Tommy Kono Open Meet Report 8/17/2013

I actually wasn't really planning to try that hard for this one.  I really wanted to squat/pull 500 at the backyard meet of the century in November, so I wanted to focus my attention on strength training.  My coach was ok with it, but wanted me to compete in the Tommy Kono Open regardless, just to get more competition experience.

I. Prep

It was basically same old same old.  I focused on strength primarily during the first couple of months, and had PRs of 435 x 4 and 440 x 3 in the squat.  At that point, I decided to switch to high bar, and had PR there of 425 x 3.  Meanwhile I continued to do weightlifting work, and a typical week would be:

Tuesday:

Snatch or snatch complex

Snatch pull

Snatch balance or snatch deadlift

Thursday:

Clean and Jerk or complex

Clean pull

Clean deadlift

Saturday:

Work up to a heavy snatch single

Work up to a heavy C&J single

Front squat 3x3.

A week before the meet, I weighed in the mornings at around 207.4, which is dangerously close to the limit.  I low carb'd for a couple days before the meet, and on Friday morning I was at 205.  The morning of the meet I weighed in at 207, which was scary (probably due to me stuffing my face the night before).  I therefore didn't eat or drink anything until the weigh-in, where I ended up at 93kg (205lbs).  I then proceeded to eat a premium chicken wrap, 20 piece chicken nuggets, 2 mcdoubles, and a filet o fish.

II. Competition

We started 1 hour late because the session before had like 30 girls in it.

Snatch:

90kg (make): this one was hilariously bad.  It's something that I'm hitting pretty easily during training, but I got nervous/jittery and I didn't take enough time to set up, so it was like way forward.  I didn't want to miss my first snatch though so I chased it like crazy (almost fell off the giant ass platform), and managed to lock it out.

95kg (make): pretty routine now that I've calmed down.

100kg (make): again, not too bad.  This is 2kg below my PR, but I didn't want to go for 103 for fear of failing.

C&J:

115kg (make): pretty decent.

120kg (make): same as the first.

125kg (make): Ok so this one was sketchy.  The clean wasn't bad, but I didn't quite get under it enough, so I personally felt like it was a press-out.  My teammates thought the same.  HOWEVER they gave it to me on a 2 to 1 decision so *shrug*.

Overall I was very very happy with the results.  I went 6/6, got a C&J PR, and beat my last competition total by 30kg.

III. Conclusion

Ironically, I no longer care that much about squatting 500 at the backyard meet.  I will go to the meet for sure, to see the monsters (Stan Efferding, Dan Green, the Lilibridge brothers, etc) lift, but I most likely won't be competing.  I want to spend more time trying to get better at olympic lifting.  I feel like I'm close to hanging with the big boys (Cal Strength guys) who were around 120/140.  After that, the goal is to make nationals, where the lowest qualifying total was a 287 this year.  If I can improve 30kg every meet, I'll be there in 2 more meets :)