Back to Competing Again!

Well…it’s been a while.  But it’s time.  It’s long overdue, but I need to get back under the bar in a competitive sense.  

My last competition was July 2010 at the N.A.S.A. Grand Nationals here in Houston TX.  I had a decent showing, nothing that re-wrote the history books , but I did manage to win the 198 lb unequipped division and set some PRs in the process.  Training with a competition on the horizon has always led to my best periods of training progress.  

Without a narrow defined goal and a time line you have ZERO to base your training upon.  Progress becomes an elusive, impossible to define quantity.  Competition provides you with consequence.  It’s 100% necessary for optimal training.  

For me, power Lifting meets have always been boring.  I don’t go to them unless I am coaching a lifter or competing myself. Even then, I find them excruciatingly painful to sit through.  Power lifting is such an individual sport that “winning” the meet has never been my primary focus.  It’s always been about the process.  The process of a fully fulfilled 3-6 month training cycle that culminates in MY best performance.  Whether I win or not, just depends on who else decides to show up or not. 

But, without the meet on the horizon, the process rarely runs its course.  There is no consequence.  

The other side to competition is the cliched aspect of “putting your money where your mouth is.”  I coach strength athletes for a living – both here at the gym and online.  I’m not saying that you have to be Ed Coan to be a great coach, most great coaches were average athletes at best.  The lack of genetic advantage forces average athletes to learn the fundamentals of their sport.  As an extremely average athlete myself, and a coach to primarily average athletes, I have gotten very good at programming and program design.  I feel like I have to attribute much of this to my decision to remain 100% drug free. The use of drugs in the strength sports can mask a lot of programming errors in my opinion. My gift in the strength sports is not my physical ability – it’s my ability to find creative solutions where others don’t.  

That being said, I feel that it is important that my paying clients see me put into action the same programs and principles I provide to them.  Starting today, I’ll be keeping a regularly updated training log here on my site.  My intention is to use the training log as a platform to teach and communicate with my subscribers – not to awe you with my feats of strength.  If you want to be AWED, go to youtube and watch Dan Green squat – not me!  

As of now, I’m looking at a USAPL meet here in Houston in July about 16 weeks away.  Let’s go!  

Andy