Meet reports are something I enjoyed quite a bit from the other place, so I thought I’d do one and hopefully get the ball rolling on Lemmy.

Last Sunday was the Rocky Mountain State Games meet. It was my sixth meet overall and my third after moving to Colorado. It seems like the competition in Colorado is much tougher than it was in Texas as I haven’t placed above 5th place since moving here lol.

I trained for about 9 months total for this competition. My meet prior to this one was 1 October, 2022. My training was broken up this time around by an injury and a 2 week trip to Japan that involved minimal training (bands only). The injury was an SI joint issue that crops up once or twice per year that required me to do easy sessions for 2-3 weeks. The program I run is Sheiko Gold. It consists of going up to RPE 8 on hard days and RPE 7 on recovery days. Due to my injury, probably half of my training was easier recover days. I fully expected my strength to decrease due to this.

The meet was held at the D1 training facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. The warmup situation was mostly good - plenty of squat racks to go around and most people were able to get their own. As usual, my wife came along with me to serve as my coach for the meet.

Squats went better than expected. I opened at 155 kg but jumped the squat command and got 3 red lights. It was a very snappy lift so I decided to increase 10 kg to 165 kg. 165 moved pretty well, at RPE 7 weight, but I decided to play it safe for the next lift and only increased 2.5 kg to 167.5 kg. This last attempt was more difficult, at an RPE 8, but I think I could have jumped 5 to 7.5 kg and still have gotten it.

Bench was fun. This was the lift I was expecting to set a PR on. I opened at 115 kg, which felt great, so I increased to 120 kg. This was a little more difficult than expected, but I really wanted a PR so I increased 5 kg more to 125 kg. Here, sadly, I got stuck halfway up and missed the lift. I think I could have gotten it on a better day.

Deadlifts were the most interesting lift! I opened at 175 kg, smashed that attempt and was expecting to go to 185 kg. My wife accidentally told the people at the desk my third attempt weight even though I was only going for my second attempt at that time. So I made a big jump from 175 kg to 192.5 kg. 192.5 was a dream weight and I didn’t think I could get it. Other athletes were screaming at me, hyping me up. I got it! It was an absolute grind but I got it. Needless to say, I didn’t come out for a third attempt.

Overall, it was a fun meet so I’d say it was successful. I didn’t lose too much strength although I didn’t train super hard for it. I’m looking forward to the next on in February, and plan on working a lot harder for it!

Videos:

Squat

Bench

Deadlift