Strength III Template Training Question

Training Q&A [Moderated]
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I’m currently running the Strength III template as my first strength developmental block after layoff earlier this year (I took about a month before re-acclimate to volume and some singles @7). I was planning on just doing a mock meet for the peak week; however an opportunity to do a USPA meet instead has fallen into my lap, it would be at my normal gym only 1 after my week 13 was planned to be (10/24 instead of 10/24). It’s close enough that I think it’s reasonable to make a small modification to the training block without affecting the progress I make out of it.

So here’s my question: What is likely going to be the best way to extend by a week? I did D3 of W7 today so I’m about to rap up the Pivot Week that divides to two 6 week mesocycles, which gives me options.

  1. Do a second Pivot Week, slightly different than the first (IDK, like 8s instead of 10s) and then do the second 6 week block as normal.
  2. Add a week on the front end of the 6 week block that is similar but less overall work than the normal W8 in the template, then follow the template until the competition week.
  3. Add some sort of ‘maintain my peak strength’ week of training at W13 and move the competition week to W14.

As far as I can tell, my ‘time to peak’ might well be around 6 weeks, which is what the template already fits. I haven’t nailed it down honestly but if it’s different It’s likely longer rather than shorter. My gut feeling is to add a pivot week and not mess with how many weeks make up the block that leads into competition and play with that some other time, but is there something I’m missing maybe? I know your pivot lasting too long can be bad as well but I thought I remembered up to a 3:1 development: pivot ratio being acceptable?

I’ve had a crazy/busy life since around the time I felt strong enough to bother with competitions and so I’ve only actually been able to do a single USAPL full power meet and non-Federation associated Supertotal meet in that time and would like to continue getting more competitions with either the USAPL or USPA under my belt so this opportunity seemed like something I shouldn’t pass up.

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I don’t think it’s possible to accurately predict in advance what the “best” strategy is going to be, not to mention that sometimes life happens and can interfere with the best of plans.

With that said, if I were in this situation I’d probably do option #2. If you’d prefer Option 1, that’s likely fine as well. I probably wouldn’t do #3.

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I feel this statement in my bones. Life happens and just keep happening and you have to deal with it.

Yeah, I wasn’t super hot on #3 either, but it seemed like a possibility I was overlooking and should ask about. If #1 or #2 are roughly equal and it’s up to my preference I think my personal pathos is that I’d rather see if I can get an extra week of 1RM progress in if I can. If I really do see peak performance at 6 weeks and take a nosedive at 7 for some reason I’ll find out (and if I don’t it will be fine), but it’s not like I’m going to stop lifting 8 weeks from now so a temporary failure for long term useful information for future training cycles seems like a fine trade.

Thanks for helping me think through this :smile: