Meg and I have been working together since September of 2022, and this was our second meet together. We were able to make a lot of progress as well as gather a good amount of meaningful data in that time. She has a bachelor's degree in exercise science and is currently working on getting her doctorate in physical therapy, so she has a good base of training knowledge and is very capable of providing valuable feedback. However, she apparently does not know that going on a ski trip in the middle of meet prep is not a good idea. She wound up with a torn ACL 6 weeks out from her first national level competition. Most of my experience in dealing with pain/injury with a client had been in a chronic pain/load management context, so navigating training with a more legitimate injury like this was new territory for me. Luckily, a functional ACL isn’t all that necessary to train the squat, bench, and deadlift. So, once we were able to get pain to a manageable level, we were able to put the pieces back together as best we could until she had to get surgery after meet day.

Squat training is what took the biggest hit post-injury. Most of our plan for the back end of meet prep had to go pretty much out the window. After a brief period of going through the motions with an empty bar/negligible amount of weight we were able to work up to about 85% of her prior workload with roughly the same average intensity through her last block of training. The goal was to get as close to her top end strength as we could, and we were able to do just that. Meg matched her ATPR gym and meet PR on the platform with possibly a little more in the tank. 

Obviously, bench training was the least affected by the “mishap.” We already had a plan laid out that Meg’s bench progressed well under, and we did not have to stray from that too much. 4x per week bench with a moderate rep, low RPE quaternary day focused on longer pausing was enough stimulus to get reliable progress, and that’s what we ran up to the meet. Similar to her first meet, her third attempt bench moved like an opener, but given how her bench moves, I am confident that was the right call on the day. If there was a little more chalk on the bar it could have been the difference between a make and a miss.

In Meg’s first meet I upped her third deadlift by 2.5kg after putting in 120kg simply because she asked me to. She was 8/8, felt good on the day, and wanted to go for a PR and have some fun on her last lift of the competition. She hit it. History repeats itself. We were 8/8 going into her third pull, she was full of adrenaline, and promised me she had 125kg after I entered 122.5kg as her third pull. Typically I stay firm on the attempts that I put in, but given the fact that she had hit this number once before in the gym and we had already secured a total PR by her second attempt deadlift, I loaded the extra 2.5kg. Seeing her stand up with the weight and get 3 white lights was one of the more gratifying moments in my coaching career thus far. To be able to come back from what could have been a prep-ruining injury and hit PR’s on 2 out of 3 lifts as well as PR her total really shows Meg’s determination as an athlete.

Meg is currently in the rehab process of her ACL surgery and is not able to train powerlifting, but I am 100% certain that she will come back better than before in no time. I can’t wait to see her come back to the platform and crush her old numbers.