During the first quarter of the year, we focused on work capacity. Along with High-intensity continuous training, we did ladders and total volume training with light to moderate weights. Much of our strength training looked and felt a lot like conditioning…because it was.
That work improved our endurance; it’s time to feature strength and movement capacity.
This training block introduces a noticeable change of pace. It begins with April’s program. Let’s break it down.
Monday and Wednesday: Strength A and B
Two days of heavy lifting are back!
Extensive strength was the last block’s strength training focus. That means training your body to use your strength many times over an extended period. During this block, we’re focusing more on “max strength.” I used quotations because we won’t train maximal efforts in the gym, but the Strength A and Strength B workouts will improve your maximal strength. Why the switch?
The first reason is musculoskeletal health. If we did another block of work capacity training, your body would have likely been totally beaten to shit by mid-summer. We all need a break from high-volume training.
The second reason is to improve our overall strength and endurance, we have to focus on getting stronger again. The work capacity equation is relative strength + aerobic capacity + aerobic power. We hammered the aerobic bits last block but only maintained our relative strength. So, now we hammer strength and maintain our aerobic stuffs.
To hammer strength, we are cutting the fluff. That means no assistance training. Heavy strength and power training improve relative strength gains the most. So that’s where we are putting our energy during our Strength A and Strength B training sessions.
For this reason, we’re doing four rounds of power work and at least four rounds of strength work every week. It’s also why the strength RPE is @8 for all weeks. Cutting the fluff and extending the rest periods gives you enough time to recover so that you can put more intensity into your lifts…without beating yourself up. This is also why we are closing each Strength A and Strength B session with movement capacity training.
The C’s during this program are focused on increasing your active joint range of motion – aka movement capacity. We’re doing this to control the amount of intense volume. You’re getting plenty of intensity from the power training during the A’s and the strength training during the B’s. Plus you’ll be doing a high-volume session during Resilience. So, there’s no need to dump more gas on the fire.
We also need to take care of our bodies after three months of hard training. Movement capacity training is the care that our muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joints need right now.
Tuesday: Vigor
This month’s Vigor workout consists of short bursts of hard work followed by longer intervals of low-intensity work. And all of that work is done on the cardio machines.
The short bursts of hard work followed by easier intervals train your body to recover after intense efforts. This setup also helps to keep your heart rate, on average, in the aerobic capacity training zone – somewhere between 100bpm and 150bpm. And after all of the aerobic power work we did last training phase, we need more aerobic capacity training. To build our aerobic system, we have to bounce back and forth between power and capacity. And if we did too much aerobic power training we would end up overtraining. We also need to improve our aerobic capacity so that the next time we train for aerobic power we’ll get more out of the training. The greater an energy system’s capacity, the better you can develop its power.
We’re staying on the cardio machines this month to limit joint impact. We did a lot of jumping around last month, and we’re doing more power training this month, as well as plyometrics during Endurance class, so we need to cut back on impact during vigor workouts.
Thursday: Endurance
The main goal of Endurance never changes. It is to improve your aerobic capacity. We do, however, rotate the means for achieving the goal. This month we’re doing a lot of movement capacity training, some low-threshold plyometric training, and medicine ball throws.
There’s a single thread that runs through all of the training modalities we chose for Endurance class during this phase – none of them involve a machine! We spent a ton of time on machines during the previous training block, and the entire Vigor workout during this phase is on machines. So, we need a gaht dang break from the machines. We need to train our bodies to continue to move well while also improving our aerobic capacity.
We’ve included movement capacity training in our Endurance to build on the restorative work included in the Strength A and Strength B workouts.
Low-threshold plyos and medicine ball throws get your heart rate up so that you can maintain it in the aerobic capacity training zone, and they maintain the gains you got from doing aerobic plyometrics during the last block.
We’re doing four circuits so that your body moves in a lot of different ways and in different directions. And also to add in some variety. It’s the spice of life, you know.
Friday: Resilience
A handful of you have peaked ahead at this month’s Resilience workout and hit me with some comments like, “Well, that looks like it’s going to suck.”
Trust me. Resilience this time around is not nearly as stressful as the Wednesday and Friday workouts from the previous training block. It ain’t that bad.
We are doing a variation of Dr. Michael Yessis’s 1×20 program. Yes, you’re doing one set of 20 reps with a bunch of different movements.
This setup maintains some of the extensive strength gains we made during the last training block while also giving us lots of practice with movements that we use throughout our strength programming.
And you get to pump those bis and tris. 😉
Okay, you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Let’s kick some ass this month.
