Time to
update my latest thinking about training, as my injury in December last year
really got me off tracks at least until I lost the last shreds of respect I had
for the medical profession (exaggerating just a little bit here) and decided not
to undergo surgery, so its really only a couple months I’ve been training
consistently again, and I still can’t say I’m fully back to the strengths
levels I reached when my biceps tendon gave way. But I’m certainly getting
closer, and one of the things I’ve (re)learned in the process is that you really
should never lose sight of the importance of frequency (hence the title of this
post). A bit of background will be necessary to clarify why I lost such sight,
and what I’m doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Towards the
end of last year I had a nice little routine in place that finally balanced (in
a way that seemed to work for me) my powerlifting and Oly weightlifting
interests: I did three “big sessions” per microcycle, and each session could be
split up in two different days if for some reason I was pressed for time (that
gave me some flexibility so I could finish writing my dissertation, and polish
the articles I had to publish in peer reviewed journals in order to be able to
defend it and get my PhD, and also attend to my other duties as salaried professional,
parent and espouse). Those sessions had the right mix of “slow” and “fast”
moves to develop both strength and explosiveness, and I was (theoretically)
waving them in a way that allowed for a smooth progression for as far as the
eye could see. The layout of each microcycle looked something like this:
|
Session 1
|
Session 2
|
Session 3
|
|
LBBS (PL prog)
BP (PL prog)
Farmers’ walk
BTN SG P Press
Chin ups
|
Jump squats (immediately followed by bounded
jumps)
Speed BP (doubles at 80%)
Power cleans (WL prog)
Savickas Press
Pull ups
|
FS (PL prog volume +)
Paused BP (PL prog)
DL (PL prog)
Paused PC
Power Jerk (WL prog)
Chin ups
|
I designed
the program to have one floating day (whenever it fitted in the schedule) to
work in explosiveness with shot putting (a bunch of throws) and hill sprints
(ditto), but honestly I never found the willpower and time to actually do it.
A program,
any program, is as good as the principles behind it, so I’ll explain why I
chose those movements and the different progressions I applied to each one.
First, this was a “strengthen your weakest link” program. I was tired of having
a very subpar bench press, of not progressing in the squat, and of struggling
with putting any significant amount of weight overhead. So I decided to squat
every session, bench press every session, and put the bar over my head every
session, and just try to tuck everything else (thankfully everything else was
basically deadlifting, the only move I’m half proficient at so ti doesn’t need
that much maintenance, and some power cleaning not to forget the Oly moves) in
between. As for progression, I called this routine “Easy strength plus” as I
didn’t want to overexert myself with frequent super-high intensity lifts that
kept me away from the gym for days with the slightest excuse (well, sometimes
it was legit, but my experience with going too frequently above 95% was that
the microcycles extended more and more and one only partially unconscious cause
was my lack of enthusiasm for the idea of going to the gym to fight a
bone-on-bone grind almost every session) and wanted to try instead for some
steady accumulation mostly in the 70-80% intensity zone. It worked like this:
for each PL move (any squat variation, the bench press and the deadlift) I
started doing 5x5 with 70% of my training max (which was in turn a 90% of my
1RM of the last month, typically calculated from any actual 3RM, 2RM or one
actual 1RM that I had perceived as being truly limit in that period). Next week
I would keep roughly the same total number of reps, in shorter sets (so I would
normally go for a 6x4) adding 5 kg in the squat and BP, and 10 kg in the DL.
Next week I would do the same (so this time it would be 7 or 8 sets of triples
w 10 or 20 kg more), and finally the next week I would do 9 or 10 doubles with 15
kg more on the bar (for the squat and the BP) and 30 more kg on the deadlift.
Depending on how that felt, I would go either for singles, or reset with 5 kg
more (so if I started the BP doing sets of five across w 80 kg the first time,
I would now start with the same sets of five across w 85).
You may have
noticed that there wasn’t so much of Oly, just some paltry power cleans (one
day with pauses -which I do both just below and just above the knees), some
front squatting once a week and some power jerks. Not much technique or
mobility, and no snatching whatsoever (well, I’m not arguing it was the perfect
program, just that it seemed to serve me well at the time, just wait ‘til I
describe how it has evolved!). Those were intended to be progressed more
gradually, starting at a somewhat higher percentage (close to 80%) for triples,
then 85% for doubles, then 90% for singles, and rinse and repeat, if possible
with 2,5 kg more on the bar. If that increase in weight felt too heavy and the
form was somewhat compromised, I would add some additional sets instead to
consolidate, and run an additional wave with those extra sets before attempting
the weight increase again.
A final note
on chins and pull ups: they were there mainly to balance all the pushing I was
doing with a somewhat equivalent amount of pulling, mainly for shoulder health
reasons. I also didn’t dislike the idea of some indirect biceps work, to keep
the tendons healthy for the deadlift (but most of you know how well that turned
out). Of course, both chin ups and pull ups were strict: no kipping and no
half-assing (all done from dead hang, full range of motion, having the sternum
hit the bar to be counted as one rep, nothing of those semi-epileptic monstrosities
that CrossFit has made so popular).
So how did it
go? Somewhat of a mixed bag. I felt I was progressing in my traditional
weaknesses, albeit at a very slow pace. Seen in retrospect, there were some
glaring deficiencies (the speed BPs were done with too much weight, so they
were not fast enough by a long shot, and I was doing too few sets with too many
reps of the front squats for them to be of much use, as it forced me to use too
light a weight), but the overall principles were pretty sound, and with some
minor tweaks it would have served me well, were it not for the main defect in
how I executed: I left too much time pass between sessions.
I have always
valued the flexibility that comes with having your own home gym, as it allows
you to train exactly when it best suits you, regardless of the day of the week
or of the hour of the day. The dark side of such flexibility is that it makes
it very easy to skip some days because really, you can do it tomorrow exactly
the same (and it always sounds more convenient for some reason or other), and
what difference does it make one way or the other, just to let an additional 24
hours pass? And whoever says 24 hours surely can say 48 hours (because the next
day you have, honest to God, an important meeting at work that leaves you just
too drained and “ego depleted” -a pity science has shown that is just junk- to
go and train). And so it goes. So my microcycles, designed to be executed in a
single week (so I did squats, in different configurations, thrice a week, and
the same goes for overhead movements and bench presses) ended up taking ten
days, then twelve days, then finally two weeks. And as of the three squat days
two were with much lighter weights (the front squats, as I was doing too long
sets for them to be of much use, and the jump squats, as honestly you neither
can nor want to jump and land with 300 pounds on your tender back) that meant
that I only squatted heavy’ish once every two weeks, which every seasoned coach
will tell you is not enough by a mile.
The BP fared
a bit better, as all the three sessions ended up being similarly heavy, so I
was not anywhere near the thrice a week frequency I had devised originally, but
was somewhat closer to “one and a half per week”, which is not so bad.
Unfortunately, the bench press doesn’t have a systemic effect as powerful as
the squat, so yep, my pecs and may be tris (that also had some extra work when
overhead pressing) were growing steadily stronger, but my overall ability to
exert force and sustain it for short periods was essentially stagnant. That was
very apparent in the “explosive” Oly moves, where I was essentially spinning my
wheels.
So big lesson
learned: frequency is one of the most important variables to manipulate (Duh! That
is like discovering gunpowder at this stage of human development), and to drive
progress the frequency of “challenging” squats (the kind of squats that really
disrupt the homeostasis your body so efficiently seeks to maintain and thus
really force you to grow stronger) has to be above one per week. Upper body
moves, being less demanding and easier to recover from, adapt themselves nicely
to higher frequencies, admitting three per week with relatively short
adaptation periods. Not that I needed a long self-experimentation period to
discover that, as Mark Rippetoe had discovered it (and Bill Starr before him) a
few decades ago, and called it “Texas method” for intermediates (having two
days per week for each PL move, one day more oriented towards volume and one
day more oriented towards intensity).
As is well
known (while my training journal, full of hastily scribbled comments reflecting
the increasing awareness of the need for more consistency and mostly a higher
frequency of heavy squatting, clearly point towards the gradual correction of
the problem), in December all that became moot, as I tore the biceps tendon of
my left arm and had to stop any upper body lifting while I waited for surgery.
Only towards the end of June did I realize (with the help of a fortuitous
encounter with a colleague that had an Achilles tendon surgically reattached
and was doubting the need of the procedure given what he had learned about how
there are numerous historical examples of tendons healing with no need of
intervention -as it was a common procedure to “hamstring” unsuccessfully escaped
slaves by cutting tendons in the back of the knee or the heel) that my own
injury had essentially healed by itself, a prolonged period of inactivity
having been enough not only to make the pain disappear, but the ability to
exert force to come back gradually (How I realized I was OK). So it was high time to revisit my last
programming and update it with what I had learned to plan for the remainder of
the year (and beyond).
Attending the
fundamentals first, I liked the idea of having three big “sessions”, each
involving the full body, although now I saw that it made sense to separate them
in two days by design, with a first half mostly devoted to “slow” moves
(powerlifting ones, with one exception we’ll talk about later) and the second
devoted to more explosive ones, plus some accessories for balance. I also liked
the idea of each day’s training consisting in around half an hour of very
intense exercise, with relatively short rest periods. I realized that during my
“low body dominated” training (while the tendon healed) I had gone a bit
overbananas with the volume (I usually did a total of 70 reps, mostly of
squats, per day, although it required up to 15 sets) so I decided to dial it
down a bit, which should also help
making the program “stickier” and easier to follow.
As the squat
is the most foundational movement, that helps drive all the rest by making you
overall stronger (but also potentially hampering the rest of the training day
by leaving you utterly depleted jut after completing it) I kept one squat type
per session. One would be lighter (the front squat), but not so light that it
didn’t help push the main move further (so I would do much shorter sets, with a
weight that never goes much below 70% of the low bar back squat that acts as a
benchmark, and at that comparatively low percentage still helps it by making
the quads work significantly harder). The other would be really focused on
speed, alternating jump squats and jump half squats (obviously with more
weight) immediately followed by bounded jumps (two horizontal jumps, the second
one over a bench to force some extra push and provide more consistency and
comparability between sessions). The third one, obviously, would be the real
deal, waving around 5x5, but starting with longer sets (3x8) and stopping at
triples (at 8x3, which will take 6 weeks, and end with 30 kg more on the bar),
only to start again 5 kg higher).
I also kept
one bench press per session, usually right after the squat, but instead of
toying with semi-different versions I’m sticking with different rep ranges of
the same variant (close grip paused bench press), doing sets of 15 reps the
first session, of 5 reps the second session (with roughly 30 kg more) and of
2-3 rep the third session (with about 10 kg more than the previous one), and
trying to increase 2,5 kg from one microcycle to the next. If I can not
complete the planned reps, I’ll keep adding reps per set ‘til I’m two or three
reps above the 15/ 5/ 2 in all sets of every day, and I’ll then resume adding
weight. I’ve found that both the close grip and the pause help with the high
frequency, as they are much less aggressive on the shoulder and the pecs.
One deadlift
session per microcycle also seems about right, seeing how depleting that is. I am
happy with my current level, even after more than six months without training
it seriously, and I confess that my main misgivings have to do with the
potential loss of gripping power (I’ve experienced some almost-misses with very
modest weights of late because of grip issues) that such low frequency may
entail, as I’m also leaving aside farmers walks for now (the traditional recipe
for improving the grip), but I’ll just monitor how it goes and adjust
accordingly in one or two months if it further degrades.
For
explosiveness, I’ll keep the power cleans and the power jerks (depending on the
weight these may alternate with push presses some weeks), and substitute hang
cleans for the paused ones (these I’ve found work very well when needing to
transition from one move done from the floor to another one done from the pins
of the rack, like when I have to move from power cleans to power jerks), and
add power snatches. Overhead strength will also be worked in every session with
the same scheme: in addition to the mentioned power jerks/ push presses there
will be a day for heavy BTN SG push presses (aka Klokov presses), and another
day for Savickas presses (although I have some doubts about how effective these
really are, as they can only be done with very, very light weights, but they
help with flexibility, stability and probably provide some extra core work, so
I’ll keep them for now and see to what extent they help more than hinder the rest).
As I have some concerns about how my form may have degraded in this time, I’ll
start with a sets and reps scheme closer to the one I’m using for the PL moves
(around 3x5), which forces me to use less weight, and by allowing me to
accumulate more repetitions, some of them pretty exhausted, definitely pushes
me to clean up my form (however, to avoid ingraining bad habits I’ll need to be
more consistent videotaping myself and analyzing how it looks like intra sets).
In addition
to chins and pull ups, I intend to do some dipping, both loaded and unloaded
(as well as load some of the chin ups), as the tris are probably my weakest
point (I think the main limiting factor both in my bench press AND my overhead
moves), so it’s high time to really make it work (not just in every session,
but every day within each session) and see how it responds. Putting it all
together it looks like this:
|
One microcycle
(duration: 10 days)
|
||
|
Session 1
|
Session 2
|
Session 3
|
|
Day 1
|
Day 1
|
Day 1
|
|
Front Squat (PL prog)
Bench Press (3x15)
|
DL (PL prog)
Power snatch (OL prog)
|
LBBS (PL prog)
Bench Press (5x2)
|
|
Day 2
|
Day 2
|
Day 2
|
|
Power Clean (WL prog)
Hang Clean
Push Press/ Power Jerk (WL prog)
Weighed chin ups
|
Bench Press (3x5)
Weighed dips
Savickas press
Pull ups
Jump squats + bounded jumps
|
BTN SG P Press
Dips
Chin ups
|
To be done in
10 days, allowing for roughly 1 day rest between each session (the days in the
same session have to be done one after the other, if for some reason I have to
skip a day the next one I do both back to back), with the possibility of the
rest being extended to 2 days in the weekend (because the weekend is mostly for
the family, so I’ll only train if there are absolutely no family events
planned).
Finally, I
still dream of being able to have one session here and there interspersed
between the rest to go to the park and do some throwing and hill sprinting,
just for fun and to stay supple. It will have to wait for temperatures to drop
down a bit, as it is now too hot to think about it, but it will arrive. Another
difference with how I’ve been doing things this last years is that I do not
intend to make any effort at all to stuff myself with food no matter what. One side
effect of my recovery (may be a bit before the injury I was already well down
that road) is that, exercising considerably less I also ended up eating less,
dropping a few pounds. Not something I ever obsessed about, but I’ve noticed my
knees (mostly the surgically reconstructed one) ache and hurt much, much less
when I go around weighing 190 pounds than when I weighed 210 pounds. So
although I’m sure my lifting would improve faster if I went back to eating two
servings of every dish, wolfing down pizzas and hamburgers as if there was no
tomorrow and drinking gallons of milk multiple times a day to complete my
caloric intake I plan not to do any of those. Not only that, I’ve discovered
that not having lunch most days of the week leaves me with extra time to pursue
other interests, saves me a lot of money and doesn’t noticeably impact my
training sessions, so I’ll be in an unstructured IF (Intermittent Fasting)
protocol for the foreseeable future, and see how my bloodwork evolves (again,
not a big concern of mine, but curious about the purported miraculous benefits
it is supposed to have). I’ll dine whatever I deem both edible and desirable
(trying to stay clean, no processed food at all if I can avoid it, so no bread,
pasta or sodas, just meat, fish, eggs, milk, vegetables and fruit… and beer, of
course, beer is almost as old as humanity, so it doesn’t belong in the category
of “processed food” at all) in the amount that leaves me fulfilled. If I gain
weight, I gain weight, and if I lose some more weight, I lose it (my Wilks
points at least seem to be improving so far). Needless to say, no supplements
(that’s 99 times out of 100 for mentally weak people that have been sadly
addled by the shady industry that sells such pricey and mostly useless stuff)
and no drugs other than alcohol.
If possible,
I’ll post more frequently how it is progressing and what adjustments I feel
need to be done.
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