How I Prepped To Crush Shit At A Meet

First, a disclaimer- this is not what I suggest everyone does, but rather what I did in preparation for this meet for a month.  Frankly, it didn't deviate all that much from my normal training, and it's certainly not exact, as I detest recording my daily workouts.  With those things in mind, I'm not a powerlifter, so I've no idea if this shit is in any way ideal for that sport, but it afforded me the opportunity to kick a bit of ass.  As an fyi, I technically started my diet 5 weeks out, as I knew I would take 4 days off before the meet.

I'll have that.

First, the diet.  My diet was essentially low carb and low fat for the duration of the prep, as I needed to cut weight.  As such, I ate between one and two lbs of 93% lean ground beef a day, supplemented with 3 to 5 Matrix 5.0 or Myofusion Shakes a day (including one overnight).  This meant that I was consuming roughly 32 -64g of fat and 92-184g protein from the meat, and 138-230g protein, 12-20g carbs, and 12-20g fat per day from shakes.  For the first three weeks, I ate probably more along the lines of 2-2.5 lbs of ground beef a day and had around 3 or 4 shakes, but it depended greatly on my level of hunger.  To keep my carbs as low as possible, I made the burgers into patties and topped them with low carb beef gravy for the first 2.5 weeks, and then switched to Sriracha sauce and Piri Piri sauce to lower the carbs further.  Additionally, since spicy foods speed the metabolism, I thought this might aid with last-ditch fatloss.  In the event that I was particularly exhausted or hungry, I supplemented the beef with either beef ribs with a dry rub or my ubiquitous chicken wings, which helped stave off hunger and gave me a needed calorie influx to aid training.  Though it wasn't an exact science, I found that although I dropped visible bodyfat, my weight didn't really change until I started cutting down on my cheats.

Best. Diet Food.  Ever.

I had one cheat meal a week, friday night, during which I generally ate pizza and went to the movies, and then had one or two additional low-fat, medium carb days thereafter.  Prior to my cheat meal, I generally kept my carbs as low as I did during the week, but on the weekends, I made low-carb Flatout pizzas with low carb pizza sauce and had the occasional Chicken Schwarama, which is essentially a burrito, topped in this case only with the hottest Lebanese hot sauce.  If I drank, I'd do it on Saturday, during a medium-carb day, and drank vodka in Minute Maid Light Lemonaid to keep the carbs low.  I also ensured that I took extra fatburners on those days to facilitate more thermogenesis with the influx of the alcohol calories.  My fourth cheat was really just 93% lean ground beef made into taco meat, and eaten with Tostitos scoops after being slathered with Taco Bell hot sauce.  I washed that down with a liberal amount of Minute Maid Light Lemonaide and Vikingfjord, which got me hammered to pieces in very short order, and had me asleep before I was able to wreck much havoc.

For fatburners, I was taking 25-50 mg ephedrine, 200-400 mg caffeine, and 25 mg aspirin.  In the last week, I switched to a diuretic caffeine pill, Kranker2, to help me shed water in the last couple of days, and bumped my water intake up to 2-3 gallons a day until the Thursday prior to the meet.

I stopped eating and drinking on Thursday night around 10, and had nothing until weigh in.  That fucking sucked, but chewing gum the entire day definitely helped.

For training, not much changed.  I never lifted fewer than 8 times a week, and believe I lifted 11 times a week for the first two.  My morning workouts generally consisted of either bodyweight exercises or light barbell work for 20-30 minutes, usually done in a circuit fashion.  Evening workouts were 3 reps or fewer on everything, and I dropped arm workouts altogether during this time.  I squatted light in the mornings 2x a week, and heavy twice a week as well, working partials at various heights.  To my recollection, I might have done full squats three times in that month, which was ill-considered, given my subsequent inability to gauge my depth.

Monday after the meet.

For the most part, I abandoned direct arm work.  I would occasionally do a few sets of pushdowns here and there, and frequently did curl and press in the mornings, but more or less abandoned my arm supersets.  They appear, however, not to have hurt my arm development at all.

If I had anything approaching a typical routine, it looked like this:

Monday:

AM: 30 mins

Curl and Press 4x10, 4x5, 3x3

Bodymaster Machine Squat 10x10x225

PM

Shrugs

8x5x775

Reverse Grip Bench Press from the bottom position 8x3x315, 5x1x335

Tuesday: 30 mins

AM

Abs and Donkey Calf Raise (superset)

Dips and Pullups (superset)
Grip

PM

1/2 Squat 15-20x1x775

Weighted Dips 5x5-8x3 plates
Grip

Wednesday

AM

Clean and Press 10x3x225
Grip

PM

BTN Press 10x3x295

200 pullups

Abs
Grip

Thursday:

AM

Machine circuit for 20 mins, on whatever machines struck my fancy.  Found myself doing pullovers a lot, for some reason.
Grip

PM

Jump Squats 10x5x225
High Pulls 10x3x315
Grip

Friday
AM
I occasionally skipped this, due to exhaustion, but would come in and work anything that didn't hurt horribly.

PM
Either Reverse Grip again, or Flat Bench Press for 45 mins, doing singles, doubles, and triples.  I only flat bench pressed with a regular grip 2 or 3 times, due to the fact that 1) I fucking hate the flat bench press, 2) I was dealing with a weird shoulder issue, and 3) I fucking hate the bench press.

Saturday
Either a Pull and Squat or Push and Squat Fiesta.  This workout usually lasted 1.5-2 hours and consisted of whatever exercises I wanted to do that day, be they cleans, deadlifts (which I only did once in the 5 weeks leading up to the meet, for reasons I will describe in a second), rack deads, shrugs, or one arm lifts.  For presses, I mostly stuck to overhead work and weighted dips, and for squats, I worked off the pins at various heights ranging from parallel to just below lockout, but always singles on everything.  I also hit grip on this day, exactly as I did on the other days- a mixture of heavy wrist rollers, plate pinching, baseball curls, and simulating the lever with a sledgehammer with a cambered, preloaded barbell.  I never went to complete failure, but made sure I hit them hard every day.

My gym sucks ass, so it closes on Saturday at anywhere between 12 and 2 (they like to change their hours) and is closed on Sunday, which fucked me in my prep.  I let them know about it, loudly and frequently.

That was pretty much it.  I trained everything as heavy as I could, as often as I could, with as much volume as I could, for between 1.5 and 2 hours a day, every day.  As far as  deadlifts, my back cramps horribly, as I've mentioned, when I deadlift heavy.  Additionally, I couldn't train without straps because I've bent all of the bars in my gym into a U shape, and they're all bereft of knurling.  Thus, I stuck to a shitload of heavy grip work, squatting, cleans and high pulls, and shrugging.

Though I see things I might have done differently (like practicing full squats, for instance) and adding in more full squatting with front squats, I'm pretty pleased with my efforts.  I can't guarantee you'll all see the same results I did with this style of PL meet prep, but I can tell you that it seemed to work for me.

One last note- you do not need to carry on like a fucking lunatic whilst setting up to complete a lift.  As you've seen from my videos, I don't fret like a fucking bitch about foot placement, the clothes I wear, or take a minute and a fucking half to set up for a lift- I grab the bar or get the fuck under it and lift it.  I saw more ridiculous bullshit while people much larger than me prepared to lift much lighter weights than I, and couldn't help but wonder if they felt as embarrassed as I felt disgusted.  It's akin to setting up a press conference to display to the world the "artwork" of a 3 year old artistic kid.  You're embarrassing yourself when you do that, and it's fucking pointless- if you're not strong enough to lift the fucking weight, no amount of fucking carrying on will allow you to be.  If you're confused, I'm not talking about the slapping and and the poppers, which are simply amusing- I'm talking about the 30 seconds to set one's feet, then an ultra-dramatic rise of the arms in the air and equally slow and dramatic lowering to the bar on deadlift... the 2 minute setup underneath the bar to squat an opener... the 90 seconds spent getting a beautiful arch while benching.  I opened with weights I could lift cold, and still fucking crushed everyone.  Don't be that fucking guy- just lift the fucking weight already so everybody can go the fuck home.

See?  No shenanigans.  Grab it and fucking lift it already.