Peaking experience for powerlifting

[d0uevenlift]

There are a lot of lifters on this forum that are new to powerlifting and are getting ready to do their first or second meets. I thought it would be interesting to see how the various men and women here peak for their meets, and what your experience is like when you do so. Maybe it will help put the rest of us at ease when things aren't going according to plan.

Give an overview of what your training was like leading up to your peak, how you peaked and tapered, how you felt during the peak and taper, and how you performed at your meet. Age, bodyweight, sex, etc. all that relevant stuff would help.

I can start.

Age: 36
BW: 237
Sex: Male

I've done four meets now and my experience has been the same leading up to each peak and taper: things start to feel really heavy, weights don't move like I think they *should* (whatever that means), and I generally become very demotivated when I'm 1-2 weeks out.

My training blocks start out with higher volume, lower intensity, and they work their way up to lower volume and higher intensity. My volume stays fairly high leading up to the meet, where I could be squatting sets of 3-5 a week out, and benching even sets of 8 when I'm 7-10 days out. Deadlifts do take a big taper, where I'm doing triples @8 when I'm 10 days out, and then do a warmup single 5 days out.

For the most part, weights that should be an RPE 6-7 start to feel like 7-8 and sometimes 9 when I'm a week or two out. Just two weeks before I squatted 430 (at an RPE 8) at my meet, I couldn't even squat 365 for doubles. 6 days out from the meet, I benched 303 thinking it would be an @8, but it was @10. The first time I had this experience, I doubted whether my planned openers would even be reasonable second attempts.

That experience doesn't stress me out anymore. Some people feel fresh when they're 7-10 days out, some people feel like a wreck, like me. But what matters isn't how you're feeling leading up to the meet--what matters is how you feel on meet day.

At every single meet I've done, I've felt like a million bucks--and this is coming from a guy who has crappy recovery and insomnia.

[Sumo]

Male, 34
BW: 72/158(Current) but all meets I've competed at in the last 2 years have been at 145-148

I've done 5 meets in the last 2 years, and I've peaked and tapered the same way every time, and have hit PR's in all 3 lifts at every meet. Not every meet went perfectly, but every single meet I took part in I never walked away without hitting bigger weights than I did in training and in previous meets.

Psychologically I tend to get more excited as the meet approaches and I get to handle bigger weights. Physically I start to feel a very deep seated type of fatigue, bone weary as one might call it, which I forget about after a while. Weights feel heavy, motivation drops, and low grade soreness starts to build up throughout my entire body, but I know it's the home stretch so I'm fine. I usually introduce caffeine pills once I start the peaking block, to combat the aches during the session, get a tiny bit more oomph as I go into a session, and because I need to use the same caffeine pills on meet day and I want to make sure my body is familiar with it.

• First 4 weeks of normal 12 week prep it's all about volume in the 68%-83% range.
• Weeks 5 & 6 I start to transition to higher intensity and lower volume.
• Weeks 7-9 is all about high intensity & low volume, assistance work starts dropping beginning week 8.
• I hit my heaviest Deadlift Week 10(3 weeks out), and heaviest Bench & Squats Week 11. Assistance still going down and almost non-existent for Week 11.
• Week 12 is deload, all active recovery

On meet day I can barely contain my excitement. If the peak and taper went well, I feel like I really need to lift something heavy. This feeling is similar to the feeling one has when you miss a few workouts because of work/family or some other life event, and you walk into the gym feeling like a coiled spring ready to rep your max.

I have a full time job, wife and 2 kids and other life commitments. Late night training sessions are the norm for me.

[DirtyRed]

I would grind TM to an impressive/horrifying extent until about 2 weeks before the meet. I would then do one more full volume day on Monday, a light day on Wednesday, on "heavy day" stop doing so much heavy shit and just hit what I expect to open with on each lift, then do a "volume day" with half the sets and rather light weights (about 66-70% of expected maxes) the Monday before the meet, then just glorified active recovery that Wednesday with a set of 5 for each lift and 50% weight, then the meet that Saturday.

Did this for three meets, with decent, pretty good, and kind of crappy results. It might be able to be done better than this.