Peaking Strategies: Concepts and Practical Examples

At Team Hogan, we pride ourselves on the ability to produce athlete’s best results on the platform, however, the way my athletes and I get there can look drastically different depending upon a host of variables, and I find these days, no two preps are alike, even with historical data. More on that concept a bit later; overall this article seeks to do 3 things:

1. Establish what peaking actually is and what it looks like.

2. Provide analysis on a couple distinct case studies where peaking looked drastically different, yet lead to the respective athlete’s best ever results.

3. Theorize on where some people and some concepts fall short and suggestions on how to mitigate the effects of a poor peak.

What is Peaking in the Context of Powerlifting?

Well, in order to answer this, we also have to look at the definition of peaking and it’s application to sport as a whole.

The word “peak”, as defined by Merriam-Webster, means, “reach a highest point, either of a specified value or at a specific time”.

3-4 key words there:

• Highest

• Specific

• Value/Time

Now, let’s look at context examples within sport.

In any competitive sport where there is a winner and a loser(s), there are times of the year where performance metrics need to be, or at least should be, “peaked”, to create the highest likelihood of a performance necessary to achieve whatever the result desired is.

The easiest example of this is the phasic structure most sports take.

• Pre-season

• Regular season

• Post-season

• Off season

In general, you use your pre-season to work on the general physical preparedness for the sport as well as introduce sets, plays, and work on things that you will need for the season, you use your regular season to maintain those general qualities and be a bit more specific in your approach, your post-season is there solely for specific qualities and bare-bones physical maintenance, and the off-season serves to offload the rigorous demands of said regular and post seasons.

Ex. American Football

• Pre-season: Lots of general activity, weight training, sprinting, non-contact plays, etc…

• Regular season: When games are introduced, lifting and conditioning takes secondary importance to things like timing of plays, blocking concepts, strategy for the opponent, etc…

• Post-season: Winning time, you are not running flying 40s and gassers all week, you are as in shape as you are going to be, so this is about refining plays, resting when needed, and then going all out for the given games.

• Off season: Typically relegated to working on weaknesses from the prior year, a bit more player-centric (if you are not strong, more weights, if you need to get quicker, more sprints, etc…) and overall, a great time to cross-train to avoid over-use injury.

So, as you can see, if your most important games are later in the season, it does not make sense to be at your best 16 weeks before that point.

“Okay, Erik. But what does this have to do with powerlifting?”

A ton.

You see, powerlifting does not have set seasons, at least not in the classic sense. When you play team sports, you are at the discretion of the governing body that schedules games many months beforehand as well as at the discretion of the team coaches and people in charge.

I can sit here and take on an athlete and say: you will compete on X, Y, and Z and plan a whole years worth of phasic training out, only for the athlete to have an accident in week 4 of prep for X, get sick and derail their momentum in prep for Y, and have an important life event fall on the same weekend as Z.

I think as you get older, more competitive, this can be done quite easily, with athlete’s saving themselves for 2 meets a year that are usually the same times each calendar cycle. However, for the vast majority of athlete’s, opportunities come up that we can’t pass up and sometimes, life happens, and we can’t make a certain date happen. So, as such, we do not have a set-in-stone, competition schedule like other sports do. You shouldn’t, but in theory you could compete every single weekend, meaning, there is very few weekends where meets are not happening, where as for other sports like school-sponsored athletics, there is one season for these games and competitions to occur and that’s it.

So, if we are never really in a true “off” season, it does not make a ton of sense to be too far removed from what the demands of the sport actually entails, hence, our peaking definition, changes a bit due to the nature of how we go about doing competitions.

There are caveats across the board here, but in general for the sport of powerlifting, very rarely do we see athlete’s who are successful take steep departures from their competition-required movements.

This can be easily overdone in the wrong hands however, as specific training, with ultra-specific parameters, usually can only be sustained for a small duration of time, and for many, it is not even necessary.

If you just got into the game, I think you are in the era of powerlifting that is the most progressive and most productive in terms of training concepts. There was a time, not too long ago, where the pendulum was swung in each direction, one side was the, “never do competition movements until you are at the meet” crowd and the other was, “ONLY do competition movements for high volume, frequency” crowd and I think nowadays we as a collective, realize that both extremes cause as much negative adaptation as they do positive.

In essence, I think in the context of powerlifting it is as simple as the sport sounds on paper, seek to establish the highest performance possible on the competition squat, bench press, and deadlift for single repetitions. Meaning, although there are metrics an individual uses to build the top-end single, an athlete’s PR set of 10 during their meet prep cycle, falls null and void if that rep PR did not do anything for their single PR.

How Should One Peak for A Powerlifting Meet and What Factors Matter When Designing a Meet Prep Cycle?

Quite a loaded question, but if you do not care to learn the in-depth side, here is the TLDR;

• Whatever makes your single progress, feel strong, and does not have high risk of injury, continue to do that.

But this is hopefully not why you clicked on this article, so let’s do a deep dive on how YOU should peak for your next meet and whether it makes sense for you to change things drastically during that cycle. I think based upon my experience, with additional variables I consider for different athlete’s, the main things I tend to think matter most, in no particular order, are the following:

1. How much time do we have to prepare and beyond that, how are we going to break up that duration of time for block structure?

2. What are the goals for the given meet?

3. What has been working in blocks leading into prep, what has not been working as well.

4. How applicable is the athlete’s life to productive, “optimal”, training?

5. What historical data can be pull from to expedite this process?

Buckle up, I’m about to go in.

Concept 1. Block Structure and Duration of Prep

So, we already established earlier that there really is not a classic off-season for powerlifting, at least not in the way we would usually define it. So as such, our training usually is not too different in a peak cycle, compared to the one or two blocks before that given cycle.

In the last year or so, I have leaned a bit more into an athlete’s pre-peak cycle, than years before that, and surely enough, I have had some substantial increases in athlete’s totals, while maybe going against conventional wisdom with meet prep training.

So, when an athlete comes to myself, wanting to do a meet, I first analyze how much time we have to prepare, where they are currently at in their training, and then finally, how will we split up the blocks into this meet, if we decide it is appropriate at all.

Recently in the powerlifting coaching sphere, a theme that has came back as a topic of discussion is block length and how it effects things. For my own personal athlete’s, most of the cycles I tend to design fall between 4 and 6 weeks. What is nice about this, is if we have data that the final week of the cycle is always the strongest, we can quite literally make no changes in a drastic sense, add singles, and go into a meet that way. However, very rarely does it line up exactly.

An athlete presenting a strong showing of a 5 week meso-cycle design, might come to me and say hey, the meet I want to do is 16 weeks away. In my opinion, unless your training is specifically a departure to work on limiting factors that require a dedicated approach, you should be able to prepare for a meet within that time frame, pretty much always.

However, simple math shows we cannot simply use a true, 5, 5, 5, structure, as we are left with one extra week to work with.

When presented with this, I usually will use one of the three following methods to make do with this dilemma.

• Go 5, 5, 6.

  • I most often will default to this approach if the athlete has strong data showing a 5 week meso is the best for them. What will happen is block 1 will be taken to an ending of an RPE 8 on primaries, the next block we will double down and really look to push the top end to @ 9-9.5 levels, and we will use week 1 of the peak cycle as a reload/deload/intro that serves as primer for what is to come, dissipate that lingering fatigue accumulated during the last 10 weeks, and allow us to start a little lower on our progressions to have 1 extra session of habit building with lighter weights. I find this approach works extremely well for most of my athletes.

• Go 6, 5, 5.

  • Sometimes, it makes most sense to rely on that 5 week data-driven cycle, and it’s not worth risking that extra week when the competition matters a ton, so we will elect to make the first cycle 6 weeks long, and that week 1 will be a glorified rest week in terms of additional workload. Meaning, it is there to deload, not prime. I use this for my athlete’s who are particular and tend to rely on data as their source of confidence.

• Go 4,4,4,4

  • Now, you may be saying, 5 weeks is the established time to peak, why would we do 4 week blocks? Well, sometimes you have to go with your gut in the sense of preparation and for some athlete’s, think lightweight males and middle to lightweight females, doing a 6 week cycle for any reason can tank progress. Caveats around the board again here as I have had a 60kg lifter perform a 7 week prep and hit all time PRs on all 3 lifts with this approach. If you know what you are doing, you can more than likely use this approach for a light-weight, high frequency lifter, just fine. I do not think this works for super-heavyweight lifters who are of high absolute strength.

This is not even taking into account what happens during these blocks, I have lifters who change secondary lifts and progressions mid-prep like Logan Allaire and Gavin Akeley who will feature pauses squats at the beginning of a prep and change to comp squats 3 weeks in.

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.

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.

Concept 2. What are the goals of the meet?

This concept tends to matter less and less for me these days, just short of, this athlete is only doing the meet because it was something to do and it was of the understanding we would not be peaking for it. However, if an athlete is going for a national medal, or trying to win said meet, we are going to pull more ace cards and in some cases, take more risks with programming concepts.

A good example of this is Andrew Graves 2nd and 3rd attempts to qualify for USAPL Raw Nationals.

With such a high level goal, we made the choice to attempt comp squatting 2x per week for his 2nd attempt, that ended up yielding a 5kg squat PR but a -2.5kg bench performance that put us in poor position for deadlifts.

For attempt #3, we made the decision to try a new bench programming strategy and grip change that yielded a +7.5kg bench PR while being able to PR squat by 2.5kg. If this meet was not his final attempt, maybe we don’t change this at all.

As you can see, sometimes you NEED to take a risk as you do not have positive data supporting a current trend. This can workout, but it also can lead to degradation in some other capacity.

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.

Concept 3. What was working in previous blocks, what was not working?

If there is anything I want people to take away from this, it is this concept right here. So many times as coaches, we want to be ground-breaking with new methods and try to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, each time we write a training cycle.

Early on, I would make my peak cycles look drastically different from my pre-prep cycles and really, it would be a gamble if things would take the way I wanted them too. See, even though I made the case that block structure matters, what is actually happening in those blocks matters more.

For some athlete’s, I will feature the first phase of prep with singles to @7.5-8 and this will give us an accurate depiction of where the top end is going, without entering the danger zone and we can do this for 10 weeks.

For others, the second we feature too much intensity on those singles, they degrade very quickly, meaning, we need to change that pre-peak cycle block up to accommodate that.

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.

Concept 4. How Applicable is the Athlete’s Life to “Optimal” Training?

What I mean by this, is how many external variables can the athlete control? For some athlete’s they have things such as: a significant other to spend time with, a child to tend to, personal life events they need to attend, and have a host of other things they need to do on top of their work day.

So knowing this, who am I to blame the athlete when I have a very long-drawn, specific approach, that requires a ton of time and takes multiple hours to complete, but looks “right” on paper, when they inevitably maladapt and have to constantly end workouts short and rearrange their entire life to get workouts in.

The fact of the matter is, sometimes you need to just suck it up, do not get me wrong, but in the same vein, and I am sorry if this means I don’t care about powerlifting as much as the next coach, your child or your work schedule matters more than your competition.

I am lucky to coach several unique cases where people are spread thin and honestly, you would be surprised how little we need to do in order to progress as in my eyes, I need the athlete to decompress and “rest” more than I need them to beat them into submission with workload.

Optimal is a sliding scale.

Concept 5. What Historical Data can we pull from to expedite the process?

Now, this is a trap!

I say this in jest, but it is really not far off in some cases.

I think as coaches, we rely on data to make decisions, but we have to view this data under the correct lens, in my opinion.

This means, what worked your previous prep can and should work in the next, however, if you are giving a carbon-copy of said prep, I do not think that is wise if you fail to account for things such as:

• Where the athlete is in their life compared to that previous prep.

• Where their overall strength is compared to the last prep.

• What was working in the previous blocks before their upcoming meet and whether that is a departure from their previous prep.

• How is the athlete feeling and are they carrying injury into this prep, or maybe they were carrying injury into the previous one that effected approach.

The data does not lie, but if you are now 300lbs stronger on your total, using what you used to peak for meet #3 four years ago, hell, even meet #7 one year ago, might not have the effects you want it to.

3. Why and Where Do People Fall Short in their own Peaking?

Now, this is not a call out on others, but this does serve to educate on why you, the reader, might feel you are leaving some on the table in terms of getting the most out of your meet day performance.

• The meet prep was too heavy, too often.

  • It is common theme for lifters to be prescribed a single @8 their entire prep cycle leading into competition, sometimes multiple of these a week, and I fully understand that, in theory, relative exertion should decrease as you adapt to training. Very rarely, in my experience, does this happen. Getting into psychological jargon now, but I feel that for the majority of athlete’s, seeing @8 signals something that is closer and closer to a max and, if you are already very strong, this does not bode well for holding on to many weeks of this approach. Many athletes I have taken on for their first prep, sometimes complain that they need to hit X number multiple times to hit in in a meet, again, I get it, but I do not think you need to squat 400+ for 7 weeks in a row, to hit it in a meet. Trust me, I have been there. Was I more confident in squatting 400lbs? Yes. Did I get stronger and feel more confident doing north of that? No.

  • This is why I use load caps for some athlete’s, it takes much longer to write training, but it is well worth it in the end when we have plenty to spare their final heavy day.

• The meet prep was not specific enough.

  • Do we need to be doing SBD sessions multiple times a week and singles on every lift? Of course not, but if you are, say, a lightweight female with a wide bench grip, high arch, and are benching 1x per week with that being a variation, chances are, you are not being specific enough to induce adaptation for top end singles. I see this a lot in the sense of, people do not do singles and default to higher rep work, which 100% has it’s place, but prioritize that over their primary heavy work and get a flip-flop effect. You can PR your 10rm in prep, but if that does nothing for your single, why are you doing it or prioritizing it?

• You are taking data that is not your competition singles.

  • Now, I think some people might disagree with this, from their school of thoughts and approaches. In my opinion, if you are not doing singles in a meet prep, there has to be good reason. I see the common approach of:

    • Whatever you can hit for 3, that’s your opener.

    • If you hit a PR set of 5, plug that into a 1rm calculator, that’s what you can hit.

    • I hit a PR on deficit deads, my comp dead must have gone up.

  • My own ethos as a coach, is we rely on the data that is most specific for the goal at hand. If anything, I want to avoid the secondary or tertiary day out-performing the primary day like the plague.

• You did not align primary days accordingly.

  • For a lot of my peaking training, really the goal is to find a consistent recovery curve that yields the competition day feeling strongest. So, if your primary squat day is on Monday, bench is Tuesday, and deadlift is Wednesday, and then maybe Friday is a secondary squat day, and Saturday a secondary bench day. And you follow this scheme for months and months, knowing the day you compete is Saturday. Your body primes itself for that Saturday being a secondary, lower effort bench session when you need to feel good and strong on all 3?

  • Does that mean we need an SBD day? Not so fast. It could, yes. But creating and flipping structure to account for the end of the week being stronger than the beginning, can be enough for most athlete’s when they taper down. For athlete’s doing a meet on a weekday, this matters a ton, in my opinion.

• You tapered too long or too aggressively.

  • This is a tough sell to people. Why? Because we equate feeling good to feeling strong and it does not make sense that we can perform while not feeling the best we ever have.

  • The way I see it, if the athlete is performing well under fatigue, it is likely that they are either not as fatigued as they think they are or simply perform better under a given amount of volume. If you have objective measures, this helps as you can say hey, you PR’d the last 3 weeks and we have only added volume.

  • For many athletes who show this trend, their taper might be very last minute as we want to feel okay subjectively, but do not need a full 2 weeks to do so.

  • Many times, I see athlete’s hit their heaviest lifts many weeks out and then under-go a massive, massive taper to the point of, they are not doing much of anything the week of the meet. I never thought this was valid and have never used it for my athletes and the inspiration was when I looked into Chinese weightlifters and their tapering strategies that included, keeping in accessory work all the way into the meet week, going relatively heavy the week of, dropping total volume down only at the very end and using pure rest strategically to induce the feeling of “freshness”. PEDs aside as China has shown to promote, this approach has carried over well to my own lifters.

• You did not train to competition standard.

  • Simply put, if you are not training to comp standard, you will probably underperform in the meet. I do not think there is much that needs to be said here.

So, if you made it this far, I hope you took something away from this. I see a lot of media being produced on this concept, and I think if we are being objective, I have proven over the last three years, and built a reputation of my athlete’s performing in meets and being their strongest at meets. That is something that I hold near and dear as getting someone strong in the gym, is strength training, getting people to perform in meets, is powerlifting.

Hope you all crush it your next meet prep!

To Utopia,

Erik