I’m currently in meet prep for the 2016 XPC Finals at the Arnold Sports Festival on March 5th, in Columbus, Ohio. I will be competing at 132 pounds, raw with knee wraps.

For programming and coaching inquires, please email SmitleyPerformanceSystems@gmail.com


Saturday kicked off meet prep at Elitefts. My training partners all had family obligations, so I just had to make my lovely 3+ hour commute. I can't ever complain about being able to get to train at my favorite place on earth though. I got to train with Bryan, whom I've gotten to know over the past year or so, and it was good to catch up with him and I really appreciate him helping me out for the day (while the old Westsider's were off doing their thing, haha).

Today's session was pretty straight forward: get back under a straight bar and straight weight. Weights weren't meant to be super heavy, just heavy enough to force me to work on good positioning and technique and get some good quality reps in. After that, I got to push it a bit on my supplemental work and knock out my usual higher volume accessory work. I'm changing just a few things for this meet prep, which you'll begin to see probably as the whole week works itself out. Here are some brief changes though.

  1. Deadlift heavy every other week, on dynamic effort days only (after speed squatting!)
  2. Build up slowly on competition lifts while hammering supplemental movements until about 4 weeks out (keep doing what's gotten me stronger in the first place!)
  3. Abs every training day
  4. Do everything possible to stay fresh and healthy as long as possible (smart supplemental options that still let me train HARD)
  5. SSB Squats like it's my job on dynamic effort day

A good first day in the books! 10 weeks out!


[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1cxtaeFYqA]


Items Used in this Training Session EZ Loaders Chains Mini Band

Warm Up Reverse Hyper - 3x15 Standing Cable Crunch - 3x15

A1) Squat 60x10 150x5 200x5 240x3 290x3 330x3 360x3 380x4 400x2x3

B1) Squat vs 2 Chains Per Side 150x5 240x3 330x3 360x3 390x3 - PR

C1) Pause Squat (beltless) 150x8 200x8 240x8 260x8

D1) Wtd GHR 3x10

E1) Dimel Deadlift 3x20

F1) Back Attack 3x20

G1) Power Squat Good Mornings 100 total reps

H1) Decline Sit Ups vs Band 4x15


Brandon Smitley
Tagged: Training Log

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