Team Hogan @ 2024 USAPL Raw Nationals - 9/6-8/24

Ah yes, Regionals. This meet holds a special place in my heart for a few reasons, and this weekend was a full circle moment for myself and co-director Andrew Graves. Let’s do a bit of a rewind.

The year is 2019, I am 1.5 years into “coaching”, which really was soft program design and guidance, not charging a dime, and working with I think 3 total athletes at the time. I find myself in Connecticut, at the Mohegan Sun, coaching Andrew for what we thought was the biggest meet next to Nationals, which, on paper at least, it was. This was long before pro meets, long before invite-only primetime meets, it was pretty cut and dry. Andrew was not under my programming, in fact, he was running (and dying) from Layne Norton’s PH3 into the meet. Andrew puked while “rehydrating”, which really was eat as many BBQ chips as possible with ice cold pedialyte. It was my second ever meet handling at, and boy was I in over my head. I had never used a combo rack, did not understand kilo math, and we somehow got so behind on squat warmups that we had to skip not one, but 2 warmups, and his last warm was easily 90 seconds before his opening squat. Andrew went on to win his division that day, which felt like a major breakthrough, for the both of us.

Fast forward to 2024, those 2 asshats were in charge of running this very meet and in my eyes, elevated it higher than most could ever imagine. The same person who had a roster of 1 at the meet in 2019, had a roster of 13 in 2024 doing the meet, and leads a roster of 48 athletes in total. This weekend was a long one, with us getting up at 6am and ending the day at 3am on Friday, ending the day at 1:30am on Saturday, then the same on Sunday, add in set up on Friday, take down on Sunday, then finishing returns on Monday. Safe to say however, this was well worth it, per reports from everyone who did the meet and I personally could not be more happy with how things turned out. 

For transparency sake, there were a few things that did bother me going into this day. The first of which was an in-team issue that caused me to have to remove a lifter literally 5 days out, which, will stay private, but kind of pulled the rug out from under us immediately. More on that in a bit. The next was some initial push back I got to the team scoring division which frankly I thought was completely unwarranted. I am all for constructive criticism, but the opinion that the scoring was favored for lifters with the most athletes doing the meet was simply asinine and per the 10+ people who reached out and thanked me personally for featuring it in the manner in which we did, it is safe to say everything was fair and square and fun for all involved. Lastly, the biggest thing that bothered me was the lack of support from USA Powerlifting. We did not have any help beyond being granted the sanction from our regionals appointed individual, I had to personally DM the USAPL account on instagram to get posted on the main feed, and unless we pumped out content, you would have never known the meet actually happened. This simply needs to change and I truly hope USAPL starts taking these meets more seriously as this is what is keeping the federation relevant for many. 

Now that I am done yapping, how about we talk about the 13 individuals who competed under the Team Hogan name over the weekend? I am going to go in order of session for uniformity sake. 

Grace Poirier

Crazy to see Grace’s progress in this sport in real time. I said it before, but I literally remember vividly taking her on as an athlete, going through how to even execute a lot of these lifts in general, and to see that start, to where she is at now, is nothing short of break-taking. This was Grace’s 4th meet in a little under a year and I am happy to report we have improved total and DOTS in each meet and reached some major milestones in the process! This meet being a very short turn around from Maine States, we knew to temper expectations and unfortunately got hit with sickness about 4 days out in which she showed up to the meet noticeably shaky on squat. However, after the squat portion of the meet, she came back to life, able to meet PR on bench and all time PR on deadlift and hit her first deadlift over 300lbs in meet, with pretty much all odds stacked against her. She did all this after experiencing her first squat miss, I think ever, which, was a bit atypical as her second moved with conviction but goes back to the shakiness of being sick, more than anything. Her training was pretty dialed in and has been for a while, we have aligned 4 week blocks for every meet since the 1st, and like clockwork we are penciled in for big W4s virtually of anything else that comes before it. We both look forward to taking some time to not compete as often to rebuild her base and trial some new things, but for now, she should be proud of what was an incredible training and competition year. A euphoric day to say the least and she was around all weekend helping out with stuff in terms of take-down, which goes to show her character, more than anything.

Results:

Squat: 120kg/264lbs

Bench: 55kg/121bs, +6lbs PR

Deadlift: 137.5kg, +6lbs PR

Total: 307.5kg/689lbs, +11lbs PR

Haley-Jane Tuplin

The journey to even get to this meet for Haley is nothing short of incredible. A few months after her first meet, which actually fell around the same time as this one just a year later, I had got an update from her in a hospital bed, with the beacon that she was going to be out for a bit. Torn ACL from field hockey, which, of course, threw a bit of a wrench into what was a pretty explosive debut in the sport. As she got into specific rehab she had reached out towards end stages of it to get back on program, and to address some very glaring strength deficits while working around the injury. Progress at first was slow, dare I say, very slow, but when it finally took, man did it start to shine. Typical post injury stuff I have seen, in that objectively the clearance is there but mentally you can’t trust the positions that put the area under the most duress, whether that be conscious or subconscious. As alluded to in the previous meet recap, we elected to train through the Stand Strong meet to get feel for competition again before going into a regional championship, which I think 100% was the right call as she did not have to worry about any execution things in what was the biggest meet of her career, thus far. 

One thing that took a major upswing this preparation period was deadlift, we had been tweaking with technique a bit, but to be honest the main keys were simply not letting the head dip straight down at the floor and being a bit quicker with grip application. 

About a week out, she had what I would like to call, a horror session. Long story short, extraneous circumstances kind of showed up and caused lifts that were normally quite routine for her to be extremely difficult. No big deal, we relied on our strong week, tapered a bit more than usual, and on meet day she went off. Opened the day with quite the squat grind for a PR, matched her best bench, this time much easier, and for deads, I actually went 2.5kg above the top end heavy range because things were flying. After a year that featured surgery, recovery, and everything that stems from it, she walked away with a 140kg/308lb deadlift PR, with even more in the tank off a 280lbs final heavy pull in preparation. There were times early on where she was borderline failing 265lbs. Nothing short of incredible, but this is just the beginning, I look forward to growing the squat even more now and that is something we will be focusing on.

Results:

Squat: 105kg/231lbs, +6lbs PR

Bench: 67.5kg/148bs

Deadlift: 140kg, +6lbs PR

Total: 307.5kg/689lbs, +22lbs PR

Brie Cowing

Nothing short of incredible progress from Brie since we started working together in May of ‘23. I think above everything, I look at her history before we started, had not PR’d her squat in meet since 2021, had not made a third attempt bench… ever, and her total stayed at 315kg, just in different permutations of numbers this entire duration. To not only bust past those plateaus, but to really show no signs of stopping, that is cool to me above all.

One thing I noticed this meet, compared to the first, was a bit more nerves on squat, which could 100% just be my assumption but this meet carried a bit more magnitude than all the others she had done previously. The other glaring thing I noticed was bodyweight was LOW, I would have to go back and check exactly, but for the duration of this prep we are 149lbs+ and weigh in on the day was 143.6lbs, which tells me either the scale was not accurate to begin with or we simply pushed fasting/food sources too aggressively. This is solely on me and this is something I know effected top ends for the day, simply need to be better here and I told her this is something I will look to manage better next time.

Nonetheless, we elected to be a bit conservative on squat as it was already a 7.5kg PR, we might have had a touch more on the day but with the nerves/shakiness, it was not worth the extra risk. On bench, we were already ahead of pace by second bench, missing the third that just was not there on the day, still a 5kg PR, on deadlift, we missed the third for the same reason just was not quite there, we could have gone up 2.5kg to secure an even bigger PR total, or go for 5kg more in order to move into 9th place to pick up an extra team point, so I do not regret it really.

Meets like this are always a mixed bag, on a 7/9 day, she PR’d her squat, bench, total, and DOTS all in one go, but we both know there was more to be desired.

Post meets training, we are overhauling quite a bit for deadlift and I am not going to jinx it, but when it is time to reveal, you will see a meet PR pull from her next meet to the tune of a total PR that will make this one look like a joke. 

A very introspective and thoughtful lifter, in terms of being a model athlete, I would be hard-pressed to find a lifter who is more well-rounded in terms of constructive and detailed feedback and receptiveness to being coached, which makes my job so much easier and is a reason why I think we have been able to make as progress as we have. Time to become large and in charge.

Results:

Squat: 130kg/286lbs, +16lbs PR

Bench: 62.5kg/137lbs, +11lbs PR

Deadlift: 142.5kg/314lbs

Total: 335kg/738lbs, +33lbs PR

Brittany Boxer

The prep from hell. 

Wait, I thought that was Maine States? Nope, we doubled down even more here… and then some.

In all seriousness, this preparation period for Brittany was the culmination of several things at once. The biggest thing and lowest hanging fruit is this was her 6th consecutive meet prep, never having more than 16 weeks between meets since the summer 2022. Now, equally, we have made some insane progress during this time period, going back and looking on it, we have put 17.5kg on her squat, 15kg on her bench, and 22.5kg on deadlift, to the tune of 57.5kg on her total, 45 points to DOTS. So Brittany, I don’t know if you will read this, but this is insane and you should be very proud of all this above all.

To make a longer story short, we had very little continuity and momentum in her training since Maine States. I actually think almost all squat above 300lbs were failed, culminating in a fail of 285lbs a week out, off the back of a 350lbs deadlift fail which was poor judgment on my part and not hers at all, ironically, bench was the strongest it had ever been despite this. A lot of sessions had to be taken north of 10pm after a long workday, Saturday sessions sometimes had to be split into two separate sessions, she got sick, her daughter got sick, seemingly everything that could go wrong, did. Brittany is a bit finicky as with her longer levers, there is so much more “work” being done per rep compared to more compact lifters, and we learned now that we simply cannot deadlift mega heavy the week of heavy squatting, so long as the deadlift comes before that squat session, an adjustment we are trialing now we are in a much needed off-season. 

So, we were looking at going into this meet, on paper down about 12.5kg on squat, up 2.5kg on bench, and at the very least, at or 2.5kg above her best deadlift. We had a phone call discussing how we were going to approach this as she had a real possibility of medaling at this meet and I wanted to at the very least, see it through that we could be in the best possible position to do so.

Truly calling attempts by eye sight, we somehow were able to squat 137.5kg, 5kg short of her all time best, but the heaviest she had successfully squatted since Maine States. Bench went off with a hitch, all time PR and meet PR of 70kg! Then, the deadlift debacle.

So, we knew we were going to have a shot at 5th here, and I knew it would be down to the wire, so, we took our planned 1sts and 2nds and then waited. I put in a place holder attempt of 162.5kg because I knew we needed to be at 157.5kg minimum based on what our opposition did and to see if they would bite. I feel pretty confident in knowing how she moves, and although a pull looks quick, with where she tends to default, what looks like 10kg in the tank is really 5kg. Based on the second, I thought 155kg was the right call, however, 157.5kg would be the number so I was okay going 2.5kg north of that to try to medal, however, what had happened, was 155kg was the declared weight for a lifter, as I prepared the card, as soon as that lift was over, I went over to go submit 157.5kg before the declared weight of 160kg for the next lifter was on the bar, as you have until the bar is loaded to submit an attempt change. I then got 2 people telling me that I cannot go down in weight, which I was aware of and I said I submitted it before the bar was loaded and I am not going down in weight, the attempt before was 155kg, 157.5 was valid. Not sure exactly what happened, but human error happens, and if I was rude about this to anyone at the table I really do apologize, so, we were unfortunately now locked in to 160kg, the lowest denomination we could have pulled, and she went out and gave it her best shot, but was literally not remotely close to our plan for the day.

This was a tough pill for me to swallow as I think if I had to do it again, fuck the medal, let’s end on a high note after the prep from hell, instead, I made a foolish decision to try to get her a medal + extra team points that is inexcusable, in the future I will play this more straight up as seeing what her reaction was post miss, is not something I want to see again.

Nonetheless, we have learned a lot, and above all, have grown a lot. When we step on the platform next, my goals for her are: 400 DOTS score, meet PRs on all 3 lifts, and a killer total. All are more than doable.

Results:

Squat: 137.5kg/303lbs

Bench: 70kg/154bs, +6lbs PR

Deadlift: 150kg/336lbs

Total: 357.5kg/788lbs

Mike Hartjens

Another person who had seemingly everything crumble the end stage of this prep, I want to personally thank Mike for being a team player above all else. Almost more than anyone, he had every right to drop this meet and wanted to stay the course to provide us team points more than anything. Mike is also an actual “team” player, meaning he holds no ego, wants to see everyone around him do well, and will be actively supporting the entire time. Sometimes in a team environment, jealousy is a real thing and as a coach it is the part I hate to navigate, but with people like himself, it is refreshing to know he understands I have his best interests at heart as well as everyone else.

To list the things we had to work around this prep:

• A fluke deadlift session that just did not show up, more due to extraneous circumstance than anything else.

• Moving down a full weight class.

• A severe shoulder injury that nuked bench training to such a substantial degree that we did not bench only but one time the last 11 days leading into the meet.

Somehow, someway, we made it through to the other side in one piece. More than anything I am proud of our communication and adjustments during this period as without it, we really do not find a work around and are probably in even more pain post meet.

To dive into the shoulder thing a bit more, we basically deducted that we were simply doing too much comp benching, paired with low bar squatting, and we needed to simply wave off that stimulus and actually let the area heal paired with some TLC work Mike had gotten from a PT friend of his that seemed to have a pretty profound effect. We elected to switch most squat work to SSB to avoid torquing the shoulder back anymore than needed, which is something we are featuring in post meet training, as well as eliminated all benching until 4 days out, where I made myself available to talk him through a session in which we would find something close to what an second attempt would be, with a closer grip that we messed with to see if pain symptoms would be less pronounced with it, ending with a solid 235lbs that was a far cry from his best, but allowed us to know that bare minimum we had that in the tank.

Getting into meet day, my man numbed the FUCK up. It has become an inside joke on the team, but Mike had loaded up so much Tiger Balm that you could smell his presence from 20+ feet away and I promise on everything I love I am not exaggerating here.

Another one who weighed in LIGHT, we have talked about dialing in the cut next time and have that squared away, but that 100% had an effect on squat I feel. We actually adjusted down, taking the low end second attempt and then lower than the lowest end for the squat third, and thank the heavens we did, if there was announcer ounce on the bar, I do not think Mike gets it. But this set the tone for the day in so many ways. Bench, we opened him way lighter than usual to make sure we did not bomb out due to not being able to lock his elbows or something funny, with a new grip and then asked to do the movement under competition standards and in pain, there is no reason to take a risk. We jumped to the planned second, and by the grace of everything holy, were able to manage 112.5kg/248lbs on the day, with for sure a bit to spare! When it came to deadlift, we already had 5th place locked up and had gambled a bit so I wanted to play the hot hand and go for a 240kg/529lb deadlift, 237.5kg/523lbs would have been better here and would have been a meet PR but I do not think either of us regrets it. Although he did not outright PR his total, he established his first total in this new weight class and PR’d his DOTS for the first time since 2021 and took home a 5th place regional medal. One more meet for us this year, and he spaced it out awesome, January, June, then November, and then we build for something insane by next Regionals!

Results:

Squat: 192.5kg/424lbs

Bench: 112.5kg/248bs

Deadlift: 230kg/507lbs

Total: 535kg/1179lbs

Emily Grinnell

This meet was quite the adventure for Emily, for multiple reasons. After competing last November through some serious fatigue/back pain, we decided to really overhaul our approach as well as chase some new goals. One of which was moving down to the 82.5kg class, the other was trialing changes to deadlift to not cause so much built up fatigue that seemed to effect almost everything we did thereafter.

The first important variable with Emily is that she is a very grindy lifter, which, is a blessing first and foremost, because if she needs to squeak out 2.5kg more, she usually can, but it can be a curse as every time you see Jesus on a rep, there is some net negative that comes from it, whether it be in meet or in training. So we elected to really buckle down on leaving out blocks with a bit to spare each go around, which I felt we did a great job for the most part. 

The second part was finding a deadlift style that allowed her to train the pull pain free above all, eventually getting stronger with it once we had established whatever that looked like. I could be misremembering but I am pretty certain our order of flow was:

• Sumo with mixed grip, good for training pain free, but was not a strong stance for her.

• Conventional with hook grip, good for training free, was stronger, but getting shoulders back at top was tough to do.

• Conventional with mixed grip with a bit more knee flexion bias, strongest, but we had the least amount of time to work on this.

I am absolutely not making excuses, but I feel if we had a touch longer to work on mixed conv, we would have had a better set of variables to work with for this meet. More on this when I talk about training going into nationals.

Going into the meet, we knew Emily would have a chance to either win or bare minimum place top 3, which is important at meets like this. One of the things I feel I really dropped the ball on is something that seemed to be present with most of my team, drastically overshooting the making weight portion of getting into a new weight class, or making your declared class. Training most of this prep at around 183-185lbs, her weigh in on the day was around 179.9lbs. Now to the lay person, you might ask, how does that actually matter? Just 3-5lbs down. Well when you adjust to hitting weights at a certain weight, and all of a sudden there is a massive leverage shift on the day you are to hit the heaviest weights of your training cycle/life, there can be weird things that stem from that which can be attributed to net weight loss (energy deficit) but also forcing the lifter to rehydrate/replenish more than usual. And that was our issue I think, which falls solely on me, I should not have put her in a position to need to be that aggressive with it to begin with.

Squats started off a bit shaky, with us missing the opening squat on depth, forcing us to retake. We got our second and third on a small jump, keeping us in the fight. Bench we were able to squeak out 97.5kg/214lbs on the grind of a lifetime. For deads, I ran by all the scenarios to her that we could pursue and wanted to go what she felt strongest about/what was most important to her. We knew we would not drop any lower than third, but second was still very much on the table, so the dilemma was, we either:

• Plan to take 170kg on the third to secure an 8/9 day with momentum and she had hit this in training convincingly.

• Plan to take 172.5kg which would PR her DOTS, and most force our opponent for 2nd to hit her third to beat her.

• Plan to take 175kg which would do all the aforementioned plus give her the QT for Raw Nationals at 82.5kg.

She felt strongest about pursuing the last option, so I was more than happy to facilitate it. Simply put, just wasn’t there on the day but I do not regret going with my athlete’s instinct and keeping their goals above all else.

All in all, she placed third in a stacked 82.5kg class on a 7/9 day and now we have the luxury of not being as food restrictive for Nationals, competing as a light 90kg. We have since overhauled the split and worked on a few variables that include:

• Clearing the rack more efficiently on squat.

• Learning and adopting a softer touch bench style as opposed to an aggressive sink and heave.

• Moving primary deads to end of the week.

I am confident Nationals will be Emily’s best meet yet and cannot wait to put it altogether.

Results:

Squat: 160kg/352lbs

Bench: 97.5kg/214lbs

Deadlift: 165kg/363lbs

Total: 422.5kg/931lbs

Tayla Knapp

Tayla came into this meet with a ton of momentum and to clear the air right off the bat, I feel I really limited her performance by being way too aggressive on squat to start the meet. Somewhere along the line, I think I convinced myself I leave to much on the bar for people’s squat sessions but being as objective as I possibly can, I would rather take 5kg and give up 2.5kg, than force 7.5kg and end up getting 0kg. We were in limbo most of the day as placing was rather stable, so I should have played this straight up.

She was on a tear in training, rattling off PRs on squat and bench, deadlift was a bit harder to come around but we got it to tick just in time. We debriefed after the meet and I think one of the limitations with these bigger meets with lots of athletes doing it, is I don’t see any warmups and am really seeing the opening attempts blind, which might not matter for some coaches, but matters a lot for someone like me who is very visual, very consequential. Every meet Tayla has done with me has been that, so I really think I owe her a one on one meet where she is the center of attention for the day.

Getting into the day itself, she hit her planned second of 147.5kg/325lbs strong, but had a little bit of a bobble midway through, this tied her meet PR, and knowing she had hit 330, 335 in training, she mentioned she felt strong with it so I erroneously jumped 7.5kg to 155kg/341lbs. Foolish as visually speaking, 152.5kg/336lbs was there, objectively, and already would be a PR to start the day with momentum. She went out and had something unusual happen, almost as if she lost her drive from her back immediately. All on me, I need to put her in a better spot to succeed above all else and Regionals is not the place to “try” heavy stuff, it is to have a strong performance.

Ironically, the lift that has plagued us the most, bench, peaked the best and she nailed an all time PR of 65kg/143lbs with room to spare, I look forward to taking Tayla into the 70kg+ range so we do not have to rely on deadlift as much in meets in the future as we finally found a method that seems to grow her bench.

Deadlift was a mixed bag as I did not see her opener, or second, and I trusted her primary handler on the day, Michael Beaupre to make the call for her third, which was the correct call as she had 0kg to spare on the day.

As I watched her lock it out, I straight up thought it was a good lift, then I say 2-1 red lights so I sprinted to the jury table and very aggressively lied.

“Guys this lift was no different from the first two, all I am asking for is consistency”, I said, fully not even seeing the first two hahah. It almost worked, we got 2 people to agree to overturn but needed the third and they did not agree. Oh well.

We have since overhauled her split a bit and I think Tayla’s super meet is coming and when it does she will turn a ton of heads. This year has been very stressful for her and I think once life kind of settles, we will see the uptick again and I will for sure be better with selecting better attempts for her.

Results:

Squat: 147.5kg/325lbs

Bench: 65kg/143bs, +6lbs PR

Deadlift: 185kg/408lbs

Total: 397.5kg/876lbs

Meghan Frangione

This performance was rather remarkable for Meg for a multitude of reasons. When I first took Meg on way back in ‘21, she was simply looking to get back into strength training again in a bit more of a structured manner. Fast forward to the early summer of ‘24, we are 6 meets deep and things look a lot different now than they did then.

When we first started, Meg was in the 100kg+ class and at this meet she weighed in at 76.9kg, an absolutely incredible weight loss journey and one that was not all smooth sailing in terms of strength development, but one that was well worth it for everything else it has provided her.

Much like Mike Hartjens, Meg is a big team player and is really our glue, keeping things light, but also being mega supportive of all Team Hogan lifters and embodying the community aspect I really think is important and something that I cherish.

Our training for this meet was a big all over the place initially, as during the school year, sessions can be harder to get in due to the chaos that is being a school teacher, something I know first hand.

However, the final stages were rather strong, and we were able to salvage some momentum when we really needed it. Only really catching fatigue swells about 2 weeks out, that we were able to taper off starting a week out very well!

This meet, more than anything, and especially after all we had been through, was leaving with a win and that is what we did. I opted to be better safe than sorry, matching her best lifts from training on squat and bench, and about 2.5kg more on deadlift.

Meg was able to go 9/9 for the first time since 2022, and we now have a foundation to grow from in this class! I have a feeling this coming year of training not being in diet mode is going to have the most potent effects we have ever seen from her and I cannot be more excited!

Results:

Squat: 115kg/253lbs

Bench: 50kg/110bs

Deadlift: 120kg/264lbs

Total: 285kg/628lbs

Emily Gallant

Out of all my people on this day, I would say quite heavily Emily had the most variables stacked against her in terms of preparation, week of meet, as well as general life turmoil.

Here are all the things that come to mind immediately:

• A specific autoimmune disorder than I do not think is my place to talk about, but it causes her to get sick… a lot. And with that, there is specific days where she will receive infusions that can effect squatting.

• Childcare. This is nothing more than being a mother, and thankfully, working with as many as I do, I have been able to “get it”, it is not as simple as bring your kid to the gym and it never will be. She navigated this very well.

• Getting pretty aggressively sick the week of the meet. This has become a common coping thing, but she literally was actively sick and was still sick on the day.

• Recurring pain in knees, elbow, and every so often the low back.

• Deciding between the 100kg and 100kg+ class, which thankfully we pulled the plug on when we realized net weight loss would be too aggressive with the time frame given.

Needless to say, that plus not having competed in over a year were all variables that mattered.

Training however, really had not gone better. With a hard reset after her most recent meet, we started only ramping back up around 20 weeks out. Chipping away each 4 week block until we found some supernova progress.

When it came to meet day, squat was a touch shaky so we opted to take the low end, which was a meet PR and moved clean! Bench had improved so much, nailing 70kg/154lbs for a strong 5kg PR. On deads, we could have forced the top end, but ultimately took the safer option, simply because we had taken the high option with almost everyone and missed to that point and knowing the low end was already 5kg PR and secured a massive total PR. 

She came in PEAKED to hell, and took home a 5th place Regional medal for her efforts and I could not be more proud. Now that we have cleared well with the approach we have been using, we talked about adding a bit more and I am hoping the effects to that are profound, leaning into competing once more this year!

Results:

Squat: 125kg/275lbs, +6lbs PR

Bench: 70kg/154bs, +11lbs PR

Deadlift: 132.5kg/292lbs, +11lbs PR

Total: 327.5kg/722lbs, +28lbs PR

Evan Larsen

This meet really was a strong showing for Evan that really was again, masked by pushing just too much on squat to start the meet, like I alluded to with Tayla, somewhere along the line, I think I convinced myself that this approach was necessary, but if there is anything I learned it is that you will always be disappointed with going 2.5kg heavier and missing, than going 2.5 lighter and making, if disappointment is going to happen regardless. With Evan we had some serious catching up to do, mainly because he was coming off a meet prep and massive cut into Maine States, so not only did we have bodyweight to catch up on, but top end strength as well.

For this meet in particular we adopted some changes, first being a deadlift technique change that really allowed for him to finally put together solid deadlift training for the first time in months, more of a dive technique, more push, less pull and man, did it take. We also committed to pushing the secondary squat session a bit more and this certainly had a positive effect on his primary. For bench, we also committed and have doubled down on a softer touch style, which is objectively stronger, however the top end still eludes us. He can bench up to 145kg just fine, but 147.5kg+ really causes some hard sticking points and some aggressive flaring on one side, which we are looking to address in this post meet block.

Evan was going concurrently with Jon and Sam, and many times was going at the exact same time as Jon, really for the duration of the meet. His second attempt squat, which I think objectively watching back, looked good for 10kg more, just was not there, with him losing balance forward, something I am not used to seeing from him. Still, I should have played it more conservative and gone up 7.5kg, will not make this mistake again. Again, on bench same deal, and looking back on it, 5kg looked like it was there, just got too far back off the chest. This forced us to be smart with deadlift calls, which I hate because christ almighty did deadlift peak to oblivion. We were in a minor battle for 4th, knowing we would be pulling first. Evan had bodyweight, so no matter what we totaled, our main opponent would have to pull 2.5kg more than us, so we needed a high probability make. 265kg was the number we decided on and he pulled it at RPE 7-7.5, forcing our opponent to pull an all time PR if he wanted to go for it, which he elected not to, securing us 4th! This part was fun, but I wish we could have gone a bit more aggressive on pulls, making our third squat and bench will allow us to do that next time.

Training post meet we finally are in a spot to add the elusive 4th bench day, are doubling down on deadlift training and are adding more low bar volume on his primary day. Very excited for what the future holds.

Results:

Squat: 257.5kg/567lbs

Bench: 145kg/319lbs

Deadlift: 265kg/584lbs

Total: 667.5kg/1471lbs

Jon Lavoie

The old dog, the veteran. This was Jon and I’s second meet together and this one was a bit of mixed bag due to circumstances out of our control to an extent. 

We pushed Maine States too hard frankly, knowing we were doing this meet, and that is more so on me, we went to failure on squat, deadlift, and really reaggravated some prior injuries that really reared their ugly head during this prep. However, we did find some cool things that we were able to uncover with his training and bench has remained undefeated above which leads me to think we will be back in the 400s very shortly here.

The theme of Jons career is being strong but not being able to put it altogether, at once, or, to do it healthy. This prep was as good as it could have gone, running into glute pain/numbness, lingering low back pain, and then struggling to find a squat style that allowed him to squat to depth and with loading.

I think between this prep and Maine States, Jon had hit:

• 525lbs on squat, albeit a touch high.

• 395lbs on bench, fatigued to shit.

• 625lbs on deadlift, a limit lift, but certainly was to standard.

A 1545lbs training total, however each one of those lifts had a profound rebound effect after the fact that simply had us just looking to try to win this meet above all else.

Squat came in as well as it could have, with him going 3/3 with all that was there on the day, 230kg/507lbs.

Bench was really strong on the day, and I think I probably should have taken 177.5kg/391lbs here to save face, but seeing what our main opponent pulled, I do not think it would have made much of a difference. 

Thankfully I was able to see his deadlifts and I simply think time caught up with us, things were just not there and to be 100% transparent I was not sure if we were even going to be able to get the opener, thankfully, we did, jumped 5kg and got it.

With the battle being closer now with deadlift being down, we elected to jump 2.5kg to force our opponent to pull 2.5kg higher than our best total, which we were unsure of, but he had infinitely more than that at the end of the day.

He went out and gave it all he had, just was not there on the day. One thing I want to say about Jon, is out of all the higher level athletes I work with, or at least, have been training for quite some time, Jon literally has never given me push back or made me feel as if providing him objective feedback was insulting him, which frankly can happen, and for that, I really do think our best days together are going to be in the future. Not constantly peaking for meets, stringing together positive training cycles pain-free, and then finally… letting the 83/82.5kg class chapter end and making a concerted effort to fill out and move to 90kg which will 100% be best for keeping as injury free as we possibly can be. Post meet, we have reworked things a ton, the main themes are pushing bench and upper body assistance movements, starting from scratch with squat technique to allow us to hit depth with loading, and eliminating some bad habits with deadlift that so far, with us only being a few days into this scheme, look to have a profound net positive effect.

Wait till yall see the 90kg debut, I promise on everything I love, we will bring this guy a PR total for the first time since 2020 if it is the last thing I do.

Results:

Squat: 230kg/507lbs

Bench: 180kg/396lbs

Deadlift: 260kg/573lbs

Total: 665kg/1466lbs

Sam Peterson

The only guest lifter registered for this meet that did not end up one due to missing weight. Sam by far had the longest travel stretch to get there but I would be damned if that really effect much.

One of my longest tenured clients, this was our 6th meet together and I am happy to report we have improved the total in every single one of those meets! Sam is a lifter who, straight up, is not built to powerlift, and I do not say that in a slight manner, but I think by nature his leverages/natural disposition lend themselves better to things like running and endurance stuff, and to me, this is why Sam is one of the most unique and incredible athletes I work with, because despite all that, he has managed to get stronger and stronger and the guy squats over 400 and pulls over 500.

We simply have such a solid approach with tapering squats and bench, to the point where we can accurately predict around 2.5kg to where we will be based on the last heavys. Sam had a tough time with depth this prep, only for him to sink every attempt on meet day and have it not be an issue at all. We elected to end the prep slightly lighter than normal and bank on the taper and it took very well. Bench we actually had our first miss in years a week out, that I knew was fatigue related and a taper would save. Deadlift, frankly, has been slow moving and we have tried a lot of approaches to get it to tick and to be fair, it did tick a bit more than previous blocks, just did not materialize the way we wanted to at the end. More on that at the end.

Squat peaked super well, 187.5kg/413lbs moved clean for an all time PR and only his second squat north of 400lbs ever. Maybe even had 2.5kg more! Bench, again, tapered incredible, with us nailing what we failed a week out, 122.5kg/270lbs for a small meet PR, which again, might have had 2.5kg more. Deadlift, I think I made the wrong call here, his second attempt secured a 2.5kg PR total and I think we should have just jumped 5kg to secure a 7.5kg PR total, but we jumped 7.5 to also try to grab a deadlift PR, just was not there.

Post meet, we are trying our last option with sumo deadlift, and it is way outside the box, before we seriously look at giving conventional a shot. We are going to push 9s on the secondary, with the low rep top set to come AFTER and moving the primary day to the end of the week to see how it responds. I have a good feeling about it!

Keep being you Sam, I truly value having you on this roster and always will.

Results:

Squat: 187.5kg/413lbs, +11lbs PR

Bench: 122.5kg/270lbs, +6lbs PR

Deadlift: 225kg/496lbs

Total: 535kg/1179lbs, +6lbs PR

Gavin Akeley

Last but certainly not least, Mr. Akeley, who I had the honor of handling personally on the day. There is a few things that are inevitable in sport.

• Game 6 Klay

• Tiger on Sunday

• 2016 Isaiah Thomas in the 4th quarter

• Week 5 Gavin

We have his training so dialed in that this meet was just an extension of everything we had been working since we started last year before Maine States. His first bigger meet, and the first where he actually needed to make weight, we, like many on the team, overshot the weight loss a bit that caused squat to be a bit more shaky than we would have liked, regardless, he was literally as peaked as I have seen a lifter.

But this did not come without adversity, his first injury spell occurred when we added in a secondary sumo session after Maine States and although we navigated it well initially, we equally had it come back at the very end, culminating in him actually being stapled with 20lbs less than his best ever deadlift 10 days out, that and really kind of overthinking deadlift technique, it was a toss up whether we would have a deadlift that would allow us to PR the total, but I believed in my guy and he believed in my process and it all came together.

Squat started off strong, like I mentioned, he was just a touch shaky and with the luck we had rolling the dice on squat, I was not going to make the same mistake literally for the 5th time, so we took the small PR, cleared strong. Bench, to be straight up, peaked so well that I cannot believe it watching it back. In the summer of ‘23 we attempted 137.5kg/303lbs, stapled, just was not ready quite yet. We attempted it at Maine State ‘24, completed albeit hard, taken away 2-1 for glute lift. I guess third time is the charm as this moved at RPE 6.5. I wanted to go 140kg/308lbs badly, but after snafu where he hit the rack and got redlighted on his opener, we took the safety jump and nailed his first 300+lbs bench in meet with a ton of room to spare. Finally, deadlift, this is where I saw a boy become a man. With no continuity our momentum, sometimes it can effect people mentally to attempt something north of a failure in meet, not for him. I kept reminding him, shut off the brain and just pull and by all that is holy, we were able to nail 217.5kg/479lbs, about 15lbs up from what he failed in training, 6lbs under his best EVER pull, and grinded out for his first ever mega grind on the platform. 

Post meet, we are switching things up to get deadlift to tick a bit more and hopefully doing it a bit more safely this time so when we get back on the platform, we will nail a 1300lbs total. We will medal next year as well.

Results:

Squat: 207.5kg/458lbs, +6lbs PR

Bench: 137.5kg/303lbs, +6lbs PR

Deadlift: 217.5kg/479lbs

Total: 567.5kg/1240lbs, +11lbs PR