUW/IMG_1707.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Josh Dang - USAPL New Hampshire State Championships, 74kg class, (10 April 2021) Josh and I have been working together formally since July of 2020 but I helped him with things here and there for a couple months before that. The transformation I have seen this young man go through since Day 1 has been nothing short of incredible. Coming to me, Josh was very raw in the sense that you could tell he was a strong kid and a good athlete, just did not have the proper guidance/structure in getting to where his goals were at. A member of the infamous Wentworth Men’s Rugby Team that I am the de-facto strength coach for, Josh is a dual-sport athlete (sometimes tri-sport with BJJ rolling here and there) and such is highly active. Some things I don’t monitor with others I monitor closely with Josh such as his weekly weight, his caloric intake, and his fatigue level as he has many different commitments week to week, day to day. Josh and I actually had a rough couple of months together at the beginning as it took me a fair while to find a volume/intensity prescription for him that matched his lifestyle but also yielded progress. What we agreed upon that ultimately worked is toning down the other stuff and for this prep really honing on solely powerlifting and it paid dividends. He also was not too proud to give low bar squatting a try and I think we both agree that this was a game-changer. A big factor for Josh this meet was taking all the variables we could account for and maximizing them. I noticed 3 glaring things in his prior preps (not done under me) that both yielded 5/9 performances. The first was all of his lifts were on commercial gym equipment and his first lifts on comp equipment would actually be at the meet. 4 weeks out he purchased a month pass at a powerlifting gym with kilo plates and this made a HUGE difference. The second was he did not peak well, meaning all of his heavy, heavy lifts would be many weeks away from the platform. To account for this we enacted a “time to peak” strategy in which we used 4 week cycles to mini-peak at the culmination of each block, from there we essentially did the same thing leading into the meet just pushing a bit harder and pulling back with more aggressiveness, I think he will agree the meet was the easiest portion of the prep. Lastly, Josh never had someone there with him who oversaw his entire training cycle, meaning people could not help with attempts in a true sense as they were just judging the lift, not the historical data. This is where I came in. The major goals for this meet was primarily to go 9/9 and secondary we wanted to get as close as possible to a 400 wilks (aware USAPL does not use wilks anymore but theres no lust to having a 90 IPF GL points yet). Here were the results. Results: Squat: 187.5kg (413lbs), +27lb PR Bench Press: 122.5kg (270lbs), +11lbs PR Deadlift: 225kg, (496lbs), +56lbs PR Total: 535kg (1180lbs), +95lbs PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1618263826319-W0G1OHBI1XGADKW9PD9R/IMG_1708.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Chris Couillard- USAPL New Hampshire State Championships, 83kg class, (10 April 2021) This was Chris and I’s 3rd meet together and 2nd prep, I only handled him at the first meet he ever did. I want to set all of this up briefly with a bit of a back story. Chris came to me roughly a year and some change ago and since then he has come so far it’s almost as if he is no longer the same person I came into contact with way back then, and I say this in a VERY good way. When we first started working together he was unsure of himself, not sound technically, and was more or less a beginner. He is NOT a beginner anymore. I’ve been able to see this person bring his total from 1003lbs to 1135lbs WHILE dropping down a weight class, more on that later. He has become totally confident, totally secure in his positions as a lifter and most importantly, he is one of the most coachable athlete’s I have ever worked with as he took the time to rework his squat, bring the bar down his back a couple inches, and has reaped the benefit ever since. With all that said, this was about the best prep we could have asked for given the circumstances he was dealing with outside of training. I commend him for his effort as he very easily could have pulled out of this meet and I would not have faulted him for it but he didn’t and it was one squat away from being his super meet. This guy is a fighter above all else and made some major life changes that only benefitted his lifting. So, about the weight loss, Chris was actually floating around 200lbs for most of the meet he did but was probably naturally closer to 190-195. We made the decision maybe 16 weeks out or so that giving the 83kg class a shot might not be bad idea in the short term as not only would it improve body composition, but we always could go back up if progress stalled. This was a great move and he somehow got stronger losing close to 20lbs in totality. I say somehow, but I know the reason, he adhered to a high protein intake, adhered to his training program, and made smart choices outside the gym that maximized his recovery session to session. This day was just about perfect aside from a slip up on squat, maybe could have grinded it out a bit more but I honestly put the blame on me mostly as 396 was a better call on the day rather than 402 but he wanted to attempt 402 in a meet and I owed it to him as we did not push lifts much his first 2 meets. His first ever miss on the platform and it wasn’t on technicality which I am very proud of. Funny enough, his bench somehow overperformed and this is becoming a theme as he has gotten hurt the last couple of preps in the final stages and we really could not bench much at all leading into both meets and he STILL somehow matched his meet PR bench both times. I will make note that bench is always there meet day, we had 2.5-5kg more on the day but I did not want to risk a miss as it would set him back substantially to PR his total. Fun fact, he actually missed 5kg less than this 4 weeks out. Lastly, deadlift training was dicey with the weight loss. People are are under 105kg (on average) tend to not benefit from weight loss especially if they pull conventional where the torso is literally tasked with taking on most of the weight. We actually ended this prep with a grindy 502 pull and where it mattered most he came away with a 2.5kg meet PR of 524lbs. Seeing him mentally prepare and bring the quiet intensity to this pull 100% got me emotional. Here were his results. Results: Squat: 172.5kg (380lbs), +11lb PR Bench Press: 105kg (231lbs) Deadlift: 237.5kg, (524lbs), +6lbs PR Total: 515kg (1136lbs), +18lbs PR 8/9 on attempts, down 1 full weight class https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1618265534943-0O80NFKH860WEY8WNVXK/IMG_1699.jpg Athlete Meet Reports https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1616421526750-BSJKCP9546652YDKE5N2/IMG_1502.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Andrew Graves - USAPL Massachusetts Spring Classic, 83kg class, (21 March 2021) The Team Hogan OG, Andrew and I have been friends since 2012 and I think in some capacity we had competed on the same sports teams going back to as early as 2010. Andrew actually got into the game a bit before I did and I actually handled him at his first meet before I even competed myself. Before we started working together in a coach-athlete manner, he ran popular online templates like TSA 9 week, Candito 6 week, and PH3 (message him about this program if you can, please) all to various degrees of success. What made this meet unique compared to others was how different it was in training approaches we enacted in the past as well as flat-out how fast it flew by. Historically, Andrew has always been a sumo puller, in the attached photo, you can see he is 100% not pulling sumo. A brief back-story, back in 2017-2018, deadlift was actually his best lift by a considerable margin. He pulled 500lbs sumo and actually only really touched more than that a handful of times in the coming years after that. Going into his last meet, which was a fairly quick turnaround from the meet before that, we only put 2.5kg on his total and he “only” went 7/9. This was inexcusable and although I was competing on the day myself and didn’t handle him on the day, I take full responsibility for that performance because there were some variables I just did not notice or take seriously enough to change things and it made his performance suffer. What’s cool about Andrew and I’s relationship now, is we have months upon months of data on him as well as plenty of meets to draw averages from that really, really helps when designing a peaking protocol. Long story short, after what was supposed to be a break from sumo pulling to give his adductors a break, turned into a decision of whether his potential would be higher conventional. I commend him for not being stubborn and allowing for the possibility to be there with a couple cycles of conventional under his belt. His squat training going into this was hit or miss, we had road blocks of confidence, approach, you name it. However, roughly 8 weeks out, we had a talk that I think made all the difference in which we agreed that whatever weight was there on the day, it would be put on the bar and to detach from previous performances and to rely upon the data we have with how his squat tends to taper into a meet. More on this to come. Bench press training, was great in my opinion, technically, his bench groove is flawless and we really stacked some size on to his frame which made a huge difference to me with his top end strength. Above all else, the biggest thing we changed going into this meet compared to the last, was how we approached progress from week to week, and emphasized bar speed (not speed work) and clean reps with RPEs between 4.5-7.5 as opposed to the increasing weight week to week method we used before. To me, what was happening was although he was strong, the weights he was lifting were causing too much fatigue at a disproportionate rate to the adaptation we were creating and no taper would be steep enough to dissipate the fatigue in time. So, as an example, going into 1 of his prior meets, he hit 7 or so sets of 4 @ 400lbs on squat in a workout that eventually yielded a 479lb competition squat, this go around the “worst workout” was maybe 5 sets of 5 @ 360-370lbs. This yielded a squat of 474lbs in competition. Lastly, without making this too long to digest, we knew going in this meet would be very fast. Only 8 lifters per flight meant we had at most 8 minutes of rest between attempts and we needed to warmup fast. So, as you should, we did that in training and it did not effect his performance on bit on the day. He finished his prep off with a 458lb squat @9, a 326lb bench @9, and a 534lb deadlift @9. This was his results. Also keen to add this was his final meet as a Junior as he will be aging into the Open class next month. Results: Squat: 215kg (474lbs) Bench Press: 155kg (342lbs), +5.5lb PR Deadlift: 250kg (551lbs), +27lb PR Total: 620kg (1367lbs), +39lbs PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1616424644438-DZDKPXZEXLE9FIVQJQCA/IMG_1504.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Conor Silkey - USAPL Massachusetts Spring Classic, 83kg class, (21 March 2021) Conor and I have been working together since October of 2020 and this meet was the culmination of everything he earned and more. The main issue Conor has had in his career has been motivation to continue and lack of drive on certain training sessions that either lead him to burn out or lose interest. To me, for someone who loves lifting in general, this screamed to me that the approach used for him in the past with previous coaches, however optimal on paper, was not SUSTAINABLE for longer term success. There is a huge difference. He works, he has a social life, this is not priority #1 all year for him, however it certainly was when it was time to buckle down and this is something I really admire and thought he did well this prep. Conor had not competed in 3 years due to various reasons and this was actually his first USAPL meet which was cool when we put everything together at the end. During this prep we had quite a few road blocks that I feel we were able to evade rather easily, ranging from confidence issues in the bench as well as some technical deficiencies there, to some mobility and sequencing issues in his competition deadlift that manifested in some off sessions towards the end. The biggest thing for me with Conor this entire time has been finding a fine line of getting him strong with an optimal plan that also does not create burnout and feel like a chore to him. Any athlete reading this, you need to communicate with your coach when things are not working. This is not to say Conor complains, he NEVER does, but he is honest with me when things are not working for him and I am thankful for that because it makes things so much easier to titrate. This being Conor’s first meet in a very long time, I opted to go conservative with his attempts because the last thing I want for a person who is just getting back into this and trying to rekindle the flames for the competition aspect of things, is a 6/9 meet with 3 send-it thirds that were missed on strength. In terms of his squat, it is one of the smoothest, cleanest, squats you will see, highlighted in the picture I have attached. Depth is never an issue, he never overshoots his RPE, and he tapered UNREAL for this meet. Bench we had an agreement that although his distant training numbers were slightly higher, we would opt for something on the lower end to account for the drop in bodyweight as well as to ensure 3/3 on bench. Deadlift hit a road block at the end, but some simple mobility stuff and just sequencing his pull made all the difference for the meet itself. I can confidently say we left 5kg or so on squat, 2.5 on bench, and 5-7.5 on deadlift. You may be saying, Erik, why did you short change him. Well when I lay out the numbers you’ll see why sometimes being greedy does not reward the total. We have an agreement that his next meet in July, we will open up a bit and turn him loose, and that is hard to do as an athlete who cares and Conor is very mature in the sense that he knows I have his best interest as heart. Cannot wait to see what this guy puts up over the next calendar year as we have only scratched the surface of his potential. Results: Squat: 197.5kg (435lbs) Bench Press: 120kg (264lbs), +14lb PR Deadlift: 220kg (485lbs), +15lb PR Total: 537.5kg (1185lbs), +50lb PR https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1616426856373-ZGZ5TUTSHYBRRDK1J1PV/IMG_1495.jpg Athlete Meet Reports https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1615832231762-2F8NF5MQQK9IROCQVLCY/Dave%2BDead.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Dave Cailer - USPA Rhode Island State Championships, 100kg class, (13 March 2021) The third of 3 people to do this meet, Dave and I have been working together off and on since the summer of 2020. Under this time he has made some insane progress, I do not personally take a lot of credit for that since he really just trained by feel for a while and the fact he followed a structure probably gave him the performance boost he got respective of any programming strategy I implemented. Dave was in a separate flight from the other 2 this day, so he was largely on his own in the warmup room which did not prove to be an issue. A reoccurring theme, this was his second official meet, with his first being nearly 3.5 years ago in 2017. Dave trains mostly in a commercial gym with less than stellar equipment, but never once made a big deal about it, in fact, I actually oddly think it was to his benefit as some good equipment really unlocked what was there for him on the day. For heavy thirds we agreed on 285kg (628lbs) for squat, 160kg (353lbs) for bench press, and 332.5kg (733lbs) on deadlift. Squats responded unreal, 285kg was STRONG and maybe if we wanted to we could have added another 2.5-5kg and been fine. Bench went I guess way better than I personally anticipated, we actually agreed to go 2.5kg HEAVIER than we had planned, something I do not usually agree with but it is important to not mess with something if confidence is there. Glad we took this attempt too cause it made an even bigger goal possible. Deadlift was the lift that EXPLODED during prep. When you have a lift that responds well, the biggest issue is getting greedy, however I really do not think that was a concern for either of us. We needed 714lbs to secure a 1700lb total, however Dave made it known he did not really see that as anything beyond a number so we stuck to our original plan. The biggest anomaly in all this is Dave trains exclusively in straps, a la Pete Rubish, which made me nervous more than him. We ended up pulling 700 on the second and then going for 722 on the third and it was one ripped callous away from being locked out. I have never seen a bigger hand tear in person than that one. In hindsight, I think we should have gone 694 on the second, then pulled the minimum 714 for 1700. However, there will always be more meets down the line and if I am being honest, the next time he hits the platform we will be closer to 1800 than 1700. Results: Squat: 285kg (628lbs), +110lb PR Bench Press: 162.5kg (358lbs), +72lbs PR Deadlift: 317.5kg, (700lbs), +83lbs PR Total: 765kg (1687lbs), +266lbs PR 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1615828806665-1AHE1MGPUMK44E9EPVXC/Kyle.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Kyle Kable - USPA Rhode Island State Championships, SHW Class (13 March 2021) Kyle and I have been working together since late 2020 and have made great progress since then. In the same vein as everyone I coached this day, this was technically his second meet despite him being very experienced in the gym and doing the lifts themselves. A couple unique things happened through this prep and even on the day that I am surprised did not phase him at all. His final 2 deadlift workouts did not go as planned and we were forced to scramble with a taper strategy and be a bit conservative with attempts simply because we only had a finite amount of data to pull from. Squats and bench flat out cruised the entire prep, a week out he went #578 and #375 respectively with plenty of room in the tank. After discussing attempts, we decided for heavy thirds we would go 265kg (584lbs) for squat, 175kg (386lbs) on bench, 280kg (617lbs) on deadlift. All numbers I was very confident in. As a side note, this is always good when a lifter is realistic and sees what they CAN hit rather what they WANT to hit. Kyle had some issues with his singlet and sleeves (do not buy Metal anything anymore please anyone reading this), thankfully he had an extra singlet. However, the knee sleeves he ended up using were easily 1-2 sizes tighter than what he was used to because getting the knee sleeves on proved to be the biggest struggle of the day. Squats were on fire, he blew up 265kg and honestly had another 5-7.5 in the tank which is insane as this was already an all-time PR. Bench press was much of the same, blew up his third of 175kg with 5-7.5kg to spare, again, an all-time PR. Deadlifts were the only lift we did not massively under shoot, his third of 280kg was easy enough but this was the best competition legal pull he has ever done. We can count this as an all-time PR as his other pulls heavier than this were ramped or lacking a hold at the top. All in all, there is not a ton more you can ask for on a day. 9/9 with all time PRs on every lift while also adding 160lbs to your best meet total. Kyle was a dream to work with in prep and on the day, if I told him to run through a wall in order to improve a lift, he would do it and he did not object a single call for attempts on the day but also was honest with me that he was feeling good and to be a bit more aggressive. Made my job so much easier. Results: Squat: 265kg (584lbs), +60lbs PR Bench Press: 175kg (386lbs), +23lbs PR Deadlift: 280kg (617lbs), +77lbs PR Total: 720kg (1588lbs), +160lbs PR 9/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1615826068851-4HWT9Q5BU5EPS7IFQO6R/Seamus.jpg Athlete Meet Reports - Tyler Hill - USPA Rhode Island State Championships, 82.5kg class (13 March 2021) Tyler (also known by many as Seamus) and I have been working together since late spring of 2020. Although he had only done one official meet before this, he has been around “the game”, so to speak, for a while now and has consistently trained for double that time span. The approach we took to this meet was pretty much, don’t get greedy, stick to the plan, and make your lifts. Tyler is very good at being communicative and although we had some tough moments in prep, mainly with confidence issues in the squat and sumo deadlifts not ever really clicking, I am fairly confident he would agree with me that he was as strong as he has ever been in his life on this day. Going into this our plans for heavy third attempts on the day were 195kg (430lbs) on squat, 137.5kg (303lbs) on bench press, and 232.5kg (512lbs) for deadlift. It should be noted he has historically been a sumo puller but after much deliberation and adjustments, we settled on going with conventional for this meet because all of his conventional pulls were FAR outweighing his sumo pulls both in weight and technical proficiency. Props to him for not being stubborn. We started off strong going 3/3 on squat and hit that third with kilos to spare, probably had 5 more kg on the day. Bench press we hit some turbulence on the second attempt so went with the conservative option of 2.5kg back and I think that was absolutely the right call on the day as 137.5 would’ve just been a hair too much. 6/6 through squat and bench. Deadlifts, I think we both would agree, could have gone better. Flights were very long and it was going on 5 hours from opening squats and I think we warmed up a bit too soon as there was about a 12 minute gap from last warmup to opener. We opened up at 210kg (462lbs), a number that has never given him problems pretty much ever, however after getting the down command his under grip kinda gave out and it was red lighted. We did not panic because grip really has never been an issue, however, we really could not afford to take any risks so I opted to retake it, which he made easily, and we settled on 220kg (485lbs) for the third and he made that with probably 5 more to spare. You might be saying, weren’t you a little conservative? Yes, I was and that was for a reason. The main goal on the day was to go 9/9 and there will always be other meets where we can put it all together. Although he is an experienced lifter, he is not an experienced powerlifter in the sense of competing. All in all, we went 195/135/220 for a 550kg (1212lb) total. This is cool because his only other meet was a weight class up and knee wraps. The goal was to surpass this but had we not had a blip on the opening deadlift, we would have certainly done that. He left with an all-time bench press PR and his coefficient was greatly improved. All in all, a great day. Results: Squat: 195kg (430lbs) Bench Press: 135kg (297lbs) Deadlift: 220kg (485lbs) Total: 550kg (1212lbs) 8/9 on attempts https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1615832489990-SJ39PORV8NXMDS44XKSD/Meet+Day+USPA.jpg Athlete Meet Reports A great day had by all. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/871d270e-a3d7-496f-affa-d660b5d6ed23/IMG-5787.jpg Athlete Meet Reports 5th Place! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/71692a4b-e3af-40b4-a39c-0f8ad69a583c/IMG-5804.jpg Athlete Meet Reports Tayla on the podium with the 90kg class! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5cc1347c-46d5-411b-8daa-b4880f32c6bb/IMG_5820.jpeg Athlete Meet Reports 2 Team Hogan Day 1s. https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/erik-hogan daily 0.75 2024-12-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1734890607055-EZVQPWL1B9R1DUOX90W7/AEFEC578-E6ED-4C25-8D10-DC1CD7734F42.jpg https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/logan-allaire daily 0.75 2024-12-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/e86d0e98-ff01-45d1-8c49-b2295ca22010/logan-allaire.jpg https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/evan-larsen daily 0.75 2024-12-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1735017485556-Q2OIUVJJ1J96ENUFQ7O5/evan-larsen.jpg https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/michael-beaupre daily 0.75 2024-12-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1735017624891-KOH12PQT13QRR2VMY0LD/michael-beaupre.jpg https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/henry-sandelin daily 0.75 2024-12-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1735017709342-4L3CYY1QMUVG1QSJB1WH/henry-sandelin.jpg https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/gavin-akeley daily 0.75 2024-12-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1735016680337-2U8994X1S2NJNXDXCWGT/gavin-akeley.jpg https://www.teamhoganpowerlifting.com/home daily 1.0 2024-12-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1696536671703-BT0CQVL58BZJJWGLGGUT/Andrew%2BGraves%2B%252817%2Bof%2B34%2529.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5b2d316d-7c40-4e88-93b0-3a107233ed38/IMG-4807.jpg Home 2023 USAPL High School Nationals w/ Logan Allaire in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/773b1a42-328c-4ad3-b749-a9ca1d5c9ca6/IMG-0294+%281%29.jpg Home 2022 IPL North American's w/ Dave Cailler and Bobby Dortona in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/134c8cb9-d4df-4166-9b15-3516c51e4ee4/IMG-3114.jpg Home 2022 Carrie Boudreau Big Pull-Ooza II in Wilton, ME, team went 44/45 on attempts this day! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/5c9088fd-d39b-4b6f-83ca-0df7c6c20358/E5203355-D129-4C04-A1D8-2C05B43EFE8F.JPG Home Team Hogan winning their 2nd Best Team award at 2023 USAPL Maine State Championships in Augusta, Maine. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/e5afa99a-b4e3-4c56-b0be-89e3a24a15b4/203E257A-5306-44CB-87F2-9CA56ABD88AE.JPG Home Team Hogan @ USAPL Maine Event: SummerSlam in South Portland, Maine. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/a6868c92-46e8-44d9-ae79-a2cdc24b109b/IMG-5806.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/602aede66e2e5511b4c3bfea/1696536671703-BT0CQVL58BZJJWGLGGUT/Andrew%2BGraves%2B%252817%2Bof%2B34%2529.jpg Home Handling Andrew Graves at USAPL Raw Nationals in Memphis, Tennessee