Training AFTER a Meet: Make or Break Your Off-Season
I’m sure those of us who have competed in strength sport have experienced the natural comedown of emotions and capacity, in the weeks that follow a big meet or competition. Known by some as the, “post-meet blues”, it is something I am seeing quite often, what if I told you, you can avoid that? This article will be a bit confusing, that I am aware, but I will do my best to explain on why I think the 1-3 weeks after a meet are the most crucial time for success in the off-season.
Now, before we get under way, we have to lay a couple ground rules.
My stance applies more to lifters who are of an intermediate and above level but also those who “peak”, for their competitions, enacting some form of taper to prepare them for competitions. You see, any comedown after a meet that is just kind of strolled into, is strictly emotional and you should be able to bounce back within 48-72 hours, more on that aspect in a bit.
Next, this stance applies to people who are serious powerlifters who see their success as not just what happens in meet prep, but the 3-4 training cycles before that set themselves up to peak.
If you checked those boxes, read further.
Typically, this is what I see post-meet from lifter’s I follow, not saying these are bad habits as some of these examples come from VERY successful lifters.
Taking an entire week (or more) off. Yes, this is probably the most common. Straight after the meet, you send it at the club with friends, wake up feeling annihilated, and by the time Monday rolls around, you still feel awful. You still feel bad Tuesday. You are already out of routine and you figure, let’s get back on the train Monday. Or, maybe this was the plan all along. I want to make it known, this is valid for some people, others, not so much, at least in terms of intent.
The Good: Mental break, if you developed mild overuse injuries a week away can clear them up, frees time for other life activities.
The Bad: Lose your routine, if you are someone who needs routine, you will find that if you are off, it will be hard to get back on. Makes day 1 back into training that much harder.
Maxing out non-comp standard movements. This is beginning to be more common than the week off and this is almost always not advised. We show up on a random day and take a touch and go bench max, or AMRAP a set at an arbitrary weight, or pull with straps on deadlift bar, just to do it. Again, I am not one to turn someone away from having a good time, but this in a vacuum usually is not the issue, it’s what comes after it that sets you back for weeks on end. As a side note, for those who peak well, it will be incredibly discouraging when you go to max out a 4-5 days later and you are not able to hit 95% of your meet numbers, that is actually a good thing, but not for your psyche.
The Good: Ego stroke. If you performed poorly it can make you feel better. More likes on Instagram.
The Bad: Probably indicates you peaked poorly or did not execute well to comp standards if lifts are significantly higher than in meet. If you are fighting fatigue, more than likely will eat into fatigue deficit. Cannot actually apply data to competition lifts. My best analogy would be, you shout 1-12 from 3 point range in the game, but a couple days later you shot 12-12 in the corner on standstill, non-contested, in rhythm threes, in practice. Good for the ego, didn’t translate well to the actual game.
Getting right back to it, but with insane, borderline maniacal training volumes and/or variations. This is getting a little bit less common, from what I have seen at least, but when I was first getting into the game, was pretty much common practice. Peaking meant low reps, heavy weight, post-meet meant higher reps with way less loading. We now know this isn’t the case in terms of eliciting a strength adaptation, we can get away with higher reps WITH regular heavy exposure, pretty much year round. However, phasic structure was big back in 2014-2016, and it was thought, in order to adapt to heavy weights, you need to ONLY lift heavy weights. So, you lose your work capacity and your tolerance for volume as you are now 6-8 weeks removed from it, and then BAM, 5 sets of 10 on high bar squat when you are a low bar competition squatter.
The Good: Back to routine. Lifting lighter loads to make sure you are not pushing the gas pedal too soon in terms of intensity.
The Bad: If you are months removed from high volume training, you will be incredibly sore with even 1/2 the volume, so doing even more probably makes soreness a limiting factor workout to workout, which is not necessary. Doing variations and very high volume is not always necessary, you can go back to what you did before with modified tweaks and probably make even more progress, caveat, there is levels to this.
Going straight into another meet prep. What I mean about this, is preparing for another meet 7-10 weeks down the road. There are special scenarios where this, quite frankly, cannot be avoided and you just have to accept the fact that substantial progress won’t be possible. I think of Team Hogan athlete, Josh Dang, here. He did a meet in January and had around 10 weeks or so (give or take) for a meet in March. Now, this was Collegiate Nationals, this is acceptable as this was going to be his only opportunity to do this meet. Context matters here.
The Good: If it’s a larger meet, you get that experience. If you performed awful, 5/9 or less. You can have the opportunity to fix those errors without having to get stronger in terms of force production ability.
The Bad: Can lead to unrealistic expectations. Can cause severe overuse injuries. Can stagnate progress as you are essentially re-peaking off the same base. Also, mentally the burnout associated is understated.
So, I just gave you about every scenario, but what are we supposed to do with this information? Do we just pick one and accept the lesser of a few evils? Honestly, maybe. Maybe not though, there are some things I think you should consider before I summarize what I do personally.
How hard did you push this prep? Sometimes, we breeze through a prep, lift well and with kilos in reserve and maybe we don’t need to take a ton of time off because physically, we feel fine. This is a real thing, don’t let someone tell you you’re tired or fatigued, be in tune with how your own body feels.
How mentally exhausting was this prep? Listen, I have been there. Prep cycles where seemingly everything goes wrong, you are anxious all the time, coming off an ultra restrictive diet from the week before due to cutting. You need to allow yourself to decompress, I promise you, no amount of YOLO lifts are going to make you feel generally better about your situation. As I alluded to before, the emotional aspect of a powerlifting meet, especially when you really, truly care, is very sizable. I gather so much adrenaline during meet time and am so emotional, that the next day I feel as if I have been seized of all dopamine in my body. This is a real thing and do not fight this.
How strong are you and what is your weight class? This one is a bit tough to explain to people, but essentially, the stronger you are absolutely, meaning the more weight you can lift overall, the more likely that trauma for weeks on end will need to be deloaded the week after a meet. If you are a male 140kg+ lifter who squats and deadlifts over 800lbs, you most likely will want to set some parameters for your return back to the gym. However, if you are a female 47kg lifter, you might find you can return to training that following Monday, almost as if nothing happened.
So, you considered these three things and have made your decision, great! But before you go, I’ll tell you what I have done my last two meets and I really think they allowed me to find the best blend of returning to training without running risk of overuse injury and/or setting myself up for failure with too much weight, too soon.
Most of my meets are on Saturday and I have been returning to the gym the following Monday, something I used to not do. Now, I usually have my post-meet training cycle already written out before hand, so what I do is make that week a glorified intro week, even though week 1 of my new cycle, is an intro week in itself. So in reality, I am taking 2 weeks to ramp back into it, keeping my routine, and still keeping my groove as I found when I take too much time off, I feel awkward under the bar and I do not like that feeling.
I don’t train light either. Is it lighter? Yes. Is every lift under 70%? Certainly not.
We are more resilient than we think, you are fine to go back in and lift heavier, as long as you are aware that the first couple sessions won’t feel like they did in the heart of your peak cycle, that’s okay, they will.
I also don’t mess with very, very distant variations post meet. Maybe one deviation from the comp lift and that is it.
I take the same shell of what I did in prep and simply swap out a few accessory lifts for variety sake and then modulate my rep ranges based on how far out I am from the next meet. I am at a stage where I am the earliest stage of an advanced lifter, so this works well for me. Doing 5 sets of 10 on close grip bench arguably will do more harm than good. Now, if I was one year into the sport, this could be different, but for my athletes, the same principles apply.
For example, if week 1 of a prep cycle looked like this:
Day 1 - Comp Bench, x2 @ 5, 3x7 @5-5.5
Day 2 - Comp Squat, 3x3 Ascending @ 4,5,6
Day 3 - Comp Dead, 1x1 @5, 1x5 @5, 2x5 @87.5% of top set of 5 load
Day 4 - Variation Bench, 3x3 Ascending @ 4,5,6
Day 5 - Comp Squat, x1 @5 3x2 @ 83% of top single, Comp Bench, x1 @ 5, 3x4 @ 5-5.5
Week 1 post meet would look like:
Day 1 - Comp Bench, x3 @ 4, 2x9 @5-5.5
Day 2 - Comp Squat, 2x5 Ascending @ 4,5
Day 3 - Beltless Dead, 1x2 @4, Comp Dead 1x7 @4
Day 4 - Variation Bench, 3x5 Ascending @ 4,5,6
Day 5 - Comp Squat, x3 @5 2x3 @ 85% of top triple, Comp Bench, x2 @ 5, 3x5 @ 5-5.5
The accessory work would change, like making a neutral grip pulldown underhanded, or swapping a goblet squat for a hack squat, but as you see, my routine and “shell”, stays the same however it is way less work and loading and it allows me shake off the cob webs with lower loads and not have to acclimate further and further. Basically, the more time I can spend productively training in a 52 week calendar year, the better.
One thing I want to note, I am not above time off. I did it after 2021 Junior Nationals as I had developed quadriceps tendinopathy and was emotionally burnt out. It worked wonders! I am not anti-any approach, however I have found over the years that post-meet training does not have to be “post-meet blues”, but a time to really springboard you into new, uncharted territory.
For those competing soon, make sure to get after it, and when it is over, be smart and your training post-meet will take you to the next level, rinse and repeat for a few years, you will be amazed at what you can do.