 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here with the one and only Untamed Strength, Alan Thrall. We visited his meet last weekend, Vacaville, California, USPA meet, and we just want to chat with Alan, pick his brain, give you guys a little bit of thoughts on powerlifting meets in general and maybe how his meet went, and just kind of overall theme being that, one, powerlifting is about showing up and performing like any other sport, two, being a good coach, a good lifter, having, you know, even if you hypothetically had all the knowledge in the world, which is impossible, on-strength conditioning or powerlifting or peaking, you can still have bad days, bad meets, bad training cycles, there's too many variables in life, and then three, programming, coaching, meets, all of that, kind of being just a general toolbox, right? You got this big old toolbox, the smarter you get, the more experience you get, you get a bigger toolbox, it's just when and how to apply those tools, whether it is your training, meet, etc. So Alan, maybe you start out, just tell us how the last couple weeks of training went, good, bad, general, and then how meet day went? This whole training block leading up to the meet was great. I hit PRs on all the lifts, repetition PRs, singles, so everything was going as planned. The last couple weeks leading up to it were as it should be, like any other meet, out of the ordinary, and then, yeah, meet, I'll let you kind of guide it from there, but nothing that was like, noteworthy. Good or bad. Yeah, I think, and that kind of depends, you've already worked with your coach for maybe a year now, so you guys both have a vibe of each other, training styles, training programs, there's common themes on, you know, the internet that people say one way or the other, and everyone gets all culty on how you should prep, some people are like, well, if you're not dying a week out, you're not ready, obviously some fatigue should be there, so you might feel a little tired the last month of training, but you probably shouldn't feel like you're dying, but maybe you shouldn't feel like Superman either until the week of, or hopefully the day of, right, that's, if you have a perfect peak, doesn't really matter what happened before, but you're Superman day of, yeah, right, but those things get different, so what's maybe the the heaviest singles you hit in training, and then, yeah, the attempts at meat day. So the first squat, I did a 545 squat at RP nine. Squat in this last training block was probably the, had the least improvement in terms of singles. I did squat 500 for five, which was a big rep PR. Unfortunately, you don't test your 500 max, but my singles, so my last meet was was 550 at RP 10. I did 545 at RP nine, moved faster than the 550, six pounds, but, but anyways, and then deadlift 600 on a, on an Ohio power bar, and then bench, my best pause bench, I think was 335, 350 touch and go for this past training block. And at the meet, my squats didn't go as I'd like. I missed my third attempt. I actually was a bit conservative on my second attempt because my first attempt wasn't great. And then after my second attempt, which was nearly an RP 10, I went with a small jump and I'm missing my third attempt bench. I saw your 515 opener. It just looked a little slower than you, especially if you have 500 for five, or the speed I've seen you squat, you know, 525 30, just look a little heavy. Yeah. So missed my third squat. And then bench went as planned. 320, 330, 340. That was all good. And then deadlift. Same thing as a squat. Missed my third attempt. There whenever people, you know, for the past few days, since the meet, people ask me how it's been going or how the me was. And I kind of give two answers. The positive answer would be my bench press was a 22 pound meat PR. My deadlift was a 14 pound meat PR on my second attempt. Yeah. And I figured with the I think it was like an 82 pound meat PR for my last powerlifting meat. That's not including my strength lifting me the press. So huge total PR bench PR and deadly PR. And I really don't care about placing in powerlifting. But I did get first place at a seven competitors in the 110. Yeah, which is whatever. So that from like looking at that, just saying that people are like, wow, well, you've killed it. If you get 80 pound meat PRs, yeah, you compete twice a year. You're gonna be really strong really quick. Right. Yeah. And then the other side of it is it was a crappy day. I didn't perform as I would have hoped based on how my training cycle went. And I just had these numbers in my head. There were completely realistic numbers because all these numbers I'd done in training. And I just couldn't perform. So that that upset me. To say, you know, that would leave me to say it was a bad day. I have two thoughts on maybe why some of that happened in my head. The PR is on the bench and deadlift and not your squat. Is there know me? I know you bro. Is there any idea whether you or if you've talked to your coach, why things maybe didn't go as you wanted, even though they generally speaking again, they went pretty well. 80 pound meat PR is solid. You can't really get mad about that. But if we if we ignore the cars and we just say, let's look how your last three months went. Yep. How you perform. Yeah, or even the last eight weeks, you know, four weeks, things were going well. Things were slowly lined up. But peaking for individuals. There's really good posts. I think it was Chad Leslie Smith saying the individuality of powerlifting is very, very small compared to the specificity of the lifts itself, volume being a driving factor, all these things, right? Managing fatigue and percentage of priority. So I don't want to say like, what have you should have done that I shouldn't have done? But what do you think maybe you could have adjusted in the last eight weeks? If anything calls out to you? I don't know. I haven't really even talked to sat down and talked to Austin. He says we're going to do a debriefing. But it was it's like, I meet over with just chill out. We know, you know, I didn't like get on the phone with him right away. What happened? It's powerlifting. Yeah. So so I haven't really talked to him about it. I'm sure he's got a bunch of thoughts in his head is the how we can change this. But the couple of the easy things to point to would be, oh, you were, you were over trained, you were too fatigued going into it. But I felt fine. I had no, no injuries, no nagging pain. Yeah, leading up to the meat. There was nothing I wasn't my body felt fine and volume was reduced somewhat from the last eight weeks. Right. So there was there was no, in terms of like how I felt, that felt fine. So it wasn't that. And then, you know, someone say that maybe you tapered or peaked too soon, right? Yeah. And I don't think that's the case either, because I was training that week, lifting, you know, fairly heavy singles. And then all the all the likely excuses of life stress, you know, leading up to the meat was was not nothing in particular. I slept fine the week leading up and the night before. Some people might say, you know, whenever you tell someone about having a bad meat, everyone's really friendly about it. And they always try to like reach for things like, Oh, you know, how'd you sleep? Yeah, fine. Did you? Did you eat breakfast? You probably nervous? Oh, you had Cheerios? Cinnamon toast? Yeah. And one of them was, dude, it was a long day, you know, and I was like, Yeah, but that doesn't explain my squats. I would actually think that's first thing in the morning. Yeah, the worst and I think the meat, the meat conditions were pretty decent, right? 80 degrees out, moved not too fast, not too slow. I've been away faster meats and I've been away longer beats. It was a good pace. Yeah, so I really don't have any excuses. And I don't and the only the only logical thing I can say right now is not really an answer. But it was just, it was just not my day. You do have to like you said, show up and perform and execute. I often quote Jordan who says we don't just mail in your attempts. Yeah, you have to go do it. And I don't know. I just I actually, like when I would look, you know, look myself in the eye that day, I did not like feel that great. I didn't have like, much behind my lips. I didn't have much in my legs. I was trying to put on the right song. I was punch myself in the face. And it just wasn't doing anything for me. And it's I guess I'd chalk it up to, you know, an NFL receiver dropping wide open pass. You're like, dude, how did you drop that? Yeah, that Jerry, right? I dropped the pass before. Yeah. And he's the best of all time. So, so I don't I don't have, I don't have a reason right now. But that's that's like right now a couple days after. Yeah. On my next meet or after my next training block, I might look back and retrospect, say, I think this this is what I Yeah, this was too much. This was too little, maybe. Yeah. And sometimes the things that I have in my head had nothing to do with your training because one, I think Austin's a smart guy. Two, I didn't analyze your training by any means. The one thing that pops out in my head, maybe why you had a more successful bench and deadlift meat than you did a squat meat is that one, I think you're a very efficient squatter and have been for a while. And maybe the lift that you've trained with the most frequency talking last 10 years compared to the other two. Yeah. Where there was diminishing returns, kind of diminishing returns and the skill acquisition of you focusing last eight weeks or 12 weeks, 16 weeks on the bench compared to an overhead press or even strongman stuff, right? So there's faster skill acquisition within those weeks on those lifts and even the deadlift deadlift bar where I don't think the deadlift bar gave you a PR, but I do think that you focused in on the conventional deadlift with a bar, not an axle, not a truck, not a whatever more recently in the last year, two years than you did in the last 10 years. Right? So when you go macro to micro, those things are still new compared to your squat, which you've been efficient at. And if you know, I think you'd probably say the same, the best lift you do, whether it's the strongest or not. Because I think one of my best lifts is probably my squat in terms of my form, but impounded just not. And for you, I would probably say the same. You know, so maybe those play a role. Obviously, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be peeing aring and there might have just not been a day or whatever might be. But I agree that when you don't look, when you look too soon to now, and if you don't do meets too often or tests too often or whatever it might be, you have no idea. Maybe you need doubles a week before or singles a week before, maybe even mentally you need those things and not physiologically. And that would be the last thing that I would bring up, which is the only thing I would say everyone's a snowflake for, which is the mentality going into a meet. For me, I have it down, I think just because of sports is something I was really good at. And my high school coach taught me a lot about visualization and things like that. And I know what routine I need to be to turn it on to get in my flow for that day. And everybody might be a little bit different and training has to do with that. For me, I like to train kind of submaximal where like, oh shit, dude, I just smoke 600 here. I know I'm going to get 620 at the meet where others say like, oh, if I never touch 620 in training, I can't touch 620 in the meet. There's no way, you know. And so I think those things are a little more snowflakey. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think that my deadlock has definitely been trending up. The reason I say it's a bad meet is because I pulled 600, which was huge for me in the gym on an Ohio Power Bar, which does make a little bit of difference. And so just to not do that at the meet was frustrating and not even budget off the floor. Yeah, I was just like, pulling and it was just like, fuck, dude, I'm done. But so that's why I was upset. But looking back, like my best deadlock before working in Austin was in a meet was 518. Yeah. The first meet with him was 540. The second meet was 571, which per person is 584. So it's it's trending nicely. So I don't want to say that like, oh, what the fuck? Nothing's working. So yeah. But and then the thing about the the singles at the higher intensity. I had one week. I think I think one week, maybe two, maybe the last two weeks was a squat single RP nine, which is like 96 percent. Yeah. Everything else was for leading up to it was, you know, way I was RP seven, RP eight for the majority, which is 90 about 92 percent. And it's not, you know, it's not that that's like, do your triple for one rep. So it wasn't that I was like, you know, grinding my face off. No, no, I meant mentally for that. Not physically. Yeah. I meant mentally that for me, if I handle like a one remax in training, then I feel like, oh, well, that's the best I could do with a me rather for me. I'd rather crush 90 percent rather than grind 95. And that's where that snowflake. But physiologically, which hopefully you guys know by watching his channel, my channel, that one rep and at RP nine is a lot less taxing on your body than probably five rep at RP nine, like in terms of recoverability. So for you to do a single who gives a shit if you're doing max out tens and fives, three days out, that might be something you need to look into. Yeah. Yeah. I just think I think the best way to explain it would be that I just didn't perform. Yeah, happens, which happens. Yeah, especially in this this sport, the more specific you get, almost the harder it is because you can't adjust things like Jordan. If his jumpers off, he can get to the rim and dunk on somebody. Paralypting, if your legs are gone, you are done. You are done. There's no no tricks to pull out. Yeah. When you think about a whole training block, you're I mean, it's it's not uncommon. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's you're banking on like out of these three or four months, this will be your best day. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's not. Yeah. Yeah, it's almost impossible to say. And that's like, again, if people want to say, oh, we under trained or he over trained or he under peaked or over peaked, maybe, maybe, maybe it's 24 hours difference. But I doubt it. Yeah. Like the chances are that Monday he would have smashed highly unlikely. Right. Yeah. And it doesn't like negate all the progress I made. Right. And that's a whole training block. It was just a local meat. It's not like I had I'm not even like a qualifying total online. It wasn't worlds. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't anything that meant anything more than local meat. And I really want to do well. Of course. And I'm not saying I'm not like brushing it off and saying it wasn't a big deal, but still made all that progress. Yeah. And I've actually done those lifts, which is satisfying to me. Yeah. Just kind of things that I didn't do on the satisfaction not to you turn the whole conversation, but that's a big thing. I talk about why I don't like to compete the feeling you have right now. Yeah. Because you 80 pound meat PR, which is fucking good. And you're still like that. Like that's how I am. Like if I if I hit every number I was supposed to or I plan to or even say I hypothetically hit five pounds over everything I wanted to, I'd be like, yeah, I'm supposed to do that. Yeah. And then if I don't, if I underperformed by even a pound, I'll be like, shit. So either way, I'm never like fully fulfilled. And that's why for me, gym training is just what drives me more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not that that's yeah, gym, gym lifts are not important. But it is if you're an IPF overlord. Really? I think that it's nice to have like some objective feedback. Yeah, that should go compete. You know, I mean, it's the same as course, I don't know, wanting to like being a track and field athlete and wanting to race against actual people instead of just the timer. You know what I mean? Yeah. So there is like, and being with all the guys from untamed strength. Yeah. I just wanted to like do well with all of them, you know, and like, I actually told I told them this morning they were like rooting their asses off, screaming and yelling. And those of you guys that were competing, one of them is right here. That's why I'm looking at it. But those of you that like they were actually competing. Yeah. And it's hard to be emotionally invested in someone else when you're competing. Yeah. But in between attempts, they're screaming their ass off for me. You know what I mean? And so so that adds to it. Like when you don't do it, like, fuck, man, everyone's sitting here like cheering, wanting me to do well. And then you miss it or you give up and they're just like, oh, yeah, you know sucks. But yeah, shout out to untamed. That's something I noticed right away. And I talked to you Connor right when we showed up and said these guys travel pretty good, even though it's maybe only 45 minutes away. Yeah, like probably more than half the gym showed up just to kick it. There were four or five guys competing. But a bunch of people were just one day. Yeah, yeah, it is. And they're all there the whole time. They're all cheering. So that was really cool to hang out and see you guys all lift any closing thoughts, buddy. That's it. Alan will be back. I will not, but he will be back. Yeah. Talk to you guys next time.