Base building - Part 1

I'm all out of snappy names lately, so I'm just going to call this Base Building because it's centered around your everyday max (sound familiar?) and simply working with volume at lower percentages within that range, in order to build your foundation.

This is needed by everyone.  However, the way I am going to lay it out, is for guys who already have a decent foundation, and are ok with increasing their base slowly, and methodically.

This is the kind of training you're going to want to be doing well outside of training for a meet, though we can easily ramp it upwards.  Essentially it's the primer.  It improves your base strength and working capacity.  It is not meant for driving strength up fast, but at a more steady rate, with limited needs in the way of "deloading" or layoffs.  That's what the strong-15 and peaking cycles are for.  The downside to those things, are of course, the "fall off the cliff" as I like to write about.  The faster you ramp strength, the faster you have that downslide after you peak, and the further you fall down it.  That's the ebb and flow of training.  You harder you push that stimulus curve, the higher the supercompensation curve and then the bigger the slide back down becomes.

Go ask someone who ran one of those super duper squat specialization programs, hit a PR, only to find themselves back where they started a few months later, or even regressed.  That peak cannot be held, and the higher you push the peak, the steeper the recovery curve becomes.  Part of recovery sometimes, is regression.  To give another example of this, think about a time where you were hitting PR's left and right for a few weeks, feeling awesome, then you have two or three -10% sessions and then get "burnt" and need to take a lay off.  That isn't you getting weaker.  That really makes no sense.  It's just that people talk about recovery, but then never see fatigue as part of it.  Indeed, it is.  

The best I have seen this explained is in this handy dandy article right here.  

The graph I like best there is the last one.

All your base are belong to us...

If you look at the line running straight across, that's "base" level strength/fitness/ability.  The line ascending there isn't a sharp line upwards.  It moves moderately upwards.  This is what good base building should look like on a curve.  There is fatigue, but it is not incredibly great, and then there is compensation, and supercompensation after recovery from fatigue.  The less sharp the curve is, the more you increase your base, or foundation, level of strength.  You not "peak", but you improve gradually, and consistently.

This is the kind of training that will build a foundation that does not go away very easily, and does in fact, make you stronger without "testing" strength, or having to demonstrate it.  I know this, because I've been testing these theories out for months now, and it has worked fabulously.  Funny enough, as the months went by the more information I found that was backed by this kind of training by a lot of very strong people.

I will say this, training this way probably has a lot to do with where you are in your training life.  When I was younger, I trained very hard and heavy 99% of the time.  Constantly pushing for limit rep PR's and going balls out.  At almost 38 now, and with around 25 years of lifting under my belt, I don't really want to train that way anymore.  Nor do I think I would hold up under it for very long mentally or physically.  That's not me being "weak", it's just that my body doesn't do as well with that style anymore, and eventually I dread training.  Not a place you want to be for solid and sustained progress.

For beginners and intermediates, I really suggest you learning some of these things, and pushing boundaries and the envelope.  Your 90-95% range isn't going to be as taxing for you as it is for an advanced guy.  Neither will pushing the perceived intensity or volume.  You will need to play a bit to figure some of these things out.  That's a big part of lifting, and too many people want to be hand held.

Do a program "as is" the first time around, or even the second time around.  If you think you can make changes to improve it FOR YOU, do so.  That's what becoming a better lifter is about.

If you have a good base under you, this kind of training may suit you very well.

Here are how some of these things are being laid out in my training since I'm pretty far out from the meet still.

Priorities -
Front Squat
Deadlift
Bench
Press Behind the Neck

Secondaries -
Abs ( you must say this in a Jersey accent....you know you just did in your head...ahhhhbs)
100 rep work for pre-hab (curls, leg curls, front raises)
Rows - 350 method

That's really it.  I have narrowed training down even further because well, every year I do that, I get a little better.  Squats are in there as well, they are just taking a back seat to front squatting at the moment.

So how to implement base building?

Mainly through manipulating the usual factors of training.

- Recovery
- Intensity
- Volume
- Frequency

That's training in a nutshell.

Heavy/Low - Light/High

One of the reasons I think the LRB template worked so well for people, is because it didn't ask you to go into the gym, and crush, kill, destroy yourself workout after workout.  For a lot of guys this is how you end up dipping further and further into that fatigue area, and then flat line back out of it, instead of benefit from it over the long haul.

So as I am massaging these ideas, I am still using heavy days with lower volume, then the next week using lower percentages, with higher volume.

Heavy is still "relative" and can change greatly from a day to day perspective.  You need to be able to be "ok" with where you are at on a given day rather than trying to force what isn't there.

Read that a few times, and think about it.  Ok, I'll give an example instead.

Last week you pulled 500 for a triple, and it was solid, but it was a really good day.  You go in to pull today and you can barely get 500 for a single.  Did you get "weaker"?  Of course not.  It's just that the "curve" is still in the recovery state.  I feel like this is what a lot of guys call "CNS burnout".  However their failing there is relating it to the movement itself, and not the body as a whole.  "Hey brah, you've been deadlifting too much so you need to switch movements in order to avoid CNS burnout."  /facepalm

The body itself has not recovered.  It wouldn't have mattered if you were benching or squatting or doing lat pulldowns.  Until the body has curved out of that state of fatigue, you're not going to experience the upward trend that is "strength improvement".

I feel like this is one reason the LRB split really worked so well for so many people.  It asked you to train heavy once or twice a week, then get in your base level work once or twice a week on the opposing week, so that the dip into fatigue didn't really get deeper.

So expanding on this idea is what has been shaping my "offseason" training ideas.  I have evolved the LRB split into something slightly different, and more specific for getting ready for this meet.  So where the LRB split, is a general split, what I am doing now is slightly more geared for powerlifting performance in the offseason.

Still training heavy - 

I don't think you can get away from heavy training.  I know as I've presented these ideas to people that may think I have.  But it's not the case.  It's that the ideas are ever evolving and so is the philosophy.  I do think that most guys overuse heavy lifting far too much, then brag about their gym lifts, never really being honest that they haven't hit a PR in years or gotten past a certain point because they already think they are "strong".  They refuse to develop new ideas because hey, they pull or squat or press X amount, and that's "pretty good" so obviously what they do works.

But if you haven't improved in the last 6 months, year, or even two years......it's not working anymore.

There should be a mix weekly of still stressing the body harshly, and then allowing it to recover, and massage progress along steadily as well.  Finding this balance can be tricky, which is why I haven't just laid everything out yet.

What I have found, I think, is that a nice balance across two weeks works very well.  Most guys think it terms of 7 days, but I've found that thinking across 10-14 days is better because you can distribute the volume, intensity, frequency, and recovery in a more even fashion.

Such as......

Week 1 -

Day 1 - Heavy Pull/Lower Volume
Day 2 - Light Squat/Higher Volume
Day 3 - Light Press/Lower Volume

Week 2 -
Day 1 - Light Pull/Higher Volume
Day 2 - Heavy Squat/Lower Volume
Day 3 - Heavy Press/Higher Volume

If you want a day to overhead press, you could fit that in as well.  Just minimize what else you're doing.  In other words, if you're overhead pressing, JUST overhead press.  That's it for the most part.  Just manipulate the volume.

Week 1 -


Day 1 - Heavy Pull/Lower Volume
Day 2 - Heavy Overhead Press/Higher Volume
Day 3 - Light Squat/Higher Volume
Day 3 - Light Press/Lower Volume

Week 2 -
Day 1 - Light Pull/Higher Volume
Day 2 - Light Overhead Press/Lower Volume
Day 3 - Heavy Squat/Lower Volume
Day 4 - Heavy Press/Higher Volume


From a general high level overview, this is how the template could be laid out.  So even in the 4 days a week split, you only have 2 heavy days, and 2 light days.

I personally like the first split best because you end up with only three heavy sessions over two weeks, and those will have calibration built into them.  Which I will talk about later.

On the heavy pressing weeks, you actually do MORE volume and on the light weeks, LESS.  I have a reason for this however (which I already hinted at) but I'm not going to go into it until Part 2........

Part 2 will cover - 
Calibration on "heavy" days
Manipulating Volume on light days
What you may have been doing that is hurting your main movements in regards to assistance work
Curving intensity ranges upwards over a period of time

I hope err'body has a great weekend.