Preparing for a Competition: What you can do six weeks out.

Six weeks out from a big competition... time goes very quickly at this stage. Obviously you want to be peaking for your big day, so what are some of the things you can do that will get you to your first wod firing on all 8 (or 12) cylinders....
 
1)      Stay healthy and injury free: This sounds obvious, however, it does seem that a lot of athletes turn up to comps with a sore this, or a tight that. So here are some tips to reduce the risk:

• Be mindful or how you're increase your training. Now is not the time to double your training frequency! Sure, you can do a little extra work on your muscle ups but don't do so many (attempts) that you blow your forearms out. It’s easy to go too hard, too quickly when you’re motivated for an up-coming comp. Be sensible and be mindful of your training and how it is affecting your body
• Focus on your recovery. Whenever you up your training intensity, you also need to up your recovery. Fine tune your diet and reduce the crap. Make sure you get around 8 hours of good sleep on average (I know, don't tell me how hard this is!). Do your triggering and stretching every session.
• Pay attention to minor niggles when you warmup and be prepared to modify your session accordingly. If something doesn’t feel right, then be prepared to change your session.

2)     When it comes to training improvements, pick the low hanging fruit! What are 2 or 3 things that you DON’T want to come up at the comp? Well, that's probably what you need to work on. And be accountable. Write down a goal for the next four weeks and stick to it. E.g. Two sets of 40 bar-facing during your warmup three times a week. Or squat snatch practice after two of your sessions per week.  

3)     This is part of the first two, but utilise your warmup time to really work your mobility. For us Masters this is one area that you need to do every day!  

4)    Try to predict if there may be anything unusual that is likely to come up at your comp. For example, at the State of Origin there's very likely to be a run and a swim. So add in one or two of those a week into your training. There’s also likely to be some crazy heavy type of OL complex cause Joe loves those. Make sure you're practicing your paused hang high pull snatch into a squat clean complexes  

5)     Make EVERY rep a GOOD rep! This is essential. There’s nothing worse than being in a Comp where you can't get depth or reach full extension because you never do it in training. And it's even worse if you're in a team comp! Get your coach or training buddy to keep a careful eye on you when you’re wodding (especially at the end of the WOD when you're tired) and give them specific instructions to be super harsh on you. You don't want to give your judge any question about your standards.

If you're not considering the above in your daily training, then now is the time to do so. Six weeks will fly by, so make sure you're ready!
In the next post I will outline some specific things you can add to your training to improve your weaknesses, We all have those, but by changing your training slightly you can definitely make some nice improvements.