Mental skills and personal experiment (15): end of first meso-cycle

The first properly powerlifting meso-cycle ended four weeks ago. I decided to adopt a different strategy and divided a 12 week meso-cycle into three blocks. The first block ended last week, with the very-low volume X high-intensity workout, practically a load test. The result was way beyond our expectations.

We needed to interrupt out squat test because the gym was closing, and we were at an easy 170kg, which was the objective. We outdid in 7kg the deadlift objective. Unfortunately we didn`t reach the goal with the bench press due to injury.

When my colleague and I discussed the goals for this three-week block, we were a bit insecure as to the loads: we noticed my strength had increased significantly. Therefore, we had no parameters for establishing load percentages (performance levels). We were left with the fact that bellow a certain point was too light, but we doubted the Max (100%) could be high enough for those values to be 80%.

That night I decided to use the mental rehearsal techniques I had developed to “turn” our goals into a 70-75% performance level. That was the boldest thing my colleague had ever heard of. It meant rehearsing for a 100% performance of 210kg squat, 155kg bench press and 190kg deadlift.

After our tests, we realized the actual 100% for the squat is 225kg, if calculated by my present performance. I am not so certain as to the other two lifts, where injury intervenes.

Our conclusion is that it has worked: mental rehearsal is efficient in producing substantial increases in performance which is directly related to neural activation.

For the moment, it is hard to advance any other possible implication.