At TSF, we typically program in five-week blocks and we are staunch on sub-maximal training. Understanding the “why” behind coaching decisions can help you as a lifter to attack your training with the intention that is built in to your program. If you don’t know why certain exercises are in your program or what the purpose of an intro/deload week is, it’s hard for you to execute them with the desired intention.

In this article I explain how we structure our training at TSF and in line with that, how you can best execute each week of your training block to achieve the best training outcomes.

Across a five week training period, we want to first recover from the fatigue accumulated in the preceding training block, then build training momentum across the block to launch us in to the next one. This is how we do it.

I competed a few weeks ago at the JPS Spring Showdown. It was an insanely fun day; the most fun I’ve ever had at a competition. I made some good lifts. I also made some shocking mistakes.

Each time I compete, I always have a period of self-reflection where I go through what I did well, what could have been better, my future competition aspirations, how I want to train on the other side of comp and any ideas for my training that I’d like to flag with my coach.

Here are my reflections from the JPS competition. Perhaps you learn from my mistakes. Or perhaps this just prompts some more reflective practices in you.