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It's that time of year again warriors, the virtual lifting competition looms. We must prepare ourselves by planning our lifts! For each of the 3 big lifts (squat, bench, deadlift), over the next week work up to a difficult triple (3 reps), double (2 reps), or single (1 rep). Don't fail or max out! The idea here is to do this with a weight that you are fairly sure that you could have gotten 1 more rep with, but definitely not 2. This will help you get a good idea of what your max reps are for that weight, from which you can estimate your 1 rep max. 5 rep max ≈ 83-86% 1 rep max 4 rep max ≈ 87-89% 1 rep max 3 rep mx ≈ 90-93% 1 rep max 2 rep max ≈ 94-96% 1 rep max Say I squat 295 for 3, and know I could have gotten a 4th, but definitely not a 5th. That means that 295 lb is somewhere between my 4 rep max and 5 rep max. I can then divide 295 by the high end of 4 rep max (89%) and the low end of the 5 rep max (84%) to estimate my 1 rep max somewhere in the realm of 331- 351. I might even be able to narrow it down more depending on how hard I think that 4th rep would have been. If it would have been grindy and barely gotten there, I'm probably at the lower end of the range. If it would have been pretty quick, then maybe I'm closer to the higher end. We want to do that for each of our 3 lifts, so we have an idea of what our final attempt will be. From there, wa can back track to plan the rest of our attempts based on experience and what we're trying to get out of the competition. First meet and just trying to have the experience of going for 1 rep maxes (1RMs) for the first time? Be conservative and plan your 3 attempts as something like 85%, 91%, 96% of the estimated 1 RM. An experienced lifter and trying to push your limits and hit a PR, then maybe you plan for something like 90%, 97%, 102%. Post your experience with the mini and what your estimated attempts would be here! And of course, we're more than happy to field all comments and questions and help everyone out