Competitions and training vary greatly. In training you are in your native gym (home field advantage), you can lift at your own pace, you are with training partners (who may be in different weight categories), you lift on “your” platform, with “your” barbell, and many other variables to list that are likely never to happen at competition. Training is a relatively sterile and controllable environment that you have a large amount of control over.

In competition you are likely to have none of that. The venue may be completely foreign and alien to you. Multiple attempt changes or failed lifts make you lift at the competition’s pace and not your own. Your training partners are likely to be in the audience as opposed to backstage lifting with you. The platform may be slicker or more broken down compared to yours. The barbell may be better or worse than the one you typically train with or the bar you warmup with may be different brand or generation than the one on the platform. There is very little that can be controlled in competition beyond your own lifting.

No amount of training can prepare a lifter or a coach for competitions. You must practice competing in order to get good at competing. “Heavy Friday/Saturday” will not cut it since that is still training on familiar equipment with relative control over most variables. It does not simulate the timing or pattern of a competition. Everyone goes heavy, at their own pace, usually pausing to watch someone else take a heavy lift every so often. There is no order or reordering of lifting. You “compete” on the same bar you warmed up on. The coach and athlete receive no practice in counting attempts or managing warmups. You cannot train for a 15-20 minute gap between attempts, or train for a sudden order change where you have to skip your last warmup set(s).

I resolve this by holding mock competitions on a near monthly basis; I have experimented with weekly ones with my team to great success as well (these ones they only get 1-2 attempts at either lift). The team gets to practice outside of the normal training environment under close to the same conditions as they would face in an actual competition, and often with the same amount of pressure. At mock meets we run the session as close to a competition as possible with separate warmup and competition area/equipment, loaders, judges, and so on. Sometimes I throw in variables such as attempt changes or make everyone do their first attempt followed by a second attempt, and so on. It is a good dry run and dress rehearsal to acclimate and normalize competitions.