Base Building Part 2

In part 1 of base building I addressed the issues of fatigue and supercompensation.  Basically, managing your degree of stress and recovery is what allows you to have supercompensation (get stronger), and that's really what "progress" is.

If your training is so hard, and ran at such high percentages that you rarely allow supercompensation to take place, then basically you're literally working hard for nothing.

I made a point to mention guys I know, that train super heavy all the time and will tell you "that's how you get strong".  And it is....in doses.  This is the reason why in my peaking cycles you do end up in the 90%+ range for a few weeks.  The weeks preceding that however, are all in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

To borrow again from the interview with Mikhail and also a quote from Andy Bolton.....

Bolton -

The biggest reason why most dedicated guys FAIL to get STRONGER (or don't get strong as quickly as they'd like) is because they train too hard.

We've all seen these guys...

They want to max out every single week.

And this might work for a few weeks, but then the ACHES and PAINS set in, their strength starts going backwards and they sometimes end up INJURED.

When I was younger I made this mistake and I paid the price.

Maybe you have too.

Just know that very few athletes can get away with maxing out on the same exercises week in, week out.

I certainly can't.

I tried to play that game and eventually realized it didn't work for me. So I found a better way - a way that allowed me to not train as hard and still get STRONGER.  

From Mikhail - 

 "The best method to change your plan is (and it works 100% of the time) – to cut intensity (as in weights on the bar) to around 60-70% and work on volume – reps and sets.

Forget about PRs, forget about shit like “I deadlifted 300kg today, and i am going to deadlift 350kg in half a year following this plan”, forget it.

Just cut your weights, stop going for 1RM once or twice a month. If you have a plateau, then you can say that you’re in the pit.

It takes a lot time to escape from there, and actually I am in the same place right now. Before the Worlds championships 2012 I was in the best shape, but then at some moment I forgot the need to stop and as a result I didn’t even get to a final during World championships.

So, to escape a pit of plateau you gonna do volume. Relatively little weights, and more reps. That’s it."

So here you've got two of the greatest powerlifters in the world, both telling you that everytime they decided to get too heavy in their training, they went backwards, stalled, or got injured.  This is something I have found happening in my own training more and more over the past many years.  That every time I got overzealous in my poundage/programming/intensity, I got a quick run up, hit a wall, and then regressed.

After that I would often have to train for months just to get back to where I was BEFORE the regression.    

What most fail to understand is, this is your body finding equilibrium in that whole fatigue/recovery/supercompensation paradigm.  If you find yourself regressing (this is really just being in a state of fatigue) and you continue to train hard to work your way out of that hole, you're really just digging a deeper hole into recovery.

I've heard some guys say "well I trained back out of it."  Sure I get that.  That's normal.  The body will eventually regulate and recover, but you'll flat line back out to where your BASE was before.  Not above it.  So the lifter that is all happy because he's "squatting X amount, again" really made NO PROGRESS.  He's happy that he's simply back to where he was before training went to shit.  Does this make ANY sense?  You trained so hard that you failed to allow recovery, then you kept training through that, just to get back to where you were BEFORE you got stupid.

Makes me want to slap my forehead and say "I coulda had a V8!"

So as I wrote, you trained hard....for nothing.  Maintaining your base level of strength is very easy and only requires you only get in the gym and do SOME work.  Maintenance is easy, but often times guys find that just working for maintenance, actually gets them stronger.  This is very, very common.      

So why do other somewhat strong guys tell you that I'm wrong, and that you gotta train fucking super heavy and do singles and all that shit?  

It's really simple.  It works. 

That's right, it works.  There's no denying it.  It does work....with a caveat.  It only works for so long, and there comes a point of diminishing returns.  

So the cycle works like this.  

• Dude starts lifting
• Trains heavy, makes progress fast (as a noob)
• Because progress is made, feels training heavy all the time is THE WAY to go
• Gets to a certain level of strength and can say "I lift X amount of weight, so I have to be right."
• Dude is awfully enamored with his strength but fails to mention he hasn't hit any new PR's in years
• I know dozens of strong guys that fall into this category  
• This is the "failing to evolve" syndrome in these kinds of guys training life cycle

So a lot of strong guys do get stronger pushing the boundaries of training hard, and the intensities.  However as the REALLY elite guys will tell you, this will only work for so long.  When you aren't smart enough to learn how to back off, and massage your training rather than trying to drive gains with a sledge hammer, you will make little progress, and often go backwards.  

"Gaahhhhddd!!!  I pulled 725 for a double last week like it was nothing!  Fucking 700 was stapled to the floor this week!!!  What the fuck am I doing wrong?!?!"

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I heard something similar to this.

If you are a novice trainer, I do recommend training far heavier because you're simply not going to be moving enough weight to send that fatigue curve too sharply down.  Your recovery time back into supercompensation is going to be very fast.  This is why noobs can do most anything, and get stronger.  So train heavier, and harder, and go balls out.  I also recommend novice guys train as long as they can without planned layoffs at all.  Again, you're just not stressing your system enough to worry that much about recovery.  

This isn't to say that new guys can't benefit from this method of thinking, I just think they are better served learning how to train as hard and heavy as possible for as long as possible.  You're not going to be able to do this forever so take advantage of it while you can.  

Endurance training - 

Strength athletes could learn quite a bit from endurance based athletes about programming.  Before someone chimes in with "different energy systems" and slow twitch this and fast twitch that, spare me.  We're still talking about performance and the human body, and I've already quoted two of the strongest guys ever that also back up this evidence.  So let's just get that out of the way right now.  

If you spend some time researching say, a Marathon athletes training schedule you will rarely see them actually running the full 26.2 miles.  Maybe a 20 mile run here and there.  The entire preparation for the race is spent, you know, PREPARING to run the 26.2 miles.

So I looked through some marathon training peaking cycles and here's one I found, just for example.......

Not one time does this have the athlete actually performing at the level of the competition he/she is preparing for.  The longest run is 22 miles.  You know what percentage of 26.2 miles that is?  About 85%.  It's amazing how those same ranges keep popping up in regards to elite athletic performance.  Of course, someone will bitch that "that's marathon running!" but I don't care.  If we're talking about peak level strength, that requires priming the body, and peaking.  You can't run around at your +10% strength level 24/7.  I don't care what ANYONE tells you.  It's bunk.  Nor would the average marathon athletes body stand up to doing 26.2 miles every week, unless they were some freak of nature.  And as we've been over before, never use exceptions to create rules.

So we see here, the endurance guy doesn't actually try to perform his/her "event" during training.  So why do strength athletes?

This is what strength athletes often do in their training thoughts......."I need to be able to deadlift 500 in competition....therefore I need to deadlift 500 in training,"

This does not make sense to me.  It also doesn't seem to make sense to the majority of the very elite lifters I know, because they rarely, if ever, do this.  Ed Coan said he never maxed out in the gym once.  EVER!  Think about that.  The greatest powerlifter of all time, had no idea what his best "gym maxes" were because well, he never maxed in the gym.  This is pretty much an alien concept to most guys now because they have a need to know what they can do in the gym.  I can't ever get a response that makes sense to me why this is, but to each his own I suppose.  I always thought you should save your best ones for the meet.  If you're not doing a meet, I don't see a reason to max out in the gym.  Improve your 3,5,8 rep PR's.  You got stronger.  Continue on then.

To me, training is supposed to be something you do in order to set you up for the big dance.  Your training should be something you do to make you stronger, NOT something you use to demonstrate strength.  That's what competition is for.  I've written this a million times, I've heard guy after guy after guy say "I hit that easy in training, I don't know why I missed it at the meet."

If you are training to hit bigger numbers, you should NOT be missing lifts in training.  I mean, I have to laugh....you're STRENGTH TRAINING.  Not GYM MAXING.  You're training in the gym should be spent getting you stronger.  This does not require you to train at 90+%.

"But Paul, you said training heavy was still important!"

It is.  So let's talk about using calibration in the heavy sessions.

Calibration of heavy training - 

Calibration can be used in both intensity (% of 1RM) and volume.  It all depends on how you are feeling on that particular day.

So if it's a heavy deadlift day, and I plan on doing block pulls, I know I'm going to work up to top set of 3-5.

The key word here, that causes confusion, is "top".  Top or even sometimes "max" doesn't really mean "limit".  It just means, in this instance, "max" or "top" for that day.

"This is as heavy as I'm going to go today.  This is the MAXimum amount I will use for a triple today."

One of the things I like to think about when I do that, is that I like to leave enough room to beat that set of 3-5 the next week, and that top set the week after that.

So think about that.

Week one, right out of the gate, the heavier and harder you take that "top set", the harder it's going to be to beat in two weeks when you come back to it.  Guess what happens eventually?  That's right, you stall for longer, and have to reset where you are.

The other part of this calibration is that if you're having a bad training sessions, you can get that snappy 3-5 top set in, do your work and get out.

So you can/should roughly have an idea of a goal for your heaviest movements as to what you'd like to hit.  For deads, I work these a little differently than my squat and bench.  The dead doesn't seem to enjoy being trained heavy that often, and using light/moderate poundages from the floor with a heavy block or rack pull on alternating weeks, seems to work well for me, and most.

Like so......

Week 1 -
4" block pulls or pulls from below the knee - to a top set of 3-5
Elevated Stiff Legs or Romanians - 2x5 @ 70% of what you pulled from the blocks/rack
Shrugs - to an all out top set of 8

So as you can see, the calibration takes into account that you could have either a good session, or shit one.  Thus, the stiff legs are dictated by what you hit on the top set of block/rack pulls.

It's up to you to calibrate how heavy you are going to take that "top" set.  Again, my advice here, is to hit something crisp the first week, so that you can come back to beat this week after week until you stall for a few weeks.  You could even start at 5's, until you stall at 5's, then go to weeks of 3's until you stall there, then back off, and repeat.  If you decide to just outline some simple goals, even better.

On the light days, I am simply starting with 50% for 5 sets of 3.  That's 50% of the meet goal at this point (725) for 50%.  If I am overshooting that then I will know later because this will eventually ramp up into the high 70% range.  But not higher.  Remember, you're still pulling heavy every other week from the blocks or rack.

For squat and bench "heavy" days, it's more defined.  Now because front squats are my priority right now, I'm simply programming using 70% and 80% of my EDM (everyday max), which I programmed in as 405, which is stupid easy and something I could easily do for a set of 5 at the moment.  So think about how light my "work" sets are.

To just keep it simple, on the heavy front squat days I do 3 sets of 3-5 at 80% (325) then just add 90 pounds (415) onto that and do 3-5 sets of 5 with regular squats.  Pretty simple.

In contrast, on the light days I use 70% (285 but I just slap on 275) and slap on a mere 50 for squats.  Remember, it's a LIGHT day.  It should be a session where you got the work in, but by no means was it taxing.  You should feel better after the workout than you did before it.

For bench, it's 85% of my EDM (I figured in 425) so 365.  Bench I think, responds a little better to higher programming than squats and pulls as far as reps go.   On the "heavy" days it's 3 sets of 3 all paused.  If I am feeling good, I will go ahead and do another set or two of triples.

On the light days, it's 75%, so 315 for 3 sets of 8, and if I am feeling good and blast all these reps I add in 3 sets of 5 after that, and maybe even 3 sets of 3 after that.  ALL reps paused.  This will build tremendous bottom position strength.

I actually alternate my heavy and light bench sessions.  So you end up only benching "heavy" once a month.  Because every other week I do inclines via the 350 method, and then the next week I do a "light" bench day.  The next week is incline, then the "heavy" bench session.

That's really the very basic outline of the light and heavy days.

So to lay it out for you based on what I wrote in part 1 including intensities -

Week 1 -
Day 1 - Heavy Pulls
Block or Rack Pulls (mid shin and below the knee) - to top set of 3-5
Elevated Stiff Legs - 2x5 @ 70% of block/rack pull
Shrugs - top set of 8 all out

Day 2 - Light Squats
Leg Ext - 8x20
Fronts - 5x5 @ 70%
Squats - 3-5x5 @ +50 of fronts

Day 3 - Light Press
Incline Press - 350 method @ 225
Light shoulder and bicep work

Week 2 -
Day 1 - Light Pulls
Deadlifts - 5-8 x 3 @ 60%
Rows - 350 method
Shrugs - 3x20

Day 2 - Heavy Squats
Leg Ext - 8x20
Fronts - 3-5x3-5 @ 80%
Squats - 5x5 @ +90 of fronts

Day 3 - Heavy/Light Bench (these get alternated)
Bench - 3x8, 3x5, 3x3 @ 75% or 3-5x3 @ 85%
Reverse Grip Bench - 3x20
Curls

Some pointers

• For the love of GOD please do not ask "when should I add weight?"  Milk the fuck out of the poundages you settle in with on the bar.  Sam Byrd said before he starts adding weight for a meet cycle he stays with 5x5 @ 425 (60%) until he can blast every rep as powerfully as possible.  So in other words, just because you get your 3 sets of 8 (you may not at first) doesn't mean you need to add weight on the bench!  I haven't moved up on front squats in like 2 months.  I don't need to.  I'm still milking 275 at this point.  
• You can constantly be working on moving weights with greater and greater force, until it's just silly ridiculous.  And then, do it for 2 more weeks.  This is not a quick run up or peaking cycle.  This is BASE BUILDING.  You don't need to add weight every session in order to increase that.  Get stronger by learning how to apply more and more force to the weight you already have on the bar.  And 60-85% is PLLEEENNNTTTYYYY!!!!  
• In part 3 I'm actually going to lay out how I will implement carb backloading into this training paradigm so that you can train hard as fuck, be strong, and keep fat accumulation to a minimum.  This part is going to look pretty cool actually.