The main purpose of a peaking cycle is to have a couple maximum effort weeks working at 90% or above, and one week where we are taking a fatigued max. The importance of a fatigued max is that it's going to give us some idea of your current state of strength and give us a baseline of what you are going to be able to hit at the meet. This is the reason myself and my athletes generally go 9/9 at meets, because we know that we are going to be hitting 2-5% more at the meet than our fatigued max so it is less of a guessing game. The weeks following our fatigued max will be as follows: two more heavy weeks with a decrease in intensity and volume, followed by a speed day 7 days out from the meet to keep our ability to express strength intact. On rest days, make sure you are resting fully and feeling good. I often have my athletes do 50 air squats twice a week on top of stretching daily just to stay loose. Make sure you understand that we don't just add 50 pounds in a cycle because we work hard and want to. Strength is not linear for anybody and doesn't move in a straight line. I've seen many athletes coming off incredible training cycles and have really bad meets. The purpose of this peaking cycle is to avoid that happening. Have you ever competed, then three weeks later felt amazing in training? That means you peaked wrong. You want the best day of your entire training cycle to be the meet day, and this is how we do that. 

Remember, we only have between 1-3 meets per year, and your numbers are going to be directly correlated to your mood. What I've seen in the past was lifters going for meet PR's they knew they weren't capable of. The best way to figure out attempts and leave the meet happy is to use that 100% and add 2-5% to that number on meet day depending how you feel. I generally do not allow my athletes to attempt more than a 10-15 pound PR on any lift. I think small increments of progress will make a much healthier and more successful lifter over a long period of time. If we put 10 pounds on each lift twice a year, that's 60 pounds in a year on your total. In 4 years, that's 240 pounds on your total. For some of you guys, that's near world record numbers. The goal of this game is patience and constant improvement, not immediate gratification. One cycle or one year will never make a lifter. The amount of "next big things" that have come and left and nobody remembers is huge. To be truly successful, you have to last a long time.