How many weeks out...

[Brian Hopper]

Do you start cutting back on assistance work? After your main lift, how much more would you do?

[theBarzeen]

I usually just drop the poundage used for auxiliary stuff at two weeks out, but I keep doing my work as usual.... just WAY lighter.
I feel like the added reps help me flush out and recover better.

A better question is how do YOU program assistance work coming in to a meet... what have you tried and how did it turn out?

[Brian Hopper]

I normally just train straight up to a meet. I'm just wanting to try something different. See if it helps any. For my main 3, I'm doing something new so I figured why not go all out and try new things all over.

[kingns]

One mistake i usually make is close to a meet drop the assistance work and overall volume as the weight gets heavier, and i feel weaker right before the meet than i did a month before. I think you should keep assistance work as close as you can, and as long as your in shape it shouldnt have an adverse effect on you. And like Louie says in a lot of the articles "those are the exercises that made you strong, so why cut them out?"

That being said, there seems to be a big resurgence in people that do lots of volume on the main 3 lifts and do limited "other stuff" now. In that case, those arent really the exercises you relied on to get strong, so its not gonna matter as much to cut them out.

But everyone is different, some people need a month to taper down before a meet, and others need only a few days. I think the goal should be to be ready to compete at almost any time and not need a ton of time to peak and rest up.

My 2 cents

[ScottYard]

I usually drop the volume and weight down about 2 week out and 1 week out I don't do any. If I'm cutting thouh I try to keep at it up till the last week to keep as much muscle as I can that last week.

[Brian Hopper]

More then likely i'll be cutting for this meet since i've been waking up at 248-250.

Kingns, for this meet, I am doing alot of volume. Of course as the weeks go by, the weights will go up and the reps will drop. But it's still alot of volume.

Maybe i'm still thinking as a geared lifter. When I lifted in gear, I pretty much did what ever I had to do and then maybe one or two other movements.

Thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate it!!!

[vdizenzo]

It has changed for me over the years. When I was super heavy I'd need a lot more rest going into a meet. Now I like to get more work in. I really play it by feel. I'm glad I have someone else doing my programming now so I don't have to take responsibility for it.