Attempt Selection: Build Your Total, Be Realistic
So, I want to preface this post with my way is not the end all, be all, when it comes to attempt selection, however, at this point, I feel fairly confident in it and for those of you struggling with putting together a good performance in meets due to poor attempts and/or poor strategy, I truly hope this helps you out for whenever your next competition is.
When I go to meets as a coach or run meets as a co-director, I notice a few things when it comes to attempt selection and people who perform the highest, meet to meet.
The people who generally place the highest, make the most lifts, many times going 9/9, 8/9, 7/9 almost never 6/9 or worse.
The people who pace out their attempts in appropriate jumps, usually make their lifts. For example, going 190kg-202.5kg-210kg (a 12.5kg jump to a 7.5kg jump) are usually more successful then the people who go 190kg-195kg-210kg (a 5kg jump to a 15kg jump).
Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies in that we are not realistic with ourselves, meaning we take the number we want instead of taking the number we are capable of on the day. We focus on individual lifts instead of building the total.
Lastly, get DOTS or strength coefficients out of your head. If you are extremely advanced, disregard this, but if you are trying to weigh in lighter than normal for coefficient advantages, I can assure you the probability of you hitting the numbers you have in your plan, whilst 3-5lbs lighter than your normal training weight, is highly unlikely and ends up being a net-negative. In my opinion, which I am aware that is irrelevant for things like this, coefficients are almost always highly flawed in one direction or the other and 9.5/10, weighing in heavier and putting up a higher total will do more for you than weighing in lighter and totaling less. Plus, everything in this sport is based on totals. Winning your class, qualifying for a national meet, rankings, etc… are all predicated on totals.
At Team Hogan, if there is one thing I am confident in saying we do pretty well, it is putting together realistic plans for meet day, based on training and based on goals.
This sounds simple but there a lot of compounding variables here. These are the things that are either limiting factors, or things that need to be considered when designing attempts for a local meet (national there is nuances, especially if you are a higher level lifter):
What is the goal? This is sometimes the hardest to get passed, because, as lifters, we tend to have 5-6 goals going at once. This muddies the waters a bit as almost always something goes a bit wrong or off and you need to take the plan B or C, canceling or negating 3-4 of those goals. I want to squat X, bench Y, and deadlift Z, qualify for nationals, get best lifter, and have a 450 DOTS. Well, the thing about trying to focus on all of this is, say you miss 2 squats, that most likely now negates the nationals QT, best lifter, and DOTS goals, putting a damper on your day before it even begins. You need to have a clear, concise goal, and stick to it. Oddly enough, in my experience, all those goals will come to you organically if you can narrow your focus on one main goal and maybe one secondary goal. I don’t particularly love using myself as an example but just to provide tangible examples, in my 4th meet, I came in wanting to go 9/9, win best lifter, squat a certain number, bench a certain number, deadlift a certain number, and made sure to weigh in lights for the Wilks (coefficient at the time) boost. Well, I did okay, but since I was so locked in to all of these, it caused me to overreach my third deadlift, missing on strength, and I missed out on the deadlift number, the wilks, and best lifter (2nd overall), all because I got greedy. Fast forward to my most recent meet, the goals were simple. Total 592.5kg and take the most realistic attempts based on my training to get me there. I was not attached to any particular single lift goal, and to be honest, I rarely think it is a good goal to have, unless it is for record purposes. Bottom line, find a goal for the meet and stick to it. To many times I see people go, “Ya I am here to go 9/9 and enjoy the day”, only to get caught up in the moment, take hail mary’s for all 3 third attempts, and leave the day 6/9 with almost nothing to show for all their hard work in prep, that really pains me to see as this sport is unforgiving in that, it is expensive, we only compete at most 4 times a year, and the vast majority of competitors empty their bank accounts for the highest end equipment and are only in the sport for 3 years or so, on average.
What is realistic? Now, as a coach, this is usually the hardest conversation to have with a lifter. Every so often, it is easy and productive, in that I provide an objective opinion/fact and the lifter agrees, we go to the meet, it works out. Most times however, we wrap our entire training around goals that may be a bit too aggressive for either our level or the timespan in which we want to complete them and are too stubborn to adjust, for reasons I can only attribute to the human ego. Framing what is realistic is difficult in that there are a lot of things that go into it.
Where am I at now and how much time do I have to get to where I want to be? Ex. I am a 200kg squatter and in 12 weeks I want to squat 227.5kg. For anyone who is not a genetic anomaly, beginner lifter. This most likely won’t happen and is not an appropriate goal.
Were my lifts on competition equipment? This matters more and more as you get stronger and matters less and less the less absolute strength you possess. It also matters based upon the style in which you lift. For example, if you are a sumo puller and you put up 650lbs on big, big bumper plates, with straps and a commercial gym bar, fresh, I would be cautious to say that can be replicated in a meet, after squats and benches, on a stiff power bar, with calibrated plates, and no straps. The problem here is we sometimes don’t see it that way. Now, I have done preps on all pound plates and then all kilo plates and had roughly the same results each way, however, the confidence in practicing how you play is very understated, in my opinion.
Were my lifts to competition standard? Ah yes, this one is the hardest to kind of get around, in my opinion. So many times I have seen people in prep for a meet, train with shotty pauses, high squats, and quick lockout deadlifts, that almost always inevitably underperform to those lifts loads when it comes to the actual meet itself. Again, this stuff sounds so simple but in practice people sometimes let ego get the best of themselves here. If you cannot hold something for 2 seconds on the unrack, pause it for 2 seconds, and then hold for another 2-2.5 seconds before you unrack on bench, I am telling you, you are doing yourself a disservice if you are basing your attempts around multiple benches not held to this standard. The common theme is, “it’ll be there on meet day” or, “taper take me away”, the former can happen and I have seen it, although not often, the latter, is severely misunderstood in that a taper is not magic, you most likely won’t get a 10-15kg boost in performance from it, the more and more you go on and get stronger, especially. Team Hogan athlete, Logan Allaire, who in his debut meet, squatted an unofficial American record, went 9/9, and had as good a first meet as anyone I have personally coached, did this right and to a tee. Logan will be the first to admit, he had a couple high squats in his block before meet prep, a couple of quick pauses on bench, so instead of continuing to do that and adding more weight, he started from square one, drilled the standard, taking all of this heaviest lifts on comp equipment, and low and behold, when we got to the meet, it was, dare I say, easy for him. Everyone is capable of this!
Does my training support my goals? This is an amalgamation of everything I kind of laid out here in that sometimes, we did our best (or maybe we didn’t) during prep and it just didn’t fall the way we intended it to. You can still have a good meet and many times, better than maybe you anticipated, but if we are stubborn and stick with the main goal anyway, you know it most likely won’t be there, you are not confident, you have a poor day, and it all could have been prevented had you shifted your goals to something more in line with what your training supports. A good example of this, would be Team Hogan lifter, Amanda O’Connor, who had fits with her deadlift leading into this most recent meet she did. We had an original goal for deadlift, but it just wasn’t going to be there, instead we rolled with squat and bench, took a conservative estimate of top end for deads, and walked away with a PR squat, bench, total and was able to match meet PR on deadlift while setting state records on bench and total. That is how you salvage what could be a poor day, into a borderline great day.
Exhausting I know, but if you want to do it right, it is of my belief this is how you should think of it. Meets are not max-out sessions, you can max out, for free, with a crew of people, and there will be no harm, nor foul, and you will not have to travel far for it, like you would a meet.
In closing, I will provide you with what I do for my athletes when I design attempts, again, it is not how everyone should do it, or even the best way, but it has worked for me.
Take the final heavy lifts of the cycle, for most people 7-14 days out.
Based on how they move, what equipment they were on, and to what standard they were hit, based on your judgement decide if it is best to take a set amount more, less, or match for a planned heavy third attempt. Generally, if a lifter is highly fatigued yet still makes a heavy load move well for them, to comp standard, I will elect for 5-7.5kg more on meet day, +/- 2.5kg in both directions depending on how large and absolutely strong they are.
I do not like designing attempts from the bottom up, but rather top down. Meaning, I don’t like, “this load is easy you can open with this” or god forbid, I hit it for 3, this is my opener. I have tried that very early on and it is not accurate most times for raw lifters. Instead based on where we are for an appropriate third, I’ll pace backwards from that number to give us reasonable jumps to get there. For my most recent meet, I took 460lbs as my last heavy squat that moved well with fatigue. Based on prior data, I taper anywhere from 7-16lbs on squats, so I planned for 469-474 on for the meet itself. In order to give myself a shot at 215kg/474lbs, I paced back a 7.5 difference for the second, or 207.5kg/458lbs, and to get to that without overly fatiguing myself/having confidence in a number, I paced back 12.5kg from that, leading me to a 195kg/429lbs opener. I only ended up with 212.5kg/469lbs on the day, but the jumps still worked out great.
Lastly, for my own lifters, I keep track of meet PRs, sub-totals, deadlifts needed to pull for PR totals, etc… On the day, to make sure whatever goal we have in place, is accounted for. As I mentioned with Michael Beaupre, based on his goal of qualifying for Raw Nationals, we adjusted his deadlift attempts based on sub-total. If you are to do this, be vigilant that you need to do this quickly as openers are locked after a certain point and can only be changed once.
All in all, my biggest default is, “if you have to give up 2.5kg to get 5kg, do it.”
How this works out is:
You take 100kg-105kg-112.5kg, and miss the third. But it was close and you most likely had, 110kg. You know lose out on a possible 5kg spread because you carry 105kg as your heaviest attempt.
In the opposite scenario, you go 100kg-105kg-110kg, however you smoked it and certainly HAD 112.5kg. Now, you effectively only lose 2.5kg on the top end, but carry 5kg more than your competitors and/or momentum to the rest of the meet.
I think the saying is, “There is almost always no penalty to making a lift and almost always a penalty to missing one”, in terms of possible highest end totals. The bigger the jumps you take, the more this matters as 15kg jumps and above are VERY hard to make up, should you fall behind.
In case you couldn’t tell already, I am very passionate about lifters doing well in their meets, within their realms of control. If there is one thing I HATE, it is people shooting themselves in the foot with lack of preparation or lack of sound reasoning, I want to see ALL of you do well, not just my own lifters, hope this helped!
To Utopia.