3 (More) Mistakes Lifters Make When Trying to PR Their Lifts

3 (MORE) MISTAKES LIFTERS MAKE WHEN TRYING TO HIT PRS 1. OVER-EMPHASIZING SPECIFICITY.

1. Over Emphasizing Specificity
   
   Specificity is the #1 most important principle in powerlifting training, but often to get stronger, we must come at things from slightly oblique angles in order to progress as we get stronger. Just pushing a 1rm will get you stronger as a beginner for a while, but at a certain point, your soft tissue recovery might start to suffer, you might need more volume, etc. and singles become impractical.
   
   Variation comes from volume, different exercise variations (pause squats, front squat, accommodating resistance, etc.) and when used strategically it’s a VERY powerful tool to get you stronger.
   
2. Over-Emphasizing Variation
   
   On the other end of the spectrum, we have powerlifters who hit a plateau with a hyper-specific approach and decide to throw everything out and only train variations, high volume, etc. and not do comp lifts.
   
   There’s certainly SOME merits to this approach, but often we need to look somewhere in the middle (case in point: westside/conjugate training where variation is very heavily used, but they periodize between very high intensity and very low intensity periods).
   
   3. Overloading Too Frequently
   
   When we lift, we create a stimulus. After that, we must recover back to a “baseline” before we can adapt (i.e. improve).
   
   These 3 phases of stimulus, recovery and adaptation take time and if you’re overloading too frequently on your lifts, you’re likely to be catching yourself still recovering and not at a more “adapted” point on that curve. That’s not to say we should all just go do low frequency training since that would be a ridiculous claim.
   
   Instead, space out your heavy sessions with light and medium sessions until the time is right for another heavy/overload session based on your individual SRA curve.

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