Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 178 - Peaking for a Contest

Episode Date: February 7, 2019

Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang talk about Meet Prep. Having years of experience, they answer Andrew Zaragoza's questions as he goes into his first meet ever. Link to sign up for the ST Classic: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-training-classic-2019-tickets-53251741392 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

All right. What you got? How much you bench? That's what we're going to find out this weekend. You know about that, Andrew? How much you bench? I have an idea how much I bench. We'll see what happens on game day though.

A lot different getting it done on the platform, isn't it? Yeah. It's a lot different being, you got three judges watching you. You got three attempts. And the weird thing about powerlifting is uh you can't go back down and wait like the weight that you selected you you don't have to go up and wait but you can't go back down and wait and so you're kind of screwed with whatever you selected so those openers it caused a lot of anxiety for people like oh what am i gonna shit man what should i open with

and we all know that we should open up with something easy but then the you know you get into this this uh tough psychological thing of like well if i open up way too light then i gotta jump way too heavy to the next attempt and maybe i'm not prepared for that and there's a lot to kind of uncover when we do these meets yeah and i mean i've asked you or i've asked everybody like hey can you go down what happens it Like just I know the answer, but I'm just thinking, oh, well, no, because this is a little different

since you're lifting at the ST Classic. I'm just hoping for somebody to give me a break, but so far nothing, including wearing a singlet. Really? Yep. You got to wear a singlet.

I got to wear a singlet. You got to look good. And that's what I'm, honestly, I'm kind of worried about all of that. Why? I've never worn one. Oh, you'll like it. I've only photographed them for product shots and of course in-use shots.

Sometimes you gotta let it all hang out, right? They don't look too great. I don't know why you're like you're worried though because I mean, you're packing, dude. So I asked for tips on Instagram like, hey, how do you make the bulge look you know, a little bit extra good? You don't need to worry about that. Trust me, you're good.

Just throw a loaf of bread down the front of your pants. You'll be fine. Yeah, we have our deadlift socks, so I was thinking about rolling one or two pairs. Yeah, like, oh, that looks weird. He's only wearing one deadlift sock. Or one to wear the other one. Yeah, exactly. Or just go to the store and grab

an eggplant. Like everybody else went. Yeah, exactly. Or just go to the store and grab an eggplant. Like everybody else does. Yeah. But no, I'm excited, nervous. Katie Hogan, actually, she emailed me. She's like, hey, we need your openers. And I just wrote her back. I genuinely don't know what my openers are.

So then I text Mark and Smokey and they've been bugging me about it. Well, Smokey was bugging me about it, So I bugged Mark about it. And Mark was like, don't worry. I gave it to him. There we go. Perfect. Yep.

Got it locked in. That way you don't have to even worry about it. I like it. Thank you. But, uh, you know, peaking and prepping for these contests is, uh, it's tough. You know, how do you, how do you peak for a contest? And you got some people kind of of the belief of, um, that they should kind of be almost like ready, uh, for anything and everything at all times. And so they might kind of train pretty heavy all the time.

The intensity might be high. Uh, and you got other people who are like, well, that's ridiculous. Doesn't make sense to be, to be so obsessed with your strength 24 seven, that it has to be at a hundred percent all the time. obsessed with your strength 24 seven that it has to be at a hundred percent all the time makes more sense to uh spread out the fatigue and have maybe more frequency have the intensity be a little bit less and then prioritize you know what times a year are you going to get the strongest as possible for the platform what are some of your thoughts on how to get strong for a competition well pretty much like if it's directly talking about a peak the big concept

of a peak is that your overall training volume is decreasing through the peak so let's just like make it easy if you were doing eights at the beginning of your peak you know sets of eight of something by the end of the peak maybe you're doing doubles and singles um and your intensity which is like when when we say intensity it doesn't mean like how intense you're training. It means like how heavy the load is. Means how loud the music is, right? Yes. How loud the music is and how heavy the load is, is getting heavier through the peak.

So volumes down, intensity goes up so that at the end of the peak, you're really good at working with singles because you're going to be doing that on the platform. Um, and since your volume came down, your overall training volume, you're less fatigued. That's just the big concept. Um, now that's generally how it goes. Like during a peak, uh, if the lifter had like a rough training cycle beforehand, which is pretty good, you want to do an intense training cycle before, you know, eight weeks out or whatever, before you meet, um, you'll do that.

And then through the peak, you're like, let's just give you, you know, your first week, maybe you're doing some sixes or whatever. And you lower that down. And then you just work with heavier loads until the week before. I usually like lifters doing their openers the week before they step on the platform so that they already know how those openers feel. And generally a good rule of thumb is like, you should be able to do your opener for a triple. If you're really ballsy, okay, a double. But usually your opener is like something that you can handle for a good triple.

So you know you're going to hit it. I don't know. It's rare to see like if a lifter fails an opener, that just means that maybe they didn't pick the right load potentially or something crazy happened that day. They got two hours of sleep and they're super dehydrated and they're super tired. But you should never, ever, ever fail your opener. If you failed your opener, then it's kind of weird.

Yeah. And the only exception to that rule might be, uh, you just, um, had a technicality. You missed it, you know, for technicality, you missed the press command. You, uh, rack the weight too early, uh, your foot moved too much on the bench or you, you didn't squat quite to depth or something like that. But yeah, you, your foot moved too much on the bench, or you, you didn't squat

quite to depth or something like that. But you should also in your preparation for a contest, you should be really aware of the, of the rules of the meet and then take the rules of the competition and apply them to your training. So that way, you know, when you pick up a deadlift that you can't have soft knees, you've got to stand all the way up with the weight, you know, wait for a down command. And these are things that you want to cue each other. You know, if you have a training partner or if you're working with somebody, uh, or even you want to cue yourself, however, you got to get it done, maybe get some video footage and make sure you're pausing your benches and make sure you're locking it out and pausing it. And just be aware of the rules for the particular federation because there's a lot of them um for me you know it's always been easy for me to just tell people like ah you know

screw counting calories and screw you know programming what are you talking about programming that's for people that work on computers all day but i sometimes forget you know and as i've grown gotten older i started to have more perspective into, you know, uh, yeah, what, what it'd be like to be like that person. And, and they don't obsess over this as much as I do, or maybe they're, maybe they're newer and maybe they need a lot of direction and maybe they need to like write stuff down. Maybe they really do need to pinpoint exactly what's going on, have a lot of record of it. Because when I think back to my early lifting, I did write some stuff down here and there. I did write down PRs

and stuff. It wasn't meticulous and crazy about it, but I did do a lot of that. So for me, you know, I see a lot of online programming and things like that going on. And I got a lot of friends that do well with online coaching and people like yourself doing a great job helping people get stronger but when this first started to come around i was like man what what is this why why do people even need this service like what are they doing don't you just go to the gym and train hard and again i kind of lost perspective uh just as we lose perspective on teaching somebody how to warm up properly, we lose perspective on, oh yeah, you should, uh, make sure your hands are evenly spaced when you

squat, when you deadlift and you bench, we kind of forget about these things because they're so like elementary to us at a certain point. And once we start to, you know, go further and further ahead, uh, it, it seems like everything's so obvious and it seems like everything's so obvious it seems like everything should be kind of common sense and it's just it's just not and so when you're peaking for a contest it can be as complex as you want it to be but i like the way that you summed it up because that is kind of the easiest way to go about doing it it probably makes the most sense for somebody that's new like just you know start out with sets of eight sets of 10, whatever number of reps you want to do for a while, you know, do those for

a week or two weeks, drop the weight, drop the reps down a little bit each week and increase the weight. Now there's some other ways you can go about doing things too. There's, there's a, you can try to have your overall workload be really hard, your volume, but the intensity is not high. And so now we start to really get into, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot to start to think about when you start to do these things, because you could bench squat and deadlift three times a week, uh, potentially deadlifting twice a week, which is what you see most people do, but you could bench squat and deadlift three times a week, uh, potentially deadlifting twice a week, which is what you see most people do, but you could bench squat and deadlift three times a week and you can kind of spread out how difficult these workouts are.

Um, and I've seen a lot of lifters have great success with that. And when I saw that start to come around, I was like, what in the hell are people doing? Yeah. But some of these things came from, some of these came from, you know, Eastern block. Some of these things came from, uh, Olympic lifting, uh, where they have, you know, they've, they've studied this stuff for years and years and have excellent coaches that do it. And they don't have any regard for the way that a commercial gym is set up in the United States.

So they're not, they're not thinking, oh, like the bench and the squat, like they're far away from each other in a deadlift rack. And some of these other machines are far away from each other. In America, that's the way our workouts were designed because they were designed by like Joe Weider, like the Weider principles. I'm gonna do three sets of 10 and anybody who sets up super sets is thinking, okay, well, let's stay in the dumbbell rack area. You know, we're going to do a hammer curls and then we're gonna do dumbbell tricep

extensions. Makes sense. Cause it's all in the same spot. Yeah. But these other countries, they don't care about that. They care about getting stronger. They're not trying to just like build a body for aesthetics and they're not trying to have these really short rest intervals. So you end up with a lot of different ways to kind of peak and prep for, for a competition. But the main thing is that you understand the rules that you're going to lift with, and you learn how you respond to heavy lifting because as you come down to the end, that's when it's going to matter the most on who we're talking about, what type of training they

have, what type of nutrition they have, what type of sleep are they getting? And those are the most important things. It's all the the basics there's nothing hidden in some you know magic code or magic supplement or or anything like that it's all just the very basic so you start with higher reps you bring those reps down add some weight yeah how soon should because we recently started doing like with messing with press commands and now rack commands which was really hard for me to get used to but how soon should somebody in their um meat prep start using press commands good um it really depends i think it depends on the the load that they're doing so if if you are let's say you're benching twice a week it's just an example right and on one of your bench days

you're doing sixes right it might be a little bit more difficult to have to use a press command for every single one of those since you're doing a lot of reps. But on your other day, you're working with a little bit of a heavier load and you're doing doubles or triples. On your heavier day, maybe start using those press commands so you can get used to it. And then as you get deeper and deeper into your peak, pay more attention to that on the days that you're doing less reps because like you're not going to be working with much as much volume and you can get yourself used to that press command doing two or three reps. Yeah. And I think, you know, um, going off of like your intuition is something that I really

firmly believe in and going by how you feel. But the hard part is if you're new, you're not really sure on how you're supposed to feel. And so you might do a five by five workout and it might just blow you apart. Like it might just crush you. And you're like, oh man, I guess that's how all my training is supposed to feel all the time. And rep number one of set number one, uh, looks like you're going to die. Yeah. And, and rep number two looks worse and so on. And then you kind of think like, this is powerlifting. This is the way it's supposed to be. Oh, I'm all jacked up going into a meet happens every time. And you're like, well, maybe, maybe it shouldn't happen every time.

Maybe you should feel pretty good. And you hear fighters say this a lot. And, uh, anyone that competes at a high level, like, oh yeah, you're going to be all jacked up going into a competition. Now, look, we all understand there's going to be times where you do have to roll a dice. You do have to go for it. How are you going to be great at anything if you're not, you do occasionally have to leap for it.

Like we would love for these things to come to us all the time. And that's the way that success ultimately works out is it will come to you. It will show up when you just continue to work hard and keep your head down. works out is it will come to you. It will show up when you just continue to work hard and keep your head down. But at the same time, you won't have, you won't have the greatest experience, the fastest, if you don't take some jumps and some leaps towards things. And that's where it starts to get really difficult. And that's where we start to get, uh, all these different programs coming out. But for myself, because I've been lifting for so long and because I've done five by fives and 10 sets of 10

and so many different things, I got a good idea on how all these things are going to feel. And then I know I can feel it in my body. When I go to do a lift, if the lift is like a little bit off, then I know for me that I'm going to continue to teach myself how to lift the weight improperly and that it won't really truly get me stronger. So it does have to be a struggle. There does have to be a struggle for you to get better, but I like the rule that they use in CrossFit and they say, you know, I want to see you do 20 unbroken reps. You don't want to have broken reps. Now there might be a small breakdown. If Encima does five sets of five on a squat and you know rep number four and five

rep number three four and five of the last set is getting a little grindy hips are shifting forward starting to see them round a little bit that's all very acceptable and that's all stuff i'm comfortable with and that's all stuff i'd be comfortable with saying hey you know what you did great today and you're gonna get stronger because of that, because you want to lift with really good form and technique. That is the, that is the key factor is that the, that there's, it's precise precision to it. Yeah.

You know, what's, uh, what's pretty interesting about that. It's, it's like you said, you have so much experience that, you know, when you need to put your foot on the gas and you know, when something's feeling off, you got to put your foot on the brakes. need to put your foot on the gas and you know when something's feeling off you got to put your foot on the brakes um it's every lifter range is like i i have this guy that i work with michael and there was he was months back and he was doing a max test with like 370 pounds and he managed five reps and he's like oh my gosh this was an r, um, it, it was so difficult and you watch the video and it's like his last rep looked just as good as the first and just as fast. Some people don't know

what difficulty really feels like. So I was like, nah, dude, like in a few days, four days, I want you to go and I want you to take 425 pounds for as many reps as you can do. I want you to grit through it. Like I need you to work your ass off on this one. Did four reps. He's like, oh gosh, like it didn't feel too bad. Some people just like, sometimes people want to work themselves to death. And then some people don't necessarily know what,

I don't like to use the word pain because it shouldn't be painful. But what real difficulty in a lift should feel like you know they might not know like the absolute definition of like going all out because yeah going all out is actually really it's a really tough thing to gauge and that's still for me that's still kind of a hard thing to know um it's kind of rare that i'll do things that are all out and that that's that should be a lesson to everybody listening it's like you, you want to have longevity and you want to be strong. There are going to be times where you do need to have,

uh, an AMRAP. And there are times too, where even when you, even when your coach gives you an AMRAP, you're going to have to just make decision. You have to make it. Look,

if you finish rep number three and coach said four, but you're having doubts about number four, rack the weight. That's the most important thing. And the strongest thing you can do, the strongest thing you'll ever perform in the gym is the stuff that you don't do. It's the stuff that you put away. I'm not talking about being lazy. I'm not talking about like, oh, I'm going to get out of here and eat some ice cream. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about having the willpower and the strength to say, you know what? I need to stop right here. Cause I got what I needed and I'm taking it and I'm going home. Exactly. And I think the big thing that people can do, if, even if you don't work

with a coach, record your loads, because like, if you're doing something and you can, I get a, Hey, now he said loads. Because like literally, literally like if you put if you re-rack a squat you're like oh god that felt so bad it's so difficult then you watch it on video and you're like god that that was fast i i didn't lose position what's going on it could be you just feel really bad even though it looks really good and then you know okay i can handle that for a few more sets but if you don't record it and you only go based on how you feel, then you might stop too soon, you know, or you might, you might think it was great. And then you watch and you're like, that was such shit.

So then, you know, you got to fix some things, but no matter if you're working with a coach or if you're working on your own, record your sets, it'll give you a lot of good information on what you need to do next. And the thing that you really struggle to perform the most and the thing that you really struggle to perform the best is the thing that you should pay more attention to and also not train it like everything else. So, you know, you get this idea of, oh man, oh shit, it's deadlift day. I'm sure my coach, you know, he probably wrote a killer workout. Man, it's going to, it's going to be awful. Last week was hard.

I missed the weight. I missed the reps I was supposed to do. And you get really down on yourself. Well, think about how much success you have on the lift that you are good at. Everyone's good at some lifts in the gym, whether it be a pull-up, a push-up, a bench press, a squat, something, somewhere, right? up a bench press, a squat, something somewhere, right? And you think about how you've created success and how you have, uh, built upon that success to create more success with that particular lift and how the lift that you're not great at is the exact opposite. You always just try a little too much. You always add a little too much weight. The percentages are always just a little bit too

high. You always do one too many sets. And, and that's why you're not making progress. So sometimes people will say like, you know, they'll get through a workout and somebody might say, Hey, how are you feeling? And they don't really understand that they're, they're really, they're not injured, but they're hurt and they're hurting. They're not hurt in a sense that all my back hurts. I can't move or I hurt my hamstring or I tweaked something. They're hurt in a sense that they are hurting themselves. They are hindering their own progress and they don't even, they don't even recognize it. So I would just say as you go through your training and as you prep for a contest, and as you start to really prepare to peak for a contest, make sure that you're, you're working hard,

but also, you know, make sure you're not going beyond that point because if you are doing reps with broken form, you're not going to really be able to make the progress that you're looking for. Yeah. Oh,

go ahead. No, they say how far out should you know, like say your openers or know where that, you know, that limit is. Yeah. I'd say so it's best to,

when you start a program, it's a good idea to have a gauge of, of where to even start. So you might want to like, kind of, you know, do a quote unquote, like gym meet or something like that. You might want to, uh, just kind of get, get a number established, whether it's with triples or sets of five or single, it could be done any which way that you want. That would be a good reference point because then we at least have something to go off of. And now we can start to have conversations of, you know, of pick, helping you select the actual weight. RPE, by the way, is kind of the rate of perceived exertion, I believe it's called, right? Yes.

And that was actually, actually comes from like the military on scale of like one to 10. Uh, how hard is this? It's not really so much about, um, you know, you necessarily killing yourself, but it, it, it also is involving some technical breakdown of the lift. So a nine would be you really hunched over, uh, and you really grinding out a really brutal deadlift. That would be example of, of a nine and you don't have any more left in you. Some of these gauges that people

use can be really, really effective in kind of in coming up with how do we work out really hard? How do we keep the gas pedal to the ground, but not wear ourselves out so quickly. So you want a lot of sevens, you want a lot of eights and nines. You want to kind of brush, brush up against those nines a little bit. So your body understands, okay, what does that feel like? And maybe you want to try to use something that will give you the sensation of like a 10, but that doesn't kill you. That's when we get into partial range of motion movements. That's when we get into, Hey, maybe, maybe your training partner does give you a little bump on

the chest when you're doing your squats. Maybe they do give you a little bump on your elbows when you're doing dumbbell bench press, or maybe you do throw on a slingshot or a belt or something that gives you a little bit more reverse band squat, reverse band deadlift. These are great ways to build confidence with big weights. Cool. And then, so I didn't expect to hit a PR the week of the meet, but I did with the slingshot. Um, how early do you need to not get close to the sevens, eights and nines? You know, cause you know, the week of the meet, I didn't think I was going to be doing that, but I did. So I think it's very dependent on the individual and it's very dependent on the strength level. Normally with, um, normally with, with bigger athletes that maybe don't have as good at

conditioning and maybe that are just exceptionally strong. A lot of times in their case, it's not uncommon for them to do an opening attempt almost a few weeks prior to the actual competition. Yeah. And they'll still train and they'll still, they'll still handle some big weights and stuff, but they might not even go anything over like 80% for until the competition rolls around.

They really need to recover from the amount of weights that they're lifting. Now, female lifters and some lifters that are just less experienced and some guys out there that are just kind of getting started. Their nervous system, uh, is not, is not so crazy strong that they can really go in the gym and blast themselves out so badly that they can't recover for two weeks. So they have the energy reserve to, uh, you know, they have the energy to reserve to recover a little faster, but they don't have the energy reserve to really tap into almost like their true potential, their true strength. They're just not there yet. And so that

takes, that takes time. So for someone that's newer, uh, I would say, you know, five to seven days is a reasonable amount of time. And you can also lift, I mean, you can lift all the way up into the competition if you'd like, but I'd also realize that like in that last, you know, three to five day period, you're really not going to gain any more strength. And, uh, you want to be very careful with things, you know, don't try anything new the last month, actually don't, don't go into jujitsu. Don't go into yoga. Don't, don't try something that you haven't done. Take the contest seriously and perform the best that you can. Don't try any new movements that you saw someone do on Instagram.

Do that after the competition's over. You can try something new at that point. But yeah, really the main thing is the level of experience. When someone's really experienced and someone's super, super strong, they might, you know, someone like Larry Wheels, who's going to deadlift 900 pounds. Yeah. He's going to, you know, probably do his last heavy's going to deadlift 900 pounds yeah he's gonna you know probably do his last heavy deadlift 10 to 14 days before the competition mark how many reps did

you fail getting ready for the st classic in your whole peak yeah it's been zero that's a big deal right there that is a very big deal right there you know i mean you want to aim for zero reps when you're peaking for any type of meat you don't want to fail any reps in your peak. You're not working like you will be working hard, but you're not working to failure. All right. So if you find that you're failing reps every single week or on multiple workouts, really need to take a look at what you're doing and maybe you got to pull back a little bit. Yeah. And there's a, and there's also a difference too, between like missing a lift and failure, you know, failure, like if you want to go to failure still on some of your assistance exercises and, uh, you know, you want to do like

an AMRAP where you're pushing yourself to, to where you can no longer do anymore. That's not really exactly what he's referring to. What he's referring to is you had this idea, you were going to do a triple and you only squeezed a double out of it, uh, because, because the weight was just a little bit too heavy and you don't want to, and certainly don't want to be missing any singles. You don't want any missed attempts. If the idea is we're after like hypertrophy and you're super setting between cable crossovers and some dumbbell presses, it doesn't matter too much in that scenario. We're just trying to get some blood in the muscle and we're after something totally different when it comes to strength. you want to make sure that what's

embedded into your code and embedded into your body, into your cells, into your DNA, you want to make sure what's embedded into your body is to know how to do the lift the right way. When you go to a competition, you have to prove to everyone mainly yourself first but you got to prove to everyone that you know how to compete you know how to do this if in sema's going and and doing a jujitsu tournament and he's acts different than every single person there and you know he does some shit you know bs move right off the bat or he's got a vaseline on his wrist or something right they're gonna be like man this guy this guy does not know what's going on. Right.

Then they're going to, then they're going to really have an eye on him. And they're gonna be like, what is this guy doing? This is a disgrace to our sport. Dude, you're disqualified. You're out of here. Right. Same thing in powerlifting. If you go out and you go to do a squat and your knees cave in and you squatted a foot high,

there's going to be like, Oh my God, like that poor guy doesn't know how to lift. That's obviously different than cheating, right? But they're going to see you and they're going to be like, I'm going to remember that guy. The next squat you come out and you try to squat a little lower, boom, red lights. Cause they're really watching you. Third one, you might even kind of get there and they might disqualify you anyway. So like this guy does not know what he's doing. He's a mess.

Someone might throw a white light your way just because they feel sorry for you, but you want to have a really good representation of yourself and make sure these lifts are something that you can do smoothly. Yeah. Is Vaseline on the wrist, Natty? Uh, no, not in jujitsu.

Definitely shouldn't do that. They're really going to question your name if you do that. They'll question a lot of things about it. Yeah. How'd you get through the, uh, the mental side of the lifting? Cause you know, that's what I'm going to be your name if you do that they'll question a lot of things about yeah how did you get through the uh the mental side of the lifting because you know that's what i'm going to be struggling with the most yeah that that mental game you know you want to try to use positive reinforcement um as i've gotten older over the last several years i've gotten to

be more and more into this and i i, I kind of wish that, uh, I kind of wish I had this mental edge when I was, when I was competing. Cause I really didn't, it wasn't really fully developed yet. Um, I always, I always try, I trained with a lot of like hate.

I trained with a lot of like anger and I utilize that as fuel, which is fine. You know, you use what you got to use, you know, uh, you do what you need to do. Um, but I wish I, I wish I had a little bit more, a little bit more of a positive perspective to kind of even things out, because I think if I set the goal to bench 900 pounds and the squat 1100 pounds, or even to, even to bench 600 pounds from a standpoint of this is what I want to do.

And this is what I'm going to do rather than no one thinks I can do it. Right. These are two different kinds of conversations. So you can use a little bit of negative reinforcement can be, it can be really positive, can almost give you like goosebumps can almost make you like almost upset before you go do something, which can be fantastic.

But you can also come from like a meditative side of things where it's a little calmer and it's like you've done this before you've been here you did this in the gym a bunch this is no different than being at super training this is absolutely the same thing it wouldn't be any different if in sema tried mma right he could kind of he can go okay well we're gonna punch and kick and things things are different but i'm just gonna pretend i'm at cassio's gym and i'm just gonna pretend that i I'm tying someone up like a pretzel, like I normally do. Yeah. And that'll get, that'll give you a sense of reassurance.

That'll help, uh, calm you down quite a bit. That's, that's how I kind of deal with it. And then on top of that, just picking the right weights really helps a lot. Cause if you, if the weight is light enough, then you know, it's not really a problem. So you're not really, you're not really truly worried about, I would suggest to playing, playing through the competition in your head all the way until we go. And anytime anything negative comes in, like you get the butterflies or stop, breathe, think about it again, you know, start, start having these conversations with yourself and you don't even have to like,

why even put so much pressure on yourself? Just say, you know what? I'm going to make every lift that I'm going to make every lift on bench. I'm going to make every lift on deadlift. I'm going to do the best possible job that I can. That way you're not even associated with the numbers. You don't have to worry about it. Cause I'm going to pick them for you anyway, based on how you lift.

It's the same as in here. I've been teaching the whole time.'t have to worry about it because i'm going to pick them for you anyway yeah based on how you lift it's the same as in here i've been teaching the whole time you got to earn the weight i'm not going to stack 20 extra pounds on there unless you showed me that you could do 20 extra pounds i might put a five on there or 10 like i'll put something small increment so it won't be any different than training in the gym and when you go up there and there's a bunch of people watching and you start to think about that and you get the nerves start to hit the nerves hit all of us yeah you could really use that nerve and nervousness as as uh as positive energy yeah i'm somewhere in the middle between you two so and seema i'm sure you're on the like you're definitely more on the chill side i mean you don't even make sounds when

you lift so what's your, mental preparation for a meet? So, I mean, I think that everyone just because, uh, you know, I keep my face super straight or I'm calm, that doesn't mean that it's better than pulling from something when you lift. I just found out that cause I tried doing that and it didn't work well for me because I couldn't maintain that. Like I couldn't maintain that energy and just what worked better for me is calming down, getting in and just, just doing it without really thinking of anything and letting it like stress me out so that's why like my face is super calm because i just focus on keeping everything relaxed and it works better for me but i think also because you're talking about the nervousness

and the butterflies like when you first mentioned that I should come on this podcast, I got that, those butterflies. But I learned that like, um, before every contest or even before jujitsu, that'll happen to me. I'll feel that. And it's, I switched that from being nervous to, it's just excitement. Like before I step on the mat, I'm excited about this. I'm not nervous. I'm excited about it. And that kind of switch and changing that helped me to get a little bit better at handling myself when I come to competition. Cause it's nothing new at this point, that feeling just cause I'm, I'm super amped to get this going. And then once I start, I'm in it, you know? But when I, when I used to think of it as like, Oh God, I'm nervous and stressing out, then that, that would, that would be a, like, I would not perform as well. Cause

it was just like a, I was thinking about it in a negative light, but like, you know, before I went on my first date with my girlfriend, I got the same feeling, but I was excited to go on a date with this beautiful woman. So I think that making that switch because it's going to happen to you, you're going to feel it. But if you, every time you feel it, you think of it like excited for me day, it's coming. I'm good. I'm excited. Then I think that could really help out a lot of people. They just switch that. That's, and these are all things that I'm like learning. And I love hearing different perspective, different, a different take. Um, you know, I've, I've talked on here many times, you know, replace the word work with opportunity. It's like, man, what a, like, what an amazing, okay, now you're going to be pissed at here and

there, and you're still going to be frustrated here and there, there's still going to be things that happen, but what if you take words and just look at them slightly differently, what if you take the, you know, take the word that you're really angry about something, rather than maybe, rather than anger and frustration, maybe use fascination instead. Just a small, it's just a small leap, you know, rather than pulling out of a super training and driving home and getting on the 80 and being like, motherfucker, I can't, that does not help the traffic. That doesn't do one thing, right? What if you, what if you turn the corner and you see it's, you know,

it's a parking lot on the freeway and you go, that's pretty interesting how that happens, how this gets all clogged up. I wonder, I wonder if I could figure out a way to help. I wonder if I could, maybe there could be technology or what if you were to stumble on making the next big app? I mean, that's the way Waze and some of these things happen, right? Maybe you can kind of use creativity or, or you could say to yourself, you know what, rather than get this frustrated, I'm just going to stay at work a little bit longer, or I'm going to yourself, you know what, rather than get this frustrated,

I'm just going to stay at work a little bit longer, or I'm going to leave a little bit earlier, or I'm going to plan my day around the traffic. Cause I really, I really dislike this. This is not, not fun for me. I don't like sitting in traffic. I'm going to learn how to fly a helicopter so I can avoid all of this. Yeah. We're supposed to get that ST helicopter, but the crank for the podcast is broken.

So we got one thing at a time. Yeah. I have to tell you an amazing story about the podcast crank. Oh no. Did you find it? So after we went off air a couple of days ago and Seema comes up to me like, so. Did he fix it? Basically.

Yeah. Cause he's like, okay, so about this crank, like what can I do to help? It was amazing. I'm like, oh, well, I mean, mean it's a it's a thing on the podcast like you know there's actually no physical like tell them about the guy that you had to call yeah but it was so good because he genuinely was like yeah dude i'm all in let me help you out wherever i can if you really need help turning this thing we need to have like a giant lever and we need to like have a video of him pulling it and then and then it just everything turns on.

Yeah, that would be sick. Lights come on, cameras come on. Yeah, I love this guy. But that was good. That was really good. That was hilarious. Oh, God. That just shows you how kind he is.

He's trying to help. He's trying to help with something that doesn't even exist. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we just didn't spoil it for a bunch of listeners. Everyone's like that crank that I invested all that money in? It's not real? Yeah.

The GoFundMe page was fraudulent? We're keeping the money though. Everyone knows how I feel now. All those believers. Anyway, everybody, we're just trying to do things a little different over here, mixing things up. So this is our version of a short podcast. And today we were just trying to mainly talk about, you know, prepping for the ST classic and how we would prepare for competition.

Uh, you heard a lot of great information today and a lot of different perspective on, on what you could do in your training. But the main message was don't lift like crap, you know, lift with good form, lift with good technique and, uh, try not to miss weights. Try not to miss any attempts uh how many lifts did you miss uh doing the 755 that you did uh deadlift none yeah none i mean i worked up to like i think and how heavy did you go i think i went up to maybe like 675 but i mean the reason why like we were able to like get that 755 is because when

we were working up to that 675, it was super easy. So you can really gauge your progress on how lower loads feel. If they're feeling like feathers, then you know, you're in for a PR, but, uh, if, you know, if they feel difficult, then you might, you might be off. Right. And then as it pertains to like something like a deadlift and we're talking about a full power meet, the ST classic is just a bench and bench and deadlift but as it pertains to doing a full powerlifting meet your squat and your deadlift if you nail them right which is difficult it's hard to organize

all this and this is why people could really utilize some coaching it's hard to really manage the two because the fatigue from both is similar you get a lot of hamstring tightness get a lot of lower back tightness and it just beats the crap out of your nervous system but if you're doing it properly the squat should enhance the deadlift and the deadlift should help enhance the squat so not easy it's not an easy thing to do but the fastest way to make sure all three lifts are heading in the right direction is just to be careful with your weight selection i'm not not saying you want to go in there and lift, lift like a wimp. But I think that most people that listen to this show, you know, if you're, if you're dealing with a coach and they're giving you percentages, I would just say, pull those percentages back by about 5%, unless your coach knows you really well, unless your coach

has seen you in person, unless you had really good, uh, history of communicating with them. If it's, if it's if it's something newer you're trying it's just a program you read online pull back those percentages a little bit it's not going to hurt you it's only going to help and then you can start to figure out okay well that was that was a little bit too easy i'd rather have you say that than to go holy shit that was way too hard anyway strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later