This was my first meet working with Aubrey, and Aubrey’s first meet in the 56kg class. Couldn’t be happier with how meet day went, and couldn’t be happier with the insight we gained through prep. Given Aubrey’s age, as well as her naturally being a very good responder to training, we were able to make a pretty unprecedented amount of progress in a very short period. I was actually able to learn a lot from her throughout this prep in regards to managing rate of progression, specifically in younger populations. We were also able to secure the Texas teen state record total! I am beyond excited to watch Aubrey continue to progress in this sport, her ceiling is very high and she will be a force in whatever weight class she lands in.

Aubrey responded extremely well to pretty much everything the second we got started. So, in terms of writing her program, it was much less about optimizing every little aspect, and much more about “managing threats to the system” as Angus Bradley would say. Throughout the entirety of prep we never ran more than seven sets of squat total across the week, and never more than one day of competition squatting. Her secondary squat session (Monday) consisted of a top set of tempo squats in the 2-4 rep range followed by paused back down sets of 5. The main technical issue in Aubrey’s squat was center of mass management, specifically falling into her heels when initiating the descent which caused a pretty substantial loss of tension coming into/out of the hole. We were able to see substantial improvement with this by slowing the movement down with proper cueing. Shifting into forefoot at the top of the movement, and initiating the descent by getting the knees moving forward in conjunction with the hips. By the end of prep we were only pushing that secondary session to the 5-6 RPE range because a.) The reduced load made it easier to see the technique changes we were looking for, and b.) it allowed us to put more stress onto her secondary deadlift session. Her primary squat session (Thursday) stayed pretty similar through prep, consisting of a top set of 1-3 followed by 3 back down sets in the 4-5 rep range. This session’s intensity was much higher than the secondary and would end in the RPE 8.5-9 range on the top set, and RPE 7.5-8 on her backdown work. We were able to end prep with a 132.5kg/292lb single on squats, but with depth being iffy on a few of her heavier sets we opted to leave 130kg/286lbs as her high end. Judging by how her third squat moved, that was the right call. The plan moving forward on Aubrey’s squat is simply to continue feeding the minimum effective dose while adding stress to her secondary session as needed.

I can confidently say that the majority of progress we made on Aubrey’s bench throughout this prep can be attributed to huge improvements in technique, and obviously moving up a weight class. The main thing getting in the way of Aubrey’s press before was simply an inability to produce force off the chest due to poor positioning. At first, we went with Spoto press as her heavily loaded accessory, but that didn't work very well. We saw a big jump in her ability to handle weight on Spoto press, but that didn’t necessarily carry over to her competition bench because that last inch of the descent is what she didn’t have control over. So, we were essentially just avoiding the problem that we were trying to solve by leaving Spoto press in the program. Instead, we leaned pretty heavily into tempo/long paused work. By the end of prep we had exactly 50% of all Aubrey’s bench work constrained by a tempo or long pause, and it worked phenomenally. Aubrey went from failing 57.5kg to hitting 70kg with room to spare in a matter of a few blocks, and it was mainly due to her improved ability to get the bar down to her chest without collapsing. We had Aubrey benching 4x per week all though prep, but only two of those sessions ever went past an RPE 6. Aubrey didn’t need four hard bench sessions every week to move her top end, but having those low intensity exposures throughout the week did wonders for her competency in the movement. Judging by the speed of her third attempt bench, she likely had the extra 2.5kg to match her gym PR, but we played it safe considering we were already in massive meet PR territory.

Aubrey’s deadlift is the lift that took the longest to sort out in regards to both programming and technique. Her deadlift leverages had allowed her to get to some pretty impressive numbers while having some pretty clear inefficiencies, so taking a step back to work on those was our first priority. Her starting point on deadlifts was a very heel-heavy, over-wedged, aggressive pull. So, we started by working on hinge mechanics, how to manage center of mass, and working on hip position off the floor. We saw lots of improvements through paused deadlifts, specifically heavy paused top sets. Up until the last 2 blocks of prep, all of Aubrey’s top sets on deadlift were paused, upon taking those out we saw some pretty clear degradation in technique. Knowing we needed some heavy paused work in her program, we started by just having her pause every warmup up until her top set to reinforce that position, but what we saw more benefit from was having a form of “descending top sets” where we would progress the paused single on her primary day, % drop into a competition single, and then move into RPE based backdowns. Another roadblock we ran into in Aubrey’s deadlift was some pretty frustrating adductor pain. Her squat and deadlift have a good bit of overlap in terms of movement pattern, so her back to back secondary squat/deadlift days on Monday and Tuesday would consistently cause pain from being overworked. We experimented with conventional deadlifts on her Tuesday secondary session, and that helped us get to a pretty high relative intensity without having any adductor aggravation at all, but the posterior chain fatigue was too much having not established any kind of manageable baseline workload with that movement, and her primary ended up feeling flat/unpracticed. What we ended up going with was load capped tempo eccentric deadlifts on her secondary. That way we could get some level of relative intensity early in the week without upsetting her adductor while still keeping movement competency high enough. We ended up securing 150kg on the platform, which is a 2.5kg ATPR and a number that has been failed in the gym a few times at this point. Hats off to Aubrey for finishing this prep despite hitting multiple non-training related roadblocks along the way. Cannot wait until I am able to see her step on the platform again.