But indications to yourself that, okay, it's gonna be an off day, but could you win on an off day? What were you thinking coming in?

So for context, Joe and I were kinda talking about things with his training as of, like, six-ish weeks out.

Like, I've always got...

I've known Joe for years.

Like, we, uh...

He lives in Orlando, which is where I'm from.

Um, we do... would just kinda talk about training, whatever, like friends.

But you also went to school f- as a freaking power lifting coach, which is-

how was that transition obviously am i right thinking you trained together a bit anyway like you saw something obviously also will was obviously strong like yeah he was going to be strong enough to do well but taking that responsibility on like how was that from your perspective that close to the comp

Um, I mean, there was definitely pressure.

I mean, the circumstances in the him switching was like, obviously weird, where he asked me like three weeks out, and I'm like, what, like, what's going on? Um, but we kind of called and like, obviously, so will lives like 10 minutes from me back in North Carolina, like we're friends, we go to the gym together, everything like that.

Um, But it was one of those things where, like, okay, we kind of have to get this right immediately.

Because, like, literally, like, we're, like, three weeks out.

But, I mean, yeah, there was pressure on me.

But it was one of those things where it's, like, it's not a random lifter.

yeah that's actually a nice segue because i wanted to speak to you about joe's training as well so joe came on i think it was just after nationals um and he said that you'd kind of helped come on with his previous coach as well and like we're giving some ideas around programming changes and stuff um and there was a lot of talk around like the movement patterns doing lighter rep work not going quite as heavy on some stuff obviously he kept his top end kind of pretty heavy i think at that period but focusing on the good quality movements like keep his hips happy on squats for example and stuff and one thing i hear you talking about a lot and i think i hear alex your coach about a lot as well is the kind of solid movement patterns and reinforcing those and not necessarily just pushing all the time and obviously i think that's a really important thing and we kind of hinted earlier that you kind of spent some time just learning to move better essentially with your own training which obviously has paid off um i want to talk to you about the changes kind of being made with joe's training if you're happy to talk about that what the plan is going forward because i think he's kind of basically said you know all of these constant top end heavy week fours over time his positioning just kind of slowly got worse and worse and he was still having this crazy force output and this crazy strength but then his positioning was literally just letting him down and then obviously at a certain point that's going to bite you and then you're not going to get that same rate of progress and just the same showing that comps which we saw