Meet coaching write up
Saturday I was supposed to do 520×5 extrawide off a 1 mat. I almost always stick to the program, but sometimes you have to make adjustments when you’re out of your element. We left friday at 12 for Tallahassee drove almost 6 hours there in Marks truck, shared a king bed with 2 other dudes (3 other at one point when marks air mattress deflated), and my nutrition was way off. On top of that we were up at 5:45 and I was lifting by 7am. So I ended up doing 523 just off the floor, still extra wide stance, and got to the third and knew I didn’t have 2 good reps left in me. I was pretty happy with the way the first and third reps looked. I’m focusing on making the bar go straight up, and not shifting forward. I shift forward on the 2nd, and not too bad on the third.
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I’m gunna write a little bit about picking attempts at meets. I’ll put out the disclaimer that I’m no great coach or even close, just giving my general process of thinking through it. Maybe it’ll help you in some way, or maybe you can tell me how big I messed up. I really was only responsible for Mark, Cody, and Jps numbers. And Mark ended up picking most of his.
Jp is a 181 freshman. He did not have his best meet ever, and he’s a lot stronger than he performed here. We opened on squat at 540 (his best triple in the gym was 565, if that gives you any idea of how conservative we go on openers). He killed his opener but got 2 reds and 1 white for depth. If this had been JPs first meet, I would have just stayed there, because you never want a beginner to bomb out, it will likely kill them mentally from then on out. Since this wasn’t Jp’s first rodeo, we went to 562. If he had got his first attempt I would have likely gone 573, just to give you a reference. Again, on his second attempt of 562, he got 3 reds for depth. At this point, I did not go up for his third. Even though he killed 562 easy, I had to make sure he got in the meet. Concerning the mental aspect of coaching… If Jp had made his second attempt but it looked like a struggle, and we had gone up, I would have done a little more psyching him up in that scenario. But since this was easy weight for him, I tried not to get him too pumped up but instead just remind him of what he needed to do. I had him move his stance in a bit, he likes to squat wider and is stronger out there, but as a result its harder for him to hit depth. He went out there and made the lift and was in the meet, after causing me a near heart attack. Despite this less than perfect meet, I’m still confident he’ll squat at least 633 at collegiates in 6 months, because I know he had 600 in him saturday.
Cody is a light 198 (185 pounds at weigh in) and he opened somewhere around 556. Went out there and crushed it. Went to 584 on his second. It did not look as easy I had wanted it to. None the less, the ga teen state record for squat was 617, and this was his last meet as a teen, so it would have been just wrong to put 611 on there (which is what I would have gone based on how 584 looked). Also, I know Cody pretty well, and he has an uncanny ability to just man up and do things when he has to. To make this squat more impressive, I was wrapping both him and Mark. By third attempts they were back to back in the order. So I had to wrap Cody a tad early, so that I would have time to wrap mark too. So Cody was in extremely tight wraps for about 3 minutes before he went out there. I figured there was a 50/50 shot he would go out there and collapse from his legs going numb. But it was a risk I was willing to take since Cody’s a ginger and it wouldn’t be a large loss. Luckily, Cody went out there and hit it, taking Matt Goldin’s record from 2000, weighing 13 pounds under the weight limit.
Mark is a 220, I was mainly just suggesting for his numbers and he had the final say. He smashed 601 on his opener but was high (At this point I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t have made our team shirts say “go deep or go home.”). Again, since mark has done well over a dozen meets in the last few years, we jumped straight to 638 or 644 (I don’t remember) like we had planned. He got depth and just absolutely smoked that, so again we made a decently big jump to 672. He got down there, got all kinds of loose, and didn’t come back up with it.
It was a decent meet overall, and I’m confident Cody and Jp are going to go post huge totals at collegiates in April. I’ll write some more about the bench and dead lifts tomorrow.
