‘Soon ripe, soon rotten.’

There are times, as a competitive athlete, when a high intensity push on a certain movement is important, or even necessary.

I did this with my deadlift in the run up to the ‘Strongest in the North’ competition.

My reason? It was my first Opens competition and my deadlift lagged... badly, to the point where the opening deadlift was a 13KG PB.

It paid off, I pulled the weight which was the difference between 2nd & 3rd, but that push made training hard to recover from and unsustainable.

Even through a phase of post competition maintenance, restoration & recovery, the detraining on the deadlift happened quickly.

I haven’t tested my deadlift since that competition in October, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t replicate what I did that day, although it’s now starting to get close.

In essence, it left as quickly as it came, mainly because I couldn’t keep that level of intensity up for long enough to make the long term changes.

Every other event from that day I could now replicate in training any day of the week if I wanted, or needed too. Why? Because I was already close enough to being capable of those weights going into the competition, so the training for those was much more sustainable and adaptive in the longer term.

My point, work hard, but work sensibly and sustainably. Be selective and save the big pushes for specific movements at specific competitions and only when necessary.

In the long term, you’ll retain more of what you build allowing you to have a better base from competition to competition and ultimately will lead you to perform at a higher level.

Adam Johnston, 2nd February 2020