I wouldn't overthink it, sometimes its just not there. Seems a lot of justifying is going on so I'd just say to just try to take it for what it is worth and use the info for going forward.
It is always easier looking back and I honestly just avoided adding input after you seemed to have a plan, since I always hate to overload people and have them second guess even if my opinion differs. Since you are seemingly looking to make sense of it I'll leave some input.
I am going to kind of agree. I think overall the big issue here is that it all just kind of feels so spur of the moment or not planned. I don't follow along super close, but most of the training just feels so random and not building on itself. At least the main (day 1 bench? idk) seems consistent in Raw then Slighshot then Raw for volume in general, but everything else just feels like throwing it together as it goes. There is like a random day with OHP? Squats every so often, sometimes cleans on dead days, etc.
I'd keep in mind you were also just sick not even that long ago before deciding to want to taper.
I also just don't think a taper or even a longer exponential taper makes sense as most tapers come after over-reaching to be effective and this just doesn't seem like that had been happening.
Idk I could just be a little lost though, just kind of felt like suddenly you wanted to PR so you just decided to taper instead of already having been building specifically to this time point.
I think this is just what it boils down to for me and I hope this comes off the right way, but like what was the point? I'd just ask yourself what do you want from your training (and that the answer to that is for you it doesn't matter if that aligns with me or anyone else)?
What I am getting at is do you want to train and make progress and just keep going, or do you want to take purposeful periods of tapering to try and maximize performance even if you aren't going to compete?
I'll lay out a theoretical example/model just to give an example. I don't want the take away from this to be that this example is the right way to go or that people who want to taper, peak their strength, compete or know exactly where their strength shouldn't do those things. My takeaway is people should know what they want and go in that direction.
So generally for myself I like lifting heavy, I like knowing what my best is, but honestly I really just like working out and progressing. So I had to actually look back and I don't think I have any actual tapers into a top attempt for something other than recently when I really wanted a 400lbs Front Squat so I did taper into that.
Otherwise you know maybe you just lay out training cycles where you are somewhat progressing linearly until some sort of top then cycle back down. It probably sounds vague, because I am not trying to lay a specific training on you and there are so many ways to do it. For example with myself I'll have a movement that may be a "focus" like say Deadlift and I may move through some progressions on it slowly and continually cycling up in intensity/weight with deloads coming as needed, but overall I'm just moving through a progression. Then when it seems that progression has hit its limit I reassess and deload and either decide to move back down the progression and make some tweaks and dive back into it or just move along to something else. When done naturally this may still be some form of tapering (my volume may be lowering as intensity is increasing), but not always. I just let the progression run because I enjoy the training. A lot of times I PR along the way or deviate on days it feels great and shoot for a PR, but generally I don't because I am conservative and would rather just keep training and moving along.
This probably doesn't make a ton of sense because I am on low calories and just vomitted this giant amount of words up after training before going home, but I guess I am just saying you probably don't need to literally do some tapering like that into a max attempt every time you want to PR, you could literally just train and take the PRs as they come, but also know that the trade off with that is they might show up a little less often than if you want to purposely taper into them, in which case I'd again suggest maybe making a more conscious plan of when exactly you'd want those points to be so you can structure a more optimal approach.
Sorry for the long reply.
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