Recently, I seem to be hearing this from a lot of people and I thought I'd lay out what I do, and If anyone wants to know more detail about why I structure things this way, then you can contact me and I'd be happy to talk about it.
First and foremost I don't feel "big." I have a bit of a self image thing that I'm smaller than I really am. Right now I'm 6"1" 215# and about 15-18% body fat. To give you an idea of my current strength; my max deadlift was 500# and back squat 380# according to the charts (meaning it's not an actual lift, just based on 14 reps at 115kg yesterday). So to me, that's not really that big. Then again, I'm comparing myself to guys like Dave Tate, Jim Wendler, Doug Young, etc. Those guys are big, and strong.
Secondly, it's hard for me to describe what I do in simple terms but I'll try.
My focus is on Endurance, Strength and Power. In that order actually. I thought my strength was most lacking, so that has been my focus for a while now. Then I will switch gears to fix what ever is most lacking and so on. I started doing 5x5 basic strength progressions, found the volume too high, then I started playing with incorporating a more "west-side barbell" style into the routine. What's interesting about Westside, Dave Tate, et al, is it's all based on Soviet Dynamo Club training methods which I feel like I have a pretty good general understanding, so there were already elements in the training, but recently I read through Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 program and instantly saw how I could incorporate it. So I started doing Wendler's 5/3/1 program, or at least my variation of it. So for 2 months at a time, I do 3x/week strength training and 3x/week Steady state endurance training. Both are based on simple principles like progressively overloading and max efforts, then an unloaded week at the end of 7 weeks to recover before changing to 4 weeks of 3x/week Met-Con style, or CrossFit, or Mixed-Mode, or Power-endurance, or what ever you want to call it and 3x/week of MV02 endurance training.
That's pretty much it in the most simple terms. 2 months of 3x/week strength, 3x/week steady state; then 1 month 3x/week P/E, 3/week MVO2 training.
The details are quite complex though and even more complex is the why I do it this way. To keep it short though; strength training goes like this (percentages are percentage of 1 rep max - the max weight I can lift for 1 rep, max reps means as many reps as possible to absolute failure, and maybe even try for a few more):
week 1 - 5x@65%, 3x@75%, max reps@85% (goal of 6+ reps)
week 2 - 5x@70%, 3x@80%, max reps@90% (goal of >4 reps)
week 3 - 5x@75%, 3x@85%, max reps@95% (goal of >2 reps)
week 4 - 5x@40%, 3x@50%, max reps@60% (goal of >16 reps)
Each week, I lift 3x/week. So it looks like this:
Mon - Back squat, Press, Deadlift, Power Clean with 5 min. rest between each lift
Wed - Front Squat, Push Press, Weighted Chin, Snatch (5 min rests)
Fri - Overhead Squat, Weighted Dip, Jerk (5 min rest between)
The endurance training is simple enough too:
Steady state for 60-180 min at 70-80% Max HR. Well, I'm building up to that. Yeah, that's 3 hours! WTF. I don't need to go that far into the endurance training, so my goal is to build up to 90 min at 80% MHR. There is all kinds of garbage out there about HR training, but it's possible to figure it out. I like to look at Phil Mafatone's ideas for this piece and Mark Twight, although, I'm pretty sure it's based on Mafatone's work and Stephen Seiler's. Although his progression suggestions are way beyond my capabilities so I have to adjust those. I just don't adapt that fast to endurance training.
So there it is. 9 months out of the year, Strength/Endurance, 3 months; Power-Endurance/MV02. I might change it up though, because the weight is starting to get heavy and it makes it hard to do all those lifts in the same session. The volume is starting to get really high. And I'm concerned that I'm trying to do too many lifts during the week. I might kick it down to just Squat, Press, Deadlift, Power Clean for 1 month at 3x/week, then move to Front Squat, Push Press, Chin, Snatches for month 2 at 3x/week.
In the Power-Endurance phase my focus is on speed. All weight on the bar is reduced to 60% max at most and emphasis is on speed. High intensity Max V02 sessions or Tabata Protocol sessions running or rowing. Mvo2 is trained in 30 second intervals with 30 seconds of rest building up to 60 min in duration. Pure torture. Tabata protocol is 20 seconds at 170% vo2 max followed by 10 sec of rest for 6-8 rounds. Tabata might be worse in my opinion. 4 min. is all it takes to completely kick my ass, especially at 170% V02max pace. Most people will just go "all out" for the 20/10 deal but they obviously didn't read Dr. Tabata's work. It's very specific. 170% is not all out on the first few rounds. Rounds 6-8 however, are horrible. 4 weeks of this 3x/week and by the end, my 2k row, 5k run what ever, will be significantly improved due to my O2 efficiency improvement. Then the shitty part is, I test a new v02 max (and I like the concept 2 website calc based on my 2k row time for this), it's gone up, and now I have to do the tabata sets at a faster pace! WTF?! Oh well. Right now I'm working on tabata sets at 1:27/500m splits. Not avg, just get there and hold on!
At this writing, I'm too heavy to be a real competitor in CrossFit, but it's certainly a lot quicker to lose 10-15 lbs of fat, than to gain strength. I figure if I can keep this up for another 2 years, I'll be ready to compete. We will see. Follow along as I make my way.
That's pretty much it. I guess I just have the genes to get big pretty quick even though my intention is strength. And like I said above, if you want to know why this vs other options out there, just ask. Be prepared for a very, very long answer though. :)
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