Bryan's journal

[Bryan Dobson]

Thursday 24 July, 2014
TRAC
Says I'm stressed. ( sick dog rough work week) I may have some nervous anxiety from the Deload ,I was hoping to be more collected but still a few days to get rested.

Squat
Wu to 355

Bench
Wu 225

Body and joints feel good.( allergies are flared up) Warmups were crisp. Despite the odd sleep this week I am bubbling over with barbell energy trying to let that build. My comp fit Rehbands came in yesterday. I won't even try them until my first attempt.

[mkgillman]

Good luck tomorrow. I bet all the stress and worries just evaporate when you get back in the warm up room. Looking forward to the report.

[Lakshmi Meadows]

Sorry about your sick dog, hope he gets better. I can relate to that stress.
Looks like you're peaking at the right time and you're ready to go out and have a great meet.
Have a great day! Looking forward to your meet recap!

[Oldman]

Good luck, Bryan!

[Bryan Dobson]

Thanks guys I am driving to Colorado Springs in the morning and will spend the night. I lift on Sunday.

[Bryan Dobson]

Sunday 27 July 2014 meet results
A well organized meet for the Colorado state games out on my the RMLC. Only took 3 hours. Which is light speed for a USAPL event.

Squat
413.4
435.6
446.4(202.5kg) 11 pound comp raw pr. 27.5 pound meet pr. ( my best lift of the day very solid, had some left maybe 5-10 pounds.

Bench. A different story
264.4 x. Ass up apparently
264.4 x my left foot moved or heel came up
264.4. 2 whites. ( 5 pound meet pr)


Something was different. Maybe the bench was lower than my rogue at home leading to me not being able to get my knees below the bench plane. I need to address this. stayed in the comp..barely.

I weighed in at 100.77kg so I had to compete with the 242s. I was alone in my masters class at this weight. Next year it will be 105kg class so no worries.

Deadlift
463
490.2 (222.5kg)pr 5 pounds over gym, 15 pound meet pr.
501.55(227.5) came off the floor and stuck below the kneesxxxxx I will get this by October.

Total 1201.5 meet total pr.
I feel good about everything besides the bench. I am only going to film my feet and ass while benching for a while and try to correct this issue I am apparently using too much leg drive. I am already formulating programming to correct.

Push/pull meet next in October that I will do locally in Durango. I have time to recover a bit and go Into another block and try to add ten pounds to my deadlift and try to figure what happened on the Bench.

[mkgillman]

Solid performance all around. Did you have video of your lifts? I have found that usapl crews tend to have the things that they go out of their way to red light and I wonder if that crew was focused on the bench.

Regardless, awesome job pulling off the third attempt.

[Bryan Dobson]

Oh, if I wasn't faulting they wouldn't have had anything to call, if they weren't looking for common faults all kind of lifts would go through. I have apparently been living with something my camera angles didn't catch.
I wish I had video but no all I know is I have a butt gap issue and my heel wants to come up.

[Walter Palmer]

Bryan,

Really great lifting and you should be very proud of that SQ and DL! On the bench, looking back at your plan going into the meet, it looks like you left 10-15 pounds on the platform from your attempts schedule (although no guarantee, of course, that you would have made the 280 third attempt). However, the 264.4 was in the range of your current PR, yes?

As for technique cues, I try to think about leg drive being towards my head, not perpendicular to the floor. In other words, it is not driving up in the air, it is driving towards the chest and head which is easier to do on really heavy attempts because the weight is pinning the shoulders to the bench. At lighter weights, you can move your whole body up the bench and out of position. Anyhow, just an idea as you try to correct this for the future.

Great PR's and that 500 pound pull is right there for the taking in a couple of months!

[Bryan Dobson]

Thanks Walter. 264 was probably a little heavy for the opener. I could tng triple that but not pause them all( something to consider to get on the board with less stress next time) I have hit 275 paused on my own but that doesn't mean as much as a meet pr. It is a meet pr and that probably should have cued me in to drop it a bit for an opener. I am going to work harder but also try your drive back cue to correct this. The fault was hard to fix between attempts. Once you have muscle memory it is hard to break previous cues. The third attempt I even tried not to use leg drive and one judge still saw air below my cheek.
I am going to play with my foot position the next few weeks And work on good clean comp style bench presses. I am also going to work on increasing brute upper body strength and my patience. The damn bench is moving and I was happy with it before the meet so I don't want to change my programming much due to a technical error on my part.

My squat was dialed in though, DIALED. 9 white lights