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I will try to keep this post short, but inevitably it will be longer than I am hoping for. First, an introduction of myself: My name is Matt and I am 23 years old. I am currently a grad student studying structural engineering at UCLA but was born and raised in upstate NY. I have been weight training since the age of 13. I started it in conjunction with the sports I did (football and track). Then in college I spent the good part of 4 years learning as much as I could (through trial and a lot of error) about weight training (I really enjoy being a student of the sport). My final year of college I saw "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" and got introduced to Powerlifting. Then I found out my school had a team. So I joined, and had some moderate success for someone new to the sport. I competed in USAPL Collegiate Nationals last year and unfortunately it has also been the last meet I did. I will be competing in them again this year. My current PRs are as follows (181 class): Equipped (in the gym, since the long layoff in meets): 535 SQ, 365 BN, 515 DL Raw: 405 SQ, 285 BN, 505 DL While I am happy with my lifts I am far from satisfied (satisfaction breeds contentment which inhibits desire). And I DESIRE to be much stronger! I have read the RTS Manual as well as the articles on this site and feel that I have a good understanding of the concepts. Obviously certain ideas (RPE, stress management, fatigue) will take some getting used to in order to gauge them appropriately. I have a certain amount of knowledge in regard to my body and its reaction to workouts as well as good knowledge of my weaknesses within the competition lifts. This leads to my questions which are general in scope and which I hope to narrow down through eventual dialogue within this thread. My next meet is in 9 weeks and I want to develop a training program using RTS. I would like some input as how best to approach this utilizing RTS. I have looked at the general template versus the unidirectional template and knowing my specific weaknesses (strength out of the hole for squat, lockout for bench, and lockout for deadlift) I feel utilizing the unidirectional template would be more beneficial. Is it recommended in my case to skip over the general template like this? In regard to volume and intensity blocks - for a 9 week "cycle" peaking for a meet how long should/can an intensity block be? I had been training hard to peak for a meet in early February which I ended up getting injured and not competing. So I am in need of less intensity/stress. I was planning on trying a 3 week volume block followed by a six week intensity block - opinions on this? For the 9 week "cycle" should every week have some equipped lifting, or should I not begin equipped lifting until say 4 or 5 weeks out? I know this may be mostly a personal choice but I was wondering what peoples thoughts were on it? On the topic of equipped lifting - I somewhat recently bought a stock 42 A/S Super Katana and have had the hardest time in trying to touch weights properly (I have been belly benching it). While I am not a shirt technician in any sense, I have never had this much trouble. Are there any ideas out there on how to remedy this? The one thing I plan on trying is untorquing the sleeves, but other than that I am at a loss. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Ryan Celli at a meet and he had a similar problem with the Katana and he switched to a F6 custom using the Katana fabric. Might this be an option (I don't know much about the F6)? Alright, while I have a couple other questions, I will wait on them till I get some feedback on these questions. Plus I think my post is long enough as is. Thanks, it is great to be a part of the RTS community! Matt |
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