My Powerlifting coach

  I've had a ton of coaches in my life. Coaches in triathlon, CrossFit, nutrition, swimming, BJJ, weightlifting, Powerlifting, and more. I've never had a coach I was more impressed with than I am with my powerlifting coach Vernon Smith-More. Not only does he spend a tremendous amount of time, thought, and energy building a perfect program. He's also a fantastic problem solver. I'm a difficult athlete to train right now. There's a lot of things that prevents me from getting the gains a lot of athletes get. I'm in my 40's which minimizes gains, and I've been in a calorie defacit for a long time which also prevents a lot of muscle growth. He' tried a couple different approaches to training with me. When one thing doesn't work or he tries something else. That's rare. Most people coach by putting all their athletes on a cookie cutter program. If it works, great. If not, then that's just to bad. Vernon works hard at creating a tailored program. He's also great at keeping me on track and focused. I sent him an email requesting to do a Powerlifting meet in a couple weeks in Phoenix Arizona. He was able to convince me it was a bad idea. And that my long term development should be my greatest focus right now. Here's an example of a recent email I received from him.

Hey, Cody. I think that’d be a great meet schedule for next year! And yeah, any other meets you’d want to try in between we could just treat as “train through” meets and not necessarily adjust the programming for them. 

And as far as the upcoming April meets are concerned: I think I’d prefer you do the NASA meet. I’ve programmed this block with a bit more volume, but less intensity — which is different from how I’ve programmed you in the past. I’d like to see how you respond to a full block of submaximal training like this. If it goes well and you feel strong, we’ll have a good template going forward for how to best program for you in a caloric deficit. 

How does that sound?

Vernon