Week 1 Performance Week - Lessons from the Lab

A fun strategy I have been experimenting with on a few high-level clients is the week 1 performance week.  This programming strategy developed out of a desire to maintain a high level of specificity relative to the sport (i.e. using submaximal singles “x1@7-8” in training), while not overdoing things by training too heavy too often.   A common theme in some of the individuals I have worked with is that they seemed to be stronger in the deadlift further out from the meet than after we touched singles or doubles for a couple blocks heading into a meet.   Many of you have probably experienced something like this, whether in the deadlift or another lift, or have heard someone talk about feeling strong mid training cycle but then having their performance fizzle out heading into a meet, or the meet day performance simply not living up to expectations.  I have had this exact thing happen for a few different clients now, for some reason most noticeably in the deadlift. That and adjusting only the deadlift led to greater success in the squat and benchpress as well.  I love how little tinkering with one lift or variable can have training and performance benefit across all 3 lifts. 

My bias is probably that I noticed this in myself in the deadlift first.  My deadlift felt better when I was training sets of 4-6 regularly.  There seems to be something inherently more fatiguing in the deadlift.  It seems more obvious in the conventional deadlift, but I have seen it in sumo pullers as well.  If I start touching singles or doubles for multiple microcycles in a row I just get worn out.  I didn’t think I needed to change my clients planning too aggressively as they were still all getting stronger from meet to meet, their meet day performance simply undershot both of our expectations.  We both agreed that we thought we should have been stronger on meet day given how training had been going a couple blocks before the meet.  This is a good problem to have, we knew we were on the right track.  Only changing one main variable over a larger macrocycle maintained a lot of confidence in the plan without needing to create a ton of buy-in to the new strategy.    The strategy change was that rather than hitting regular singles or doubles on comp deadlift top sets heading into competition, we would simply hit one top single per block, usually in week 1 immediate after a deload or reload, and then the rest of the block the heaviest weights would be top sets of 4-6. 

A small advantage of always programming a training single immediately after the deload is that it really allowed me to dial in a taper workload knowing how my client performance was responding to deload (reload, washout, whatever) workload.  It allowed me to find a workload that was low enough that it facilitated more recovery, while maintaining as much performance as possible

One thing I should note is that the 3 main individuals I am thinking of all continued to have weekly squat and bench singles in their training.  One of the assumptions I operated on when I first tried a strategy like this on myself in 2021 is that doing a top single on the squat probably trains my ability to execute a heavy single in the deadlift.  The muscle groups and movement patterns of the squat and the deadlift are not that different.  Our body understands bracing and straining against heavy weight either way. Therefore, I can just focus on bread-and-butter deadlift training that I know gets me stronger, and dials in my technique, without overtraining my back.  The first cycle I used this experiment I almost messed it up by hitting my heaviest deadlift too close to the meet, slightly tweaking my back on the day, forcing me to really back off my deadlift training the next few weeks, yielding the easiest platform deadlift PR I have ever hit. 

Inspiration

A couple people who unknowingly inspired some thinking on this strategy are Trevor Greenwood and Walter Cariazo. 

https://www.instagram.com/p/C_-wu9TgBG2/?hl=en&img_index=1

At The 2022 OPA Provincial Championships I watched Trevor sandbag his way to a win with a 790kgs total (PR total was 914 at the time) in the 120+ category.  The way the schedule worked that year Nationals was only 14 weeks after provincials.  With little competition in his category Trevor decided to just treat the meet as a heavy training day.  He said something to the effect of “It probably takes me a month or longer to actually recover from going all out on a meet”

 https://www.instagram.com/p/DAZlpuOSeSz/?hl=en

A few years later at Provincials 2024 Walter said something almost exactly the same, “At this point, it probably takes a month or so to recover after doing a meet.” This resonated with me on both occasions and was part of the fuel for this strategy.  Let’s see what happens if we hit our heaviest deadlift a month or more out, and then use bread and butter training into the meet.  Working backwards from meet day this became a heavy single once a block, allowing us to touch heavier absolute weights from block to block, without negatively impacting performance over the longer-term macrocycle plan. 

William

One of the first clients I used this strategy with is William Mcalonan.  William is a 120kgs lifter spends a lot of time on his feet every day between work and coaching.  I had a pretty typical experience with William where both his squat and his deadlift performed much better about 4 or 5 weeks out from meet day, and then things fizzed out when we started touching heavier weights for too long.  For lack of a better description, William didn’t have as much jam on meet day as we expected.  Heading into the meet bar speeds seem to slow a bit and he just didn’t seem to have as much pop in his lifts.  We agreed that we would try a strategy where we kept squat singles in throughout training, but only touch a deadlift single once or twice in the entire macrocycle, about a month from meet day, just to gauge where things were at and let William feel some heavier weights.  This strategy led to a 300 kgs Squat PR in training, as well as finally leading to William hitting a 300kgs deadlift in competition, securing a PR total and national qualifying total along the way.

Dani

Danial is a former varsity rower at an Ivy League school.  Knowing that Dani had this background when we first started was exciting to me.  Along with knowing that people who have played sports at a high level usually show up highly coachable, it also meant that Dani had a very wide base of General Physical Preparedness, from reps and reps and years and years (literally a decade) of rowing, real rowing, not that thing we call rowing in the gym.  On top of that, Dani is one of the few individuals I have worked with that excels in the 6-10 rep range compared to the 1-5 rep range.  Dani once described the feeling he got after an amrap set of 8-10 as euphoric.  Oxford describes euphoria as “a feeling or state of intense excitement or happiness.”  That is how Dani feels after a set of 10 on deadlifts, what a sicko haha.  It really makes sense though when you think about the energy system Dani spent much of his life using in his training.  It is fascinating that something in his brain is somehow relating the physical symptoms of 30-60s of exertion (elevated HR, shortness of breath, metabolic stress, discomfort, etc.) with feelings of joy.  The kind of rewarding feeling you might get after a hard push to end a race when your whole body is on fire leading to a win. 

I digress, Dani is very good at squatting and deadlifting in the 5-10 rep range.  This was valuable early on because Dani wanted to get bigger, was eating tons, and soaking up the volume that was being thrown at him.  It got to the point where he got so big and strong so fast that his enjoyment of high workloads and doing the hard work probably got in the way and we probably overdid things a little bit.  I like to think of it as we were giving Dani too many repeat sprint efforts too often.  So, we backed off a bit and were able to continue smashing rep PRs.  There are some other factors at play, but a couple meets in a row we seemed to underperform in the deadlift.  Funny enough, both of those meets the squat showed up much better than the deadlift, even though deadlift training had been the highlight and squat training and been a bit of a struggle.  The deadlift was going up from meet to meet, we just weren’t hitting any of 3rd attempts that we thought we should have been capable of based on training.  So, we know that sprint type training makes Dani perform well.  We also knew that if there was too much heaviness in training, Dani would still perform, but not as well as he would when we were just building say his set of 5.  We used almost the exact same strategy, except for a while Dani’s training single always occurred at the end of the block.  Dani is one of those people whose performance thrives when training is really hard, and fatigue has built up.  He routinely performs very high at the end of the block while simultaneously reporting high levels of fatigue and soreness.  We have played with this strategy a few blocks in a row and most recently it yielded this PR in the gym. 

Joey

The first client I started messing around with a strategy like this is Joey Macdonagh.  The issue with Joey was almost verbatim what I described earlier.  We would be training sets of 5 in in some accumulation style building blocks and Joey would hit insane rep PRs in the sumo deadlift, only to underperform after a heavier intensification block heading into a meet.  Joey’s deadlift performance seemed to be at its highest one or two weeks into a heavier block and then fizzle out.  Joey will admit that part of the problem was that his load selection can at times be under the influence of his ego.  It is no easy thing to actively make the decision to load less weight than the week prior.  On top of the pattern that Joey would be stronger in week one or two, the issue would compound when Joey would use poor load selection and overshoot the plan, coming from a subconscious need to increase load relative to the week before, or in comparison to his best days. I try not to fault people for overshooting.  Overshoots happen because we want to lift heavier weights.  That is the goal at the end of the day.  So, another reason we decided to only use one deadlift single per block was to take the option of overshooting singles away from Joey.  Funny thing was, when Joey had a top single less frequently, his load selection was more appropriate, and he overshot less.  His itch to go heavy was satisfied and the strategy really took off when the performance week improved block after block.  Love it when a plan comes together. 

Practical Application

You could expand on this idea and have week 1 be a performance week for all three lifts.  How often do you really need to hit a top single to train and maintain the quality needed to execute high loads on meet day?  If you are in a period where you really want to focus on growth and technical development, and you want to get away from singles for a bit, but you don’t want to abandon them for too long, try messing around with week 1 of your second training block as a performance week, following that week with more bread-and-butter developmental training.  Repeat the strategy for a few blocks and see how you respond.  How is performance trending?  How do the weights feel on your back and in your hands?  How is the performance week progressing from block to block?  If nothing else this would be a good strategy for maintaining some sport specificity further out from a meet when a coach or lifter may want to spend time away from higher levels of specificity from week to week. 

Try out a week performance week planned into your normal base building training blocks. It will allow you to train heavy often enough, but not so often that it wears you or your athlete out. It will help manage ego and expectations, while facilitating the joy in touching a nice heavy single at RPE 7-8 once every month or so. Lastly, it will also help you dial in how much you need to taper in order to maximize performance. Remember that the goal of the taper is to maximize recovery while maintaining as much fitness as possible, leading to the highest performance possible. We want to do less training, but not so little that performance degrades.