Another meet write up/testimonial

Awesome testimonial from Donald Deiwert!  He continues the trend of hitting PR's and going 9/9 at meets using the strong-15.  I keep telling everyone, good PROGRAMMING is the key.  Not blindly walking into a meet HOPING or guessing what you can hit......

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I’m a 40 year old lifter whom been back at it for a little over 3 ½ years after a seven year layoff. I am currently a Lifetime drug free and unequipped In NASA and the USAPL. Since I’ve been back at it I have dicked around with several different programs such as Westside and others, with alright results.
Except, when it came to meet time.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to fully transfer my numbers from training to the actual meet platform. This was becoming a major fucking headache and pain in my ass. Luckily, I become aware of Paul from his appearance on Iron Radio a few months back.
At the time I was looking at competing in The NASA USA Nationals in Ohio the coming June. So I visited Paul’s blog. I realized his approach and philosophy regarding training matched closes to my own before I allowed outside influences to poison it. Well I decided to take a chance and got his E-book and ran Strong 15 for my June Meet.

To begin with I started to run it as such. Squat, Bench, Dead days. After the first 3 weeks I had a rude awakening that I’m a old bastard and I wasn’t recovering from doing squats and deads in a seven day period.
I ended up having to combine the two days as Paul has listed in the strong 15 routine. So for the final 6 weeks the template looked like this.

Sunday: Squat and Deads

First off I did a slight modification from the original protocol. Instead of doing pause squats as the back off I went with doing the dead protocol.

Squats – as written minus back off

4 “block pulls

Deads from floor using back off protocol

Standing band crunches



Tuesday: Bench

Bench – as wrote

Incline bench: 2 x 8-10

Standing behind the neck press: 2 x 10-12

Skull crushers: 2 x 10 -12



Thursday: other shit

T – Bar or Kroc rows

Pull downs 4 x 8 – 10

Shrugs: 3 x 10 -15

Arm curls: 2 x 10



Going into it I had a conservative idea going into the routine of my attempts following Paul's outline. I made adjustments when needed based on my projected maxes based on my performance on the end of the three week blocks.

The final outcome was this.



Squat:






1st attempt: 474 …no issues went up easy

2nd attempt: 513….Meet PR. Ok, I had to decide to stick with original planned 3rd attempt or bump up another 15 for 550. I played it safe and stuck with my original attempt.

3rd attempt: 535…Meet PR; I would have, in all reality, gotten the 550 if I took it but I’m fine with my decision not to try for it.



Bench:

1st attempt: 355…..easy

2nd attempt: 386….not too bad, noticed I was having issues on the eccentric portion

3rd attempt: 413…Meet PR; lost tightness had to grind the bastard up.



Dead lift:

1st attempt: 474….blew it up

2nd attempt: 518 …easy

3rd attempt: 551…Tied Meet PR, had at least 25 or 50 lbs. left in the tank easy.



I well I met all my goals which I set out to do when I started peaking for this Meet.

1. Exceeded all my numbers from the Last Meet in October. Over 89 more pounds on my total

2. Went 9 for 9 which was the first time ever.

3. Set 4 different Meet Pr’s

All in all it was good meet. First time I’ve done one that my meets numbers have reflected my gym numbers. It pretty much boiled down to properly picking good training numbers with a solid plan to peak at the right time. Which Paul’s Strong 15 does delivers.



Donald “DOG” Deiwert