The next phase

We’ve worked on building up our strength, so now it’s time to go back to pursuing overall fitness. The thing is, we don’t want to lose our strength. So, how are we going to pursue total fitness while maintaining strength (and building it up more)?

Here is how: we will train 5 days on, 2 days off, and we’ll be doing a heavy lift at the beginning of each training session. After the lift, we’ll hit a heavy but short MetCon (roughly 10 minutes, 15 minutes max), an example of which would be something like Fran with extra weight for the thrusters or pull ups, or maybe something like an AMRAP of heavy movements (e.g. 10 minutes AMRAP of 2 muscle ups, 4 full squat deadlifts @ 315#, 6 full squat cleans @ 135#). After the MetCon is done, we will spend time working doing skill work/assistance work. This could be technique work for the olympic lifts, skill work for gymnastics, or maybe some exercises that you know you need to improve on/do in order to improve other lifts.

Wednesdays will be different from the other four training days. There will be no MetCon on that day in order to allow for more recovery. We will be doing something non-conventional for the heavy lift on that day (heavy pull ups, heavy dips, heavy rows, bench, etc.), and then focus on gymnastic skills for the rest of the time in a sort of ‘active rest’ type mindset.

Here is the order of the weekly schedule:

Monday – back squat
Tuesday – deadlift
Wednesday – unconventional lift
Thursday – front squat
Friday – Press

One important thing to remember in all of this is recoverability. If you push yourself to the limit all of the time, you will actually do more harm than good. Listen to your body, and know when to scale down a WOD or when to pass on the heavy lifts.

As such, in order to focus on sustainability and recoverability, here are three things that we are going to do:

1) to start with, take 15-20% off of your current five rep max as your starting weight for each lift. If you 5RM for the back squat is 300#, start somewhere around 240~255#. If you start too high too soon, you’ll get wiped out earlier.

2) Once you hit a PR, you are down with your lifting session. This could be a new 5 RM, a new 3 RM, a new 5 RM in sets across (e.g. doing 255 x 5 sets x 5 reps) or a new 3 RM in sets across. Just remember that sets across are far more taxing to the body than building up to a 5 RM. Even if you hit a PR on your 3rd set of a 5×5, you walk away. Remember, training is long term stuff, not short term gains.

3) when you hit a stall, switch to sets of 3 reps for a couple of sessions and try and work past the stall point that way.

This is how it would look when you put it all together:

current back squat 5 RM: 300
Current back squat 3 RM: 330
starting squat weight for current cycle: 255

1st session (5×5): 135-165-195-225-255
2nd session(5×5): 135-165-195-230-265 (PR as of this new training scheme)
3rd session(5×5): 135-185-215-245-280 (PR)
4th session:150-185-240-275-300 (PR)
5th session: 155-190-245-280-310 (PR)
6th session: 160-190-250-280-315 (failed on the 5th rep)
7th session:160-190-250-280-315 (failed on the 5th rep)
8th session: 160-190-250-295-320 (5×3 instead of 5×5)
9th session: 160-200-250-300-330 (5×3)
10th session: 170-215-265-310-340 (5×3)
11th session: 160-190-250-280-315 (switched back to 5×5, completed the lift, PR)

Is this a bit slower in strength gaining than if you did a straight up strengthening program? Yes. But the thing that you gain is the ability to continue pursuing all components of fitness, meaning that you are not short-changing yourself in any domain.

Also, to mix things up, we will be throwing in a few alternate rep schemes on most days just to challenge our system and increase training volume. You may see something like this:

Press 5-5-5-5-5
Press 11-7-4

The ’11-7-4′ means to pick a weight to press for 11 reps straight, rest one minute, do 7 reps at the same weight, rest a minute, and then do 4 reps at that weight. This will maintain endurance, volume, and be a different kind of training stimulus than the typical 5×5 or 5×3. Here are some of the combinations you may see:

12-9-6
11-7-4
9-6-3
15=>20 (do a straight set of minimum 15 reps, shooting for 20)
12=>15 (same idea as the 20 but to 15)

Keep track of how you do with these alternate schemes too, since you want PRs in these as well.

Last of all, Friday is ‘challenge day’, where we will put up a post-WOD challenge for you to attempt. These will tend to be things like ‘max reps pull ups’, ‘max reps ring dips’, or the nightmarish ‘max reps of bodyweight back squat’ (put your body weight on your back and squat it for as many reps as possible). The weekend is your rest time, so use it wisely to recover from the challenge.

Refer back to this post often in order to get an idea of what we are doing and why. One thing to ease your troubled mind: we won’t program MetCons that will tax us too much for the lift the following day. If the next day is deadlift day, we’re not going to throw a deadlift-centric WOD at you that day. If the next day is a pressing day, we’ll probably keep things more lower-body oriented and avoid taxing the shoulders. The lifting session is a pretty big deal, and we don’t want to ruin that.

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