By Mark Clevenger
November 30th 2016
Great performances on the platform are directly correlated to the amount of preparation an athlete puts in long before game day. I’ve seen very strong athletes fall apart on the platform and under perform or bomb events they had no business failing. The common denominator I’ve seen in these failures has been improper preparation. So if preparation is so important, how do so many people get it wrong and how do you avoid this crap the bed (or platform) scenario?
One of the biggest problems I see with athletes prepping for a contest involves their training leading up to it. They either get too specific too fast and burn out, or wait too long to get specific and never reach their true peak for a specific implement, movement, or medley. The other aspect of training that often gets neglected is diet. You can’t run a Lamborghini on regular unleaded and expect it to still go from 0-60 in under 3 seconds. The biggest diet gainz robbing culprit of them all is alcohol. You can’t eat well all week, train hard (and smart), and then binge drink a night or two on the weekend and expect that performance poison to not have a negative effect. Diet and training are the two variables each person has direct control over that directly impacts performance, so don’t let these two keep you from being the strongest version of yourself on game day.
The other problem I see with athletes is that they want to compare themselves to everyone else at the competition. Their mind is so worried about what X person is going to pull, and what Y person is going push, that they lose focus of their moment on the platform and their task at hand. Athletes must stay focused on the given task and when their moment comes execute that task to the best of their abilities. If they do this for every event chances are they will walk away with a PR and a performance they can be proud of.
By no means are these two problems the only ones plaguing athletes performances on the platform, but they are the two biggest problems I’ve seen that every athlete has direct control over. If you’re not familiar with developing training programs, hire a coach to help you. If you’re not familiar with proper dieting principles, hire a nutrition coach (or check out Renaissance Periodization, they are the best bang for your buck). If you can’t spare the change for either of these than educate yourself, there are plenty of free (or cheap) resources available online. So take control of your diet, training, and mindset to smash PR’s and maximize your performance on the platform.
Louisville Strongman 