Tonight was hella cold outside, I kept my top on while I lifted like a man but my hands were cold as hell which sucks. Anyway yeah, good workout today, let's get to it.
Squat:
135# 1 x 5
165# 1 x 3
185# 2 x 5
185# 1 x 9
Bench:
135# 1 x 5
155# 3 x 5
Deadlift:
265# 1 x 5
So we'll start with the Squat, the last set of 9 felt tough but after I was done not bad. I felt good, definitely ready to make the jump to 190 on Monday. The bench wasn't painful on the left arm today, I did the pencil technique, shout out to you MT, appreciate it. I think I'll be getting to my max soon, which is pretty upsetting/pathetic but that's why it's called work. It's not easy and it takes time to get where you want. The Deadlift, what can I say about it today besides it sucked. I know that it's not my max probably not anywhere near it but it just felt heavy today. I'll probably be fine since I wasn't hydrated today and I felt it before I worked out. Either way it was a good day. I'm looking forward to Monday
Squat: 190
Bench: 160
Deadlift: 275
Question to anyone who wants to answer, is it possible to mix workouts on a weekly basis so:
Week 1: Strength/Mass Lifts
Week 2: Crossfit
Week 3: Bodybuilding
and then recycle the workouts every three weeks?
9/4/16
9 years ago
4 comments:
Well if other people chime in I'd like to hear their opinion on it, but here's mine. And I apologize because it's going to be long. I had to break it into two comments.
Training is all about goals. And before you go deciding how to structure your training you need to be VERY specific about what your goals are. Is it to get strong? If so how strong? Is it to get big? If so how big? You get the idea. You can of course have multiple goals, but you need to identify what priority they are to you. There is a reason this is very important. I agree with people like Jim Wendler, Dave Tate, Chris Mason, etc. when they say you cannot serve 2 masters at once. It is simply not possible to train optimally for multiple things at one time. It is possible to train for multiple things at one time, but one of them is going to have to be a priority, and the others will take a back seat.
Now I'm going to go through some of those aspects of fitness you listed in this hypothetical 3 week workout scheme you listed.
Strength: There are a couple of things to consider about gaining an appreciable amount of strength. 1) It is the most generally useful aspect of fitness that you can acquire. Strength will translate into all other areas of fitness. A stronger athlete is a better athlete every time and if you're strong it will be far easier to progress in other levels of fitness. 2) It takes the longest to gain, but is one of the most permanent. Strength adaptations happen quickly at first but then become somewhat difficult to come by, however the adaptations that occur down to the cellular level will stay with you almost forever. Once you've reached a certain level of strength it's there. Yes you can become detrained, but it will only take a few weeks to regain most of it back. This is in exact opposition to conditioning.
Bodybuilding: First, size will come with increased strength. A stronger muscle will generally become a larger muscle. However there are a lot of other neural adaptations that go into gaining strength that will not help with size, muscle fiber recruitment patterns, firing rate and efficiency, etc. By "bodybuilding" I assume you mean the standard hypertrophy work done in the 6-12 rep range. This will work, but consider this. A muscle is still a muscle. Your muscle is really no different than Ronnie Coleman's. Other than the drugs then, why is he huge and people that follow his workouts not huge? It's because the amount of weight he moves is so much larger than what the average gym goer moves. While you're benching 135 for 4 sets of 10 he's benching 405 for 4 sets of 10 so he's requiring his muscles to go through a much greater adaptation than most people. So what if, instead of doing 3 sets of 10 on bench, I told you you needed to get to 3 sets of 10 with 315lbs? How would you get there? Would the training look different than it would if I just told you "do 3 sets of 10?" I think so.
Conditioning: Conditioning is the opposite of strength. It is gained fast and easy, generally within a couple of weeks, the adaptation is not long lasting, and it will generally leave just as quickly. Given this, my general stance is that it is more desirable to strive for a high level of strength while maintaining a baseline of conditioning and you can ramp up conditioning about 3 weeks out from when you need it if you need it to be at a higher level for something specific.
So onto your question. Could you do what you wrote? Of course you could, but I think with a program like that you would just be taking one step forward and two steps backwards every week. Your basically not doing enough strength work to cause any type of meaningful long term adaptation and any conditioning benefit you gain in that week will be lost by the time your conditioning week rolls around again 3 weeks later. There's no reason you can't train ALL of those things in the same week with a well structured program as long as you choose a priority to put them in. I'm gonna point you in the direction of a program by Jim Wendler. It is a version of his powerlifting program 5/3/1 described here:
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/how_to_build_pure_strength
The variation is called boring but big and he details it here:
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_boring_but_big_3month_challenge
So basically a week would look like this:
MON
Press: 5/3/1 (strength)
Press: 5 sets of 10 @ 60-70% (size)
Conditioning
TUES
Squat: 5/3/1 (strength)
Squat: 5 sets of 10 @ 60-70%
WED
Rest
THUR
Bench: 5/3/1 (strength)
Bench: 5 sets of 10 @ 60-70% (size)
conditioning
FRI
Deadlift: 5/3/1 (strength)
Deadlift: 5 sets of 10 @ 60-70%
Conditioning
SAT
Rest (or conditioning instead of Friday)
SUN
Rest
This lets you hit everything that you listed every single week. For conditioning you can do CF workouts if you want, but there's really no reason to other than if you want to be good at CF. If you do choose to, keep it VERY simple with the movements. All things that are low skill, but effective. Burpees, sprints, KB swings, KB snatch, rowing, weighted carries, etc. Nothing crazy. No overhead squat nonsense, high rep snatches, ring handstand push ups, etc. However I would mostly keep it to interval sprints and medium distance runs. This would pretty much keep you as well conditioned as you'd ever need to be. And getting stronger would help you crush a CF circuit workout if you ever felt the need.
P.S. I would also find a place in that template I posted for weighted pull ups and dips. Probably on the deadlift and press day respectively.
Sorry for the length. A lot of that is probably just me spewing some thoughts I've had in my head for a little while, but hopefully I answered the question.
Alright it turned out to be 3 posts...
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