 Interested in getting your bench press, deadlift and squat to skyrocket? Watch this. Alright, our first caller is Carter from Kentucky. What's up Carter? How can we help you? Good, how are you all doing? Good. So, first off, I want to say thank you all for everything you do. I've been listening to you all for about three to four years now. I'm a personal trainer and nutritionist and I'm a little over one year into my career and you all have helped me tremendously. I have all of the maps programs pretty much and I use those for my clients and myself and they've gotten tremendous results with those. So, just to give you all a little background, I've been training for around five years consistently and this year I would like to do my first powerlifting competition utilizing the maps powerlift program. So, my question is, could I possibly implement skills sessions kind of similar to the ones in the kettlebell for aesthetics program to kind of increase my volume and frequency with the deadlift, squat and bench for extra practice? I would implement these on the three non-lifting days during the maps powerlift program and would that give me any extra benefit? What kind of load would you recommend and how would that kind of help me? Yeah, what a great question. That's a good question. So, have you done mass powerlifters? This can be your first time? I have. I've done it before in the past. You have done it before? I have, yes. How did it work for you? It did great. I increased my one rep max on my deadlift by around probably 90 pounds. Yeah. About 10 to 20 pounds and squat probably around 40 to 50 pounds. That's excellent. So, what makes you feel like adding extra stuff will make it more effective? I feel like the extra practice would be great. So, kind of similar to how sports has skills practices like I used to play basketball, for example. So, we'd have practices before games that would walk through drills and things like that. And then we'd have free throw skills practices, three point shooting practices. So, kind of just to give me extra practice with the lifts itself and really dial in my technique. Yeah, you should know. Did you notice that he put 20 to 30 percent of one rep max, which I think is, I mean, to me, that's the move here. And I think his application is brilliant the way he's thinking. Yeah. My advice would be different if you had not done Maps Power Lift because what I would have said then in that case would have been run through it first and then see how it works for you. And then start to modify it based off of your individual body and results and how your body works. So, I think this is okay. Is it going to improve your progress or speed up your progress? I'm not sure. So, my advice is going to be do it because you've done it before, you've got some experience. But pay attention to how you feel if you notice that even at that low load that it's maybe reducing your ability to recover because Maps Power Lift is all ready programmed and planned out. Then I would take them out. Now, I'm going to bet that it'll probably be okay. I think it might help just with your skill and your technique in each of the lifts, which is, I think, what you're asking about. Here's something cool, by the way, a little side note. They've done studies on athletes where they'll have them, for example, there's a free throw study where they had athletes just go through a free throw in their mind versus athletes actually practicing a free throw. Now, the people practicing the free throw did better, but the people envisioning the free throw did way better than people who did none of, either one. So that's another thing that you can do that really doesn't take away from your, potentially take away from your ability to recover. You're not going to get any overuse injuries. Just by going through lifts in your mind, envisioning how it feels, what it looks like, it makes a big difference based off of the studies that I've seen. But I would say experiment with this, but pay close attention because what you don't want to do is get trapped in the cycle of, well, I'm doing this, even though I'm not progressing, I'm going to stick to it. So you've got to be ready to switch gears if you need to. Yeah, you've got to definitely manage appropriately the intensity. So I'm glad you're already thinking in 20% to 30% kind of range. However, this might actually affect your other workouts as well, having increasing the volume there and the frequency. It may start out as a good thing in terms of you being able to get into the groove more effectively. Your technique might improve. Actually, technique will definitely improve if that's the focus of it and the intent. I would just really be honest with yourself and see if you are progressing or if you're not. And so that's definitely intensity wise, something you might need to adjust even with your regular workout. Is this a raw competition or is it equipped? I would most likely be using bell, knee sleeves, and wrist wraps. So raw, yeah. Okay, so here's another thing I would do on these practice sessions. I would literally practice with the 20-30% load. I would practice like you're in the event. So while you're in there and vision, you're ready to perform, getting into position. You've got the bell, the wrist wraps, everything. Because the goal, based off what you're telling me, and correct me if I'm wrong, the goal is for you to really perfect the technique and the form for your performance on game day, so to speak. So I would treat it like the competition with that light load. Get into position, envision yourself, people watching you, you've got the judges, you're in position. Get real comfortable with all the equipment that you'll be using, your positioning. Get as close as you can to the competition itself. That could squeeze out a nice few percentage more increase in your performance. Listen, Carter, you sound like a smart guy. I love this. I think you're on the right track. I think the way you even presented it in the full written question with the idea of going at 20-30% your load. You've already ran through PowerLift, so you know what type of gains you should expect and how you should feel. So if you're overreaching or doing too much, you're probably going to know better than somebody who's never ran the program. You've got a training background. You've been an athlete before and you've applied these principles in basketball and seen probably your skills get better. I 100% think squatting and deadlifting is major technique. Most of the gains I've got over the last five years in those lifts, it's been because of the technique, not because I've built a bunch more muscle since then. It's just been getting better and better at the technique. And if you, like Justin was saying, if your intent of going into those extra workouts is set like that, that I'm not here to, you know, crush. You get it because you've done this in basketball. You're in the right mindset. Right. When you did free throws and practiced your three ball on those skills days, I know you weren't running lines and like killing yourself. Like that's not the idea of that practice. So you get it. That's the same concept here. And I love this. And I think you're a perfect person to play with this and apply it because you've already been through it and you have the knowledge in the background. So go for it. And I'd love to hear what you do. I'd love to feedback as you go through this too. And also to, you know, even consider like some of the sticking points is where we can, you know, work on addressing those types of things and, you know, you know, place like deficit dead lists or do things where, you know, if that initial, if that initial bit of force is the problem, you know, to get to get it off the ground or, you know, whatever position it's in, like really hyper focus into those sticking points. Definitely. Yeah. So would you all do a one day, two day or three day kind of approach to this? Or would you do a squat bench deadlift day just for this specifically just really light load? Because it's practice and because it's technique. And I would, and this is your first powerlifting competition. I would, I would make it look like the competition itself. So, you know, which lift goes first? Like I'm not familiar. Right. So you do a squat deadlift bench or is a squat bench deadlift? How do they do it? Squat bench deadlift with three attempts each. There you go. So I would practice in that order and, and do the, and practice each of them each time because the idea is to get better at those lifts with your technique. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. No problem. Thanks for calling in. Yeah. Thank you all. Such a great question. I love the way he set the table. I couldn't help, but I was laughing over here when you were giving the, I'm familiar with the study you were talking about. Yeah. Cause all I'm picturing is somebody standing over a barbell, not doing anything and just visioning how ridiculous like that is. Like it's seriously, I get, I get the point like of that. Well, my goal was to say besides, besides this also go through your head. I get what you're saying, but I couldn't help but think of like a kid hearing that advice and going like, okay, well Sal says I don't need to do it. I'll just think about it. I'll just think about it on the couch. Yeah. It sounds ridiculous. I wish it was that easy. No, but it plays, it plays a big role. I mean, and if you're, if you're a fan of sports, you know this, like, they talk about this a lot, like, especially now, like we've, we've, we're there now, right? We've, we've realized like how important that your mental state is and the ability to see yourself making the shot before you shoot the shot and things like that. So I totally, So it separates the elite athletes. Yeah. I totally, I totally, you know that actually like, I don't know if I told you guys this, but like what's something that Curry did in the last year is like they, they shrank the size, like a shot. Oh, the rim. Yeah. It has to be, it has to be a perfect shot and how it goes through. That's great. And he envisions like this, you know, nothing but net shot, hitting the rim is, it's a fail. Right. And so he just practiced. Wow, that's really good. Does mental exercises with that. Like the effort that he puts to being the greatest shooter of all time is, is crazy. Well, you know what, what I liked about this question is it really highlights what we've said many times on the podcast, which is our programs are a really good template in the base, but the ideal program for you is always individualized. Always. So follow our programs one time through as we've laid it out. And then once you start to kind of figure things out for yourself, you can go back through and start to change things and individualize things for your body. Cause an individualized, personalized workout programs always going to outperform one that's one, you know, general for a larger audience. I feel like that was the, the best and only the, the really important question that needed to be asked that you asked. Yeah. Had he said, cause everything else was set perfect, sound like a perfect guy to play around with this and test that out. But even with his experience and knowledge and his idea, if he hadn't ran it one time, cause you're the problem with that. Exactly. You don't have a baseline to like, let's say he would have got, let's say it was his first time and he saw 80 pounds on his deadlift and 10 pounds on his bit. He would go, oh, that really worked. But he didn't know that the last time he did it without doing any of that stuff, he saw even greater things. Right. So I think that's the thing that we always try and tell anybody that's running our programs, cause you get this, especially from trainers a lot who think they know everything. Right. The, oh yeah. Well, I'm going to do, I'm going to add this right out the gate. Yeah. It's like, wait a second. If you haven't followed the program to a tee first, do that just so you can get a baseline and then you can play with it. And a big part of the performance on competition day is how comfortable you are competing. It's a big, big thing. So the visualization, the practice, what your goal is, you're aiming to do two different things, get your technique so good that it's second nature. So even though you're nervous, anxious, whatever, your technique's on point no matter what. And then number two, desensitize yourself to the stresses of competition so that when you do get in the competition, you've got less of that stress response, which screws people up all the time. I can't tell you how many times that happened to me where I'd go and get on the mats during practice and I could, you know, I could go through 10 guys, no problem. Then I'd go in competition and I'd gas out after the first match and it's because of the anxiety and the stress and the excitement that I just wasn't used to.