Mid-Program Volume Increase and 9 Weeks Between Meets

Hi, I have 2 questions.

First, I just finished Week 6 of the Strengthlifting 2 program doing the 3-day modification of subbing the 3rd movement of day 3 out and doing the first movement of day 4 instead (I vaguely remember that from somewhere). I am currently not doing prescribed GPP instead I try to rack up ~10k steps per day as that’s something my my work allows. I generally feel fine, sleep/nutrition/life stress is in a good place (knocks on wood).

My schedule just changed so now I have 5 days a week to train. I’m torn between keeping my total lifting slots of 9-10 movements per week which would mean short workouts or I could go ahead and do the full 4 day scheme +1 day of GPP on Wed but I’m unsure if this will “break” the program as I’m headed into the deload → sport specialization portion of the cycle. Would you expect any significant benefit or detriment to bumping the volume at this point in a block**?** I could just go for it and monitor session RPE and adjust accordingly?

I am doing this for mock meet prep with a few buddies so there’s only eternal honor on the line…

Second, there is a sanctioned meet that I’d like to do that is 9 weeks after the mock meet. Would simply running strength 2 again and just count backwards from week 13 to whatever week that would be work? Should I add a pivot/deload week after the first meet before diving into the truncated prep? Alternately I could shorten each “phase” by a week or two so I still have the volume-specialization-peak scheme only compacted slightly? I realize it isn’t optimal but there have been virtually no meets available to me for the last 2 years and I’m hyped to do them again.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!
Andrew

If you’ve been having good results, I probably wouldn’t change anything just yet. If the results haven’t been coming, I’d do the 4-day template like it was originally programmed.

That’s pretty much how I’d do it, though in this case I’d tweak it a bit by starting with week 1 (the low stress week), then jumping to week 4. To make the dates workout, I’d skip week 8.

Thank you for the insight!