Thread: Competition Dead higher than normal?

Everybody has off days. Plus competition gets your adreniline(SP) going.

The bar was made of rubber in that competetion so it bends with the puny weight that amauturs use in an attempt to impress people that come.... thats why you cant press as much with a real bar.

comp maxes are always higher than training maxes because of the environment. people watching you, psyching up, adrenaline rushing, and just the whole "leave everything out there" attitude. it happens to everyone.

I'd say it could easily go either way at a comp, but that goes hand in hand with how that particular day plays out for you, and equipment variations.

I've had amazing up days, and I've had some semi crappy downers.

I dont lift numbers like I used to, so just because you hit something once upon a time doesn't mean it will always be that way... Ryan Kennely hit a 950 bench ONCE and hasn't been I think past bottom 900s at best since then.

Maybe Uranus was blocking Pluto that night, who knows.

From my experiences, the more you progress the more sensative you will find yourself to outside influences. Meaning, one day will be different from the next, not every night is a PR night and not every night will you even be within 5-15 pounds of a PR, or maybe even worse. The time I go into the gym, what I eat and when I eat it, my mood, noise levels in the gym, or maybe even the music in my MP3 player all have the possibilities of playing a role in my lifting. Some people are very good at having a very successfull attitude in the gym every single time, some people to a lesser extent. These are just the laws of nature. Also, the closer you get to risking injury just with the weights you push if you even have an off day. I was just telling someone last night in the gym that if I dont feel like going, I DONT, because I have had injuries and they sometimes come from anything so small as to be on my mind that my form is off for a split second on a very heavy set.

Just too many factors, we are not perfect machines.

Bill Kazmier once in WSM stuck an amonia cap up each nostril before an event (dont know which one). That would eat my brain, but for him at that moment, that was his insanity that made him probably do better than he would have at any other given moment.

Obviously that kind of competition is a bit different than PL, but you probably have more chance at setting a PR in a dead at competition time than a bench as my guess - since the only thing you have to do is show control of the weight essentially instead of sitting parked under hundreds of pounds waiting for "PRESS!"

What you experienced is known as 'muscle rebound'.

Happened to me loads of times.

There are a lot of variables that play a part in this. However, it is definitely no uncommon to hit your highest numbers in competition.