 I consider myself a gamer. I consider myself lights on, actions on, I do work. Didn't go as planned. You don't hear this from a lot of people. I just wasn't strong enough today. So, uh, does it suck a little bit? I'm going to try to just ignore it. I mean, it sucks because all my friends were here, you know, it sucks that you guys followed along this journey. I read all your nice comments, tons of DMs, tweets, good luck, all that feels good. All the homies were here in the crowd, um, and I just didn't show up despite my prep. So, uh, kind of typical warm-up. I did everything except for a belt squat, which I'd typically been doing to kind of wake up my legs and get a little extra fatigue in during prep. So I did a salt bike for five, 10 minutes, just moved around a little bit. The weather was perfect. It was warm, which is a good lifting condition for me at least. That's probably 80, 85. And then started turning on some real music. A lot of people were around the deadlift platform, which was cool. There was one guy who's me, Kalkin. Kalkin was probably opening around five, 70 or so, five, five, 50. And then there was one other guy in our flight that was opening around six, 60 or so. He's a strong dude. I don't know his name, but so it was us three kind of on the same platform. And I got a little circle around the platform, which is cool. Got me in a good mood. I've talked about it many times, just being self aware. I like the spotlight. I like a little attention. So I was feeling good. Vibe was good. Pulled, uh, kind of the weights I can start to tell is maybe like three, 15, 450 in around five, how they feel and how they move. If it's going to be a good day or bad day. And to be honest, I thought it was going to be a good day. I thought I was going to pull some magic out my butthole. Um, three 15 felt like nothing. When three 15 feels like, uh, it's before I put on my belt. So when three 15 feels like 135, I know it's a go time. And then when four 55 and five or so, regardless of how they feel, if they move fast, if I'm fucking snapping my legs, um, I know it's go time too. And so I snapped like 420 or 520 pretty fast, pretty good. Uh, then I think I took, maybe I took 501, 530, 570 was my last warmup and all of them moved pretty dang good. If I do say so myself, timing was pretty good. So I just went in the back, baby powdered up. Um, my opener was 606. You know, the goal was just to beat 650. You know, I had 670, 680 in my head. Um, and then if I pull a miracle out my butt, which I've done before, I've done before. Uh, I thought maybe, maybe we'll try to tackle 711 or what's next above 705. But uh, like I said, things did not go as planned. Open 606 felt extremely heavy, but actually moved pretty good. If you check the video, it's on Instagram or right on here, uh, moved pretty well. So then I was going to jump to either 644 or 650. Um, I typically recommend for any power lifter, but, uh, almost everybody I've coached and myself, we take about 5% jumps, give or take in a meet, uh, anywhere from, you know, yeah, three and a half to 7% jumps, I guess, depending on how good or bad you move the previous rep. Uh, and, and depending on your overall goal, but generally speaking, 5% jumps are, are a nice, nice pace for that. Um, I think 644 would have put me at exactly, uh, 5%. So we went up maybe a higher. I think I rushed it. Uh, I don't think I rushed it enough. I think I was just too weak. I didn't get very fired up for the 655. Like I said, maybe I wasn't nervous enough. Maybe I didn't visualize enough. Maybe I didn't mentally prep enough. I'm not sure. Definitely like we talked about my preparation for the actual meet wasn't enough. My training wasn't what I needed. I wasn't physically prepared. Mentally, I think I was there except for the adrenaline, the adrenaline and like my nervousness. So I wasn't nervous, which is good and bad. I think I need those nerves to fire me up. And I think most athletes do, you know, Michael Jordan's quoted saying that the day he's not nervous for a basketball game is the day he retires. And I'm a similar fact. I think you need to be somewhat excited slash nervous before everything you go into because you want to perform your best. And I did in a way, but for some reason it just wasn't there. So, um, decided to take 650 again, although my back started tightening up a lot. I gave it another good fight and that's just kind of what happens. Probably the only me in my entire life that I've underperformed or underwhelmed myself. A little disappointing overall, but, you know, just like everything else in life, you start to detach yourself from what you're actually doing. You don't put a label on, I am a power lifter. And so it doesn't define me. It doesn't define my career as a lifter, as a coach. And that's what, you know, losers probably tell themselves and that's what you guys are going to tell me. But I still feel good. I still feel confident. I pulled the best I could with the time given and where I put it on my priorities. Right. So I put other things first in my life and that's the results you get sometimes. There's only a certain amount of things, even if unrelated, but, but especially when they're related, but unrelated. There's only a certain amount of things that we can put all our energy into and try to improve upon. It's going to be really difficult if you have five hobbies, a couple of businesses, family, friends, dog. If you have all these things and you're trying to make them all optimal, perfect and streamlined, it's going to be really hard to do multiple things. Right. I think we can be really good at maybe three, four, five things at once. And not that you can't do all those things, but you can't be the peak performance or optimal performance in all of them. And so for me right now, powerlifting wasn't one of those. You know, I have the podcast going on. I have Kaizen going on. I have my YouTube going on. I have my Twitch going on. I have my family and my mother. It's been really important. We moved her out of a new house as I talked about. I have Connor and my friends that I want to hang out with and have a good time. So just different priorities, different strokes, different folks, but that's what it comes down to. Not an excuse, but just the fact of the matter is I didn't put in what I should have and I got the result that happens. It would have been a miracle if I would have done something crazier, which happens here and there, but it wasn't today. So on to the next thing, right? On to the next thing for me is probably just going to be lose a little bit of weight. I'm going to take away some time from the barbell, allow my back to fully, fully heal. I know there's some haters to out there. Mike, your back so hurt. No wonder. And it feels fine. It feels fine. It's stiff, but it feels fine. So we're going to do some unilateral leg works and dumbbell works and kettlebell work. Try to have fun in the gym. Try to get back to a healthier body weight. I don't know if I wasn't nervous because I was felt prepared and confident or if I wasn't nervous because I didn't care. And again, like I said, the Michael Jordan quote, all those things, I'm not sure where that is and that's something maybe I won't ever know or maybe I'll have to learn at a different meet a different time. I talked about retiring from powerlifting, who, when, why you should stop powerlifting. And the other thing I'm trying to do is just take my days day by day. There's going to be other powerlifting meets. I'm turning 30 this summer, which feels old. My body feels old. And I was like, Mike, you're not old. I put my body through a lot, man. I was just insanely aggressive basketball player playing at a fairly high level of 15 years. I've been thrashing my body for another eight to 10 years, hard powerlifting with no time off. So for me to be able to mentally just take a step back, find out what's healthy, find a better flow in the gym, hit some cycling, maybe even some yoga. I'm going to try some light strongman stuff. See all my body works in different planes. Again, the kettlebell stuff. So I think physically I probably wasn't as prepared as I should have been. And I think the nerves weren't there maybe because I didn't care for this meet. And that's another reason for me to, I know it's time to step back. And if there is, if there is another time that I really want to get after powerlifting, I can, I may, I probably will, but I can't put a stamp on it. So probably just didn't care enough. You know, probably just care enough. And that's fine. I think that's absolutely fine. And you know, what do you do if you don't care? What do you do if you don't like it? I don't know. It's just what I do. It's just what I do. I like to compete. I like to compete in sports, although I don't like to compete in powerlifting. And so I threw my name in that through my name in the hat and went after it. So on to the next thing, not a big deal. People make a big deal. I make it a big deal. I'm trying not to. So as we talked about multiple priorities, YouTube and you guys are one of them. My Twitch community is one of them content creating, teaching, coaching, furthering everything that I'm doing. But for now, we're going to move into that aesthetic slide. So if you guys are into it, I'm going to be hitting a little bit more body building, feeling a little bit better, some different things on the gym, as well as the vlogs and everything else we do here. So I do appreciate you guys. I appreciate all the DMs, the tweets, the nice comments, even though I sucked at the meat. It really does mean a lot to have you guys have my back like that, even though it was an underwhelming performance. But I appreciate you all. Be sure to give this thing a thumbs up again, five videos a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, coming at you, subscribe, sell a mic. On to the next one. I'm out of here. I thought I had so much gamer in me. I could show up despite my prep and I couldn't. I couldn't. So at least I know where that line is. You learned to adjust. It was shit prep and I can't, I can't out game. I consider myself a gamer. I consider myself lights on, actions on. I do work and I still think I do, but you can't do that despite lack of preparation. Lack of preparation makes courage of us all.