Am I Doing Too Much Work? Maybe, but Maybe Not: How to Trouble Shoot Your Meet Peak and Taper

“Don’t you think this is too much for a week out?”

“Shouldn’t I be resting?”

“I feel clunky.”

“I feel like I’m getting weaker.”

The first two examples here are applicable to the, “I think I am doing too much” crowd. The second two examples, the, “I feel like I should be doing more”, camp.

If you have trained for more than, say, 3 meets, you probably have faced this dilemma yourself. If you haven’t, you certainly have been around someone who was either on their own volition, or programmed by a coach, to do peculiar things the week of the meet. Here are some I have seen, whether it be on Instagram or in-person.

• Taking all 7 days off leading into the meet. Doing nothing but resting.

• Taking your heaviest lifts of a training cycle, 5 days out from the meet. Not opening attempts, but things that might be reaching 3rds.

• Doing variations the week of the meet that you did not run during prep. Ex. SSB squats, pause squats, close grip bench, block pulls.

• Doing things like box jumps, olympic lifts, etc… in lieu of the powerlifts.

• Finally, not doing any sort of taper (this is context dependent) and just showing up at the meet.

All of these are 100% excusable if you are a beginner lifter, hell, I think the first meet I did, I dropped my volume considerably and the week of the meet, dropped both volume and intensity off the table. Meaning, I was doing 6 sets during the peak of the workload, then 2 weeks out I was only doing 3, the week of the meet I was only doing 2 with very light weights!

Now, this is where things get a little fuzzy, so stay with me after this claim.

Feeling Good Does NOT Always Mean Feeling Strong

Alright, now that I said it, let’s unpack what that means and establish some baselines.

First, what is the goal of a taper into a meet? What even is the goal of a peak cycle?

In general, in the sport of powerlifting, the goals are the following:

• Maximize strength potential

• Dissipate fatigue

• Maximize specific preparedness

So, in essence, we train for a set amount of time, until it is time to compete, in which we seek to dissipate the fatigue we built up for weeks and months, while still keeping our ability to express our strength high (maintaining muscle, neural qualities) and feeling confident in what we will be asked to do in a meet, singles on the squat, bench press, and deadlift.

Kinda a mouthful there, but you probably already subconsciously knew that.

What I think most people get “wrong”, is the dissipation of fatigue principle. Meaning, I think we overestimate how much fatigue we need to dissipate overall, and end up overshooting that which leads to decay in one of the other 2 principles.

Ex. Lifter A squats 9 sets a week on average across a 3x per week frequency, they seek to dissipate their fatigue, so starting at two weeks out, they ramp down their working sets to 3 sets per week. Let’s say we are using a DUP style, 7,4,1 rep scheme. If you multiple each number by around 3, you’d get 21,12, and 3, which altogether, equals 36 working reps. Now, let’s slash that into a third, now we are at 12 working reps. Just conceptually speaking, if you are used to regularly doing something 36 times per week, and then all of a sudden, you are now doing 1/3 of the normal working reps, do you think that will feel better, or worse?

Here lies the issue. Lifter A will probably feel GREAT going down to 3 working sets per week. Probably no aches and pains, nagging injuries are gone. However, time and time again, you will see this person feel weak and clunky under the bar. What gives?

Well, I am sure most people reading this article are familiar with overtraining, and the effects it can negatively cultivate. The same can be said for detraining.

You see, our tapers are relative to our volume demands and even our intensity demands.

A male superheavyweight lifter squatting one time a week who has a 1rm of 850lbs, will probably need a longer, more intensity-dropped taper, than a female lifter who squats 3x per week with a 1rm of 230lbs, they will most likely only need a week of alteration to volume, and honestly not much of a drop in intensity.

“But Erik, X person does this and they are strong.”

Well, are you them?

And are we under the impression that X person is strong because of Y, or in spite of Y?

Here’s the deal, there is a general flow I have noticed with my athletes that all seem to taper well.

• 2 weeks out they are going through it, things are harder than they usually are.

• 1.5 weeks out, they start to feel really beat up.

• 1 week out, they usually have an adrenaline surge from a final heavy day, which leads us to the week of the meet.

• 6,5,4 days out, they feel better each day, with 6 days out usually feeling somewhat hazy.

• 3 days out, they feel ready.

• 2 days out they are good to go if they had to.

• 1 day out, they are chomping at the bits to get under the bar.

Notice, they don’t feel, “good”, until a couple days out. This is because of a few reasons, but mainly because we dissipated fatigue slowly, as if we did it all at once, or drawn out SO slow that it took 3 weeks, they would most likely detrain.

So, the next time you are peaking out for a meet, remember good does not always indicate strong. You see a lot of people perform extremely well in the heat of a higher volume cycle.

Peaking Looks Different For Everyone

I think by now people know this, but in general, powerlifters don’t run a “peaking block” anymore.

Meaning, we do not run all 8s for months, then all 5s for a bunch of time, then for 6 weeks do mostly or all singles to “peak” our neural motor pathways for strength expression.

I say this, because I see a lot of lifters have tons of success with blocks BEFORE their meet prep peak cycle, only to fizzle out doing super low reps leading into the meet.

Again, we probably know this, but do what makes YOU strong, in order to prepare for YOUR meet. There is no rule that states you need to be doing only sets of 5 or less, in order to perform at your highest strength potential.

For reference, the last 3 meets I did, I hit all time PR bench presses, and I was doing 4 sets of 7 at a moderate RPE the week of the meet for all of those meets.

If you have data that you are progressing, have regular exposure to singles, then what is the problem? Even doubly so if you always perform at least 2/3 heavy singles on the day you would compete.

Now, there is context all over the place here, including but not limited to:

• Overall absolute strength

• Frequency of the lift

• Whether you are way better at reps than singles

• Standards of the lifts you are hitting

But in general, do not feel like you need to be doing heavy 3s for 6 weeks leading into a meet, if 10s move the needle, do 10s.

It Is 9/10 Not Necessary To Have a Day Dedicated To Hitting Your Openers

I fell victim to this one. 5-7 days out, you come in to take your opening attempts to make sure they feel good for the meet and you have the confidence to do them. Certainly a sound thought process, I understand it even, but it is highly flawed.

Here is the deal with this one, if you plan backwards from 3rd attempt to 1st, you will probably land on a number you already feel confident in anyway. I field a lot of, “what do you think my openers will be?” or, “I think I’ll open with X”.

Again, context matters here, but I would recommend you go the other way with this.

Think about what realistically you can hit for a heavy third attempt based on training, and then go backwards from there.

To give you a tangible example, my last competition, I knew I would need to be at 210kg-215kg on squat in order to hit the total I believed was possible (based off training), so I planned on using the highest range as a third and work backwards from there.

3rd - 215kg

2nd - 207.5kg (-7.5kg)

1st - 195kg (-12.5kg)

I had hit more than 195kg, I think 3x already that prep cycle, was doing it ONE more time necessary? No. It would arguably do more harm than good for me, as that intensity is already pretty high and here is the thing, it probably would not have moved well, now that would really tank my confidence.

So, if you do not like this approach, more power to you, however, if you feel it is necessary, it isn’t, and in fact I do not know many people who have a dedicated openers session, certainly no one who is of an advanced level.

Is There A Case Against Doing Too Much?

Absolutely.

Detraining aside, overtraining certainly exists.

It is not a popular now, but back in 2014-2015, it was common to do a massive overreach week, where you double your volume, and sometimes, no amount of taper can save you from maniacal workload.

I am guilty of this as well, do not make the same mistakes as me!

I will say though, this is hard to do and you really have to have a “I will push through ANYTHING”, mindset, most people do not.

So, How Should I Prepare For A Meet Then?

If you follow these VERY general recommendations, you can guarantee you can at least make sure you will feel somewhat strong on the day and probably dissipate a bit of fatigue to express your strength.

• Starting 2 weeks out, begin to ramp volume down. If you are a lighter weight, consider doing this at 1.5 weeks out.

• Starting a week out, begin to lower your intensity (weight on the bar) for the majority of your compounds lifts. You can keep isolation lifts somewhat high.

• Keep majority of accessory work in, take out highly fatiguing ones the week of the meet. Things like hack squat, stiff leg deads, chest press, etc…

• Take no more than 2 full rest days leading into meet day.

I hope this was of use to you, if you have any questions about this, let me know, I hate seeing people sabotage their hard work with things that can be prevented!

To Utopia,

Erik