San Antonio, TXIron Wars is arguably one of Wes Zunker’s more popular meets. The meet is hosted at Zunker’s gym, Texas Strength Systems, and he continues to increase the efficiency and production value of each meet. Iron Wars is just one of three annual meets that Zunker hosts in San Antonio.You can always expect the Texas Strength Classic in February, Iron Wars in September, and Texas Open in December. This predictable schedule is great for lifters and coaches as they plan their training and competition schedule; many lifters will compete in the same meets each year.This year we only had one lifter competing at Iron Wars. Jeremy Smith competed in his first powerlifting meet as a 93 kg lifter in the men’s raw open division. Jeremy completed eight out of nine attempts and totaled 547.5 kg.Squat // 3/3 190 kgIf I was nervous about any one lift for Jeremy it was definitely his squat. Jeremy experienced some pain during his squats in his last training block leading into the meet. Pain is to be expected during a meet prep but there's a clear difference between tolerable and intolerable pain. Thankfully we made the right adjustments by managing load and intensity and the taper did the rest. Squats showed up on meet day without pain and Jeremy hit 5 kg over his heaviest squat of prep for an easy 190 kg. The momentum and confidence from this definitely carried over into bench.Bench // 3/3 142.5 kgBench was pretty smooth and straightforward. Jeremy had spent the last few blocks hitting easy PRs in the gym. Frequently he would bench weight he never touched before but it would be for two or three reps not just a single. At the beginning of his peaking block, we reviewed some numbers and the 142.5 kg he hit on meet day fell within that range that we had talked about weeks prior. Moving forward we will get him more accustomed to higher intensities and that will prove useful for both his bench and deadlift.Deadlift // 2/3 215 kgWe had a near perfect day. Jeremy missed his third deadlift attempt of 227.5 kg but there was no way I wasn’t loading +500 for him. A 500-lb deadlift was one of Jeremy’s goals for the meet and both the data and meet day execution justified it. We opened at 202.5 kg which set us up for two 12.5 kg jumps if everything went well. His opener and second attempts looked great but we missed on the third attempt just below the knee. As mentioned earlier, higher intensity lifts are just something that will get better with practice and experience.SummaryIron Wars is always fun and I was very happy with Jeremy’s meet prep and meet day execution.