Hey,
@donbdc, lots of people keep training logs here - why not start one of your own? We have two sections, one 'normal' and one only visible to people who've signed up and logged in to the forum.
I'll give you my two-cents-worth here. After a year and a half off, I'm trying to follow a classic strategy of two meets a year, spaced about six months apart, so that I have a couple of three-month cycles where I focus on the meet and a couple where I just kind of have fun, address weaknesses, and the like.
I'm DL only at most meets - it's the lift that's been great for keeping my back healthy, and I have issues with both bench and squat and, hey, I have nothing to prove, so I'm happy pulling and doing nothing else. My DL PR was set about 10 years ago, at age 51, and was almost 2.5 x bodyweight - weighed in at 147 lbs. and pulled 364. I did 330 last March, 350 this past November, and I'm going to aim for an early June meet and try to best my 350 and, I hope, my 364 sometime soon, too.
I'm working a lot on my 1-arm, 1-leg pushup for now, also doing skin-the-cat on the rings, a little bit of 1-arm kettlebell pressing, and taking a fair run at regular practice of the two S&S lifts. I have damaged cartilage in my upper back that has always made getups with any decent weight a problem, and also nothing left in my knees so anything past the first two stages of the getup (elbow, hand) is iffy. In the past, I've had to stop at 12 kg for getups, but I'm up to 16 kg and they feel OK so far, so I'm really encourage by that.
I was doing sets of 25 x 1h swings with a 28 kg a couple of days ago, and am aiming for making the 32 my regular 1h swing bell. Been doing 2h swings with 40 and sometimes 48.
I also love the two-kettlebell front squat - I throw them in whenever I'm in the mood, usually just a pair of 24's for me although I've done a pair of 32's in the past. And I throw in some weighted pull-ups, too, usually with somewhere between 16 and 24 kg hanging on a foot.
It's _fun_ to have this three month down time, and it also coincides with my really busy time at both work and volunteer projects I do, and I'm already looking forward to being back on a program in about a month's time. I did the Daily Dose Deadlift before my last meet and it was a perfect fit for me - really felt like I dialed in my form, got up to 340 for 3 singles in training, so doing I felt pretty confident about doing 350 in the meet.
One thing I learned from Marty was to skip the third DL - he said it's when a lot of injuries happen. That makes a lot of sense for a 3-lift competitor, but I do that, too. I take a few warmups, open with something easy, make my second what I have planned, and then I leave - don't even wait for the awards and trophies because, hey, I'm almost always the only guy lifting M61-65, 148 lbs., and raw. I'd get the prize for just showing up and lifting an empty bar.
Hope you start a training log here, Don. Lots of the folks who keep them look in on each other's logs and offer comments, ask questions, etc. Not a lot of competitive PL'ers but, hey let's see if we can change that.
-S-