Adequate exercise and workout frequency

Hi all.

First off, I'm new to the whole gymnastic scene, but have been working out for fitness purposes for around 1½ year, with very varying frequency and intensity. I started my fitness pursuit with your typical weightlifting + cardio and gone through various programs of such. Lately (the last 6 month or so) I've been moving further away from the weights, and doing a more calisthenics orientated workout, and I've actually been enjoying it more than the weightlifting aproach.

So this brings me to reading BtGB and foundation 1 and this sparked my interest towards the gymnastic skills and moves. I've always been notoriously bad at systematically tracking my progress, especially lately, with my calisthenics training, and I was also hoping that the progression in the gymnastic skills could help me out with this. On top of this lack of tracked progress in my previous training, I have also gotten very unstructured in my workout lately, and mainly just going by a gut feeling of when enough is enough. This has lead me to working out pretty much everyday for 1-3 hours and lead me to believe this was necessary for me, without any actual proof of this (lack of structure and track of progress).

After having done some strength and mobility testing on the basic moves in the foundation 1 course, I end up around PE 3 for most moves. So anyway, here's my actual question; Is there anyway to actually determine my recovery rate? I understand I should base my workout frequency on this, however, after having pushed myself to working out everyday, I have a hard time settling for less as adequate. Based on the foundation 1 (which is where my max testing places me strength and mobility wise), anywhere from 3 - 5  days a week is advised. The thing is with my (flawed) philosophy of adequate exercise, I would tend to choose 5 days a week and put in some extra training of my own to make up for the downgrade from working out everyday for 2-3 hours. I know this would change the program and possibly ruin it, but I just can't help but feel doing it alone isn't adequate. 

I'm having a hard time knowing the difference between when I'm pushing too hard, because of my will power and stamina, and when my pushing is actually benefiting my workouts and health. I just really can't grasp the idea of less is more, even though I know I have to...

Anyway, any advice or similar experiences is much appreciated.

hehehe... a wall of text for such a simple question...

The answer is complicated though , but mostly because you won't do it!

- Start with 3 days a week for 3 cycles.

- Evaluate.

- Maybe increase to 4 days a week and do this for 3 cycles, unless you start feeling like crap, or slow progress, etc... revert to previous programming.

- Evaluate & repeat for 5 days.

- Evaluate & repeat for 2xF7, then 3xF7

Be wary of extra activities that may interfere with your fatigue/recovery.

Maintain good nutrition & sleep patterns.

Also note that you can and even should add something extra on top of F1. That is first of all some cardio work. Maybe two sessions of slow and steady cardio work which actually works to help recovery to some amount and if you wish, one higher intensity session of HIIT or something similar. Also one day of stretching a week will help immensly. 

Many also have their other sports and activities they do which involme more skill work like martial arts, climbing, parkour, tricking, you name it.

hahah, yeah I know, wasn't meaning for it to get that long, but once I started I just got to babble on about my situation...

I suppose I knew the logical answer was something like that, guess I need to force my self to do it somehow. 

Yeah I thought some type of HIIT or cardio would be good for me to include as well as I haven't got any sport on the side atm. Is more stretching then the included mobility exercises in F1 a good idea?

Thanks for the response both of you

Bror said:

Is more stretching then the included mobility exercises in F1 a good idea?

Probably.  In the same way I'm doing some max strength work alongside F1, getting comfortable in more extreme ranges of motion will only help you when you get to more difficult mobility elements later in the series.

FredInChina said:

- Start with 3 days a week for 3 cycles.

- Evaluate.

- Maybe increase to 4 days a week and do this for 3 cycles, unless you start feeling like crap, or slow progress, etc... revert to previous programming.

- Evaluate & repeat for 5 days.

- Evaluate & repeat for 2xF7, then 3xF7

If anyone actually did this, they would have almost finished F1 by the time they got up to 3xF7....

Bipocni said:

If anyone actually did this, they would have almost finished F1 by the time they got up to 3xF7....

hahahahha

when I started F1, I started with 5 days a week, since it was so low volume. 

upon entering the more volume dense weeks, i reverted back to 4day.

to start H1, I started with 3x on the volume, now that it's in week 9/10/11, I'm doing it 2 times a week. 

when it's low volume, I like to take advantage of the time and get acquainted with the movements I'm doing. it's kind of like a pre-prep phase. then once the volume starts kicking in, i have more or less down how I handle going through the volume while maintaining a level of performance. i haven't progressed passed week 5 in MN/PE1 for this reason, before it was my PPT fatiguing before finishing the last set. now i can keep the PPT up until the last few reps but now I need to work on not using momentum. once the momentum is cleared and i can do every rep with lift and zero momentum, it's the time to go to week 9/10/11 and prove mastery. 

3x3(week1) can be pretty mellow and so can 5x3(week 2), those two weeks is where i get in the groove of things and 3x5(week3) is where i usually have to step it up and prove that i got most of the cues down or have assessed what cues i need to strengthen. 

/2cents

Bipocni said:

If anyone actually did this, they would have almost finished F1 by the time they got up to 3xF7....

If people could choose the right frequency for them right off the bat then they would finish it faster!

Personally I need the more frequent, it's just how I learn. Anything below 2x a week, when I jump on the bar or rings I feel almost as clumsy as if I'd not trained that element for a long time; can take a couple sets before I feel like I've got the stubble off. But that also means I have to pay closer attention to how near my current limits I'm working at a given time. That's okay with me, I like micromanaging and enjoying the process, but sometimes I know I make it more complicated than it needs to be I like hearing the different approaches people have to accomplish the same goals, it's interesting.

I'm also enjoying the way splitting up 3xF7 is going. Short, 40-ish minute session before breakfast each morning (incl general warmup) gets me in a good frame of mind for the day and just as I start to get restless again, evening martial arts training. Not a bad little groove just now.

Bipocni said:

If anyone actually did this, they would have almost finished F1 by the time they got up to 3xF7....

Hummmmm........ that is a very bold assumption that "anyone" could really benefit optimally from 3xF7.

I used to think that way too; that was a mistake for which I am not done paying the consequences.

Anyhow, if things happened as you say, from 3xF1(3,4) to 3xF1(7), is doubling the workload over 18 months...

Charm said:

 

I'm also enjoying the way splitting up 3xF7 is going. Short, 40-ish minute session before breakfast each morning (incl general warmup) gets me in a good frame of mind for the day and just as I start to get restless again, evening martial arts training. Not a bad little groove just now.

How do you get done in 40min including warmup on F7? I haven't really tried to race through my sessions but when I'm doing F7 it takes at least an hour for me, unless it's deload week.

gohei_ said:

How do you get done in 40min including warmup on F7? I haven't really tried to race through my sessions but when I'm doing F7 it takes at least an hour for me, unless it's deload week.

Nah, I meant I *was* doing 3xF7, but have split it up over 6 days. It took about a bit more than an hour, maybe closer to 1.5 to do F7, but since I'm not so far from finishing F2 most of my progressions are repeating max volume. Time got a bit out of my hands with travelling. Now I do a general warmup, then F and H. The whole thing takes 40ish minutes Mon-Sat, which I do on waking up.

I will probably go back to 3xF7 once F3 comes out, but for the rest of July this suits my schedule better.

I'm experimenting with volume at the moment and it looks like for some exercises I need a different training pattern. In HBP/PE1 I stayed at week 6 for over 3 months doing 3 trainings a week, which is the maximum listed in the program, but even though I was getting muscle failure any time I attempted the week 7 volume, the muscles never felt that they had "worked" afterwards and were never sore.

What I've been trying for the last two weeks is to repeat the week 6 volume several times, until I feel that the muscles have "worked". For example last week this was be 4 times on Monday, and then another 2 times on Tuesday. The result was that there was still no soreness, however there was fatigue and I felt like resting for several days before doing the exercise again - something which never happened before. This week I was finally able to do the week 7 volume and moved to it.

I'll keep this strategy for a couple of months on all exercises - do the volume I'm at until the muscle feels like has "worked" and then rest until it feels like it needs work again. This may be a bit unstructured but I'm keeping a full exercise log and will be able to see any patterns that emerge.

Charm said:

Nah, I meant I *was* doing 3xF7, but have split it up over 6 days. It took about a bit more than an hour, maybe closer to 1.5 to do F7, but since I'm not so far from finishing F2 most of my progressions are repeating max volume. Time got a bit out of my hands with travelling. Now I do a general warmup, then F and H. The whole thing takes 40ish minutes Mon-Sat, which I do on waking up.

 

I will probably go back to 3xF7 once F3 comes out, but for the rest of July this suits my schedule better.

Ah I see, my bad then.

stan said:

I'm experimenting with volume at the moment and it looks like for some exercises I need a different training pattern. In HBP/PE1 I stayed at week 6 for over 3 months doing 3 trainings a week, which is the maximum listed in the program, but even though I was getting muscle failure any time I attempted the week 7 volume, the muscles never felt that they had "worked" afterwards and were never sore.

 

What I've been trying for the last two weeks is to repeat the week 6 volume several times, until I feel that the muscles have "worked". For example last week this was be 4 times on Monday, and then another 2 times on Tuesday. The result was that there was still no soreness, however there was fatigue and I felt like resting for several days before doing the exercise again - something which never happened before. This week I was finally able to do the week 7 volume and moved to it.

 

I'll keep this strategy for a couple of months on all exercises - do the volume I'm at until the muscle feels like has "worked" and then rest until it feels like it needs work again. This may be a bit unstructured but I'm keeping a full exercise log and will be able to see any patterns that emerge.

if you explain this with numbers laid out, i'd have a better understanding (it's the spaniard in me, im tellin' ya)

Sorry, I did write that too complicated!

I used to do HBP/PE1 on Monday-Wednesday-Friday and it felt good. FL, sPL, MN, SLS all progressed nicely. ABH is so-so, I'm looking forward to trying your foam roller tip. But on RC and HBP I stopped making any progress after weeks 5/6.

Now I started to experiment thinking what feels right for me. My muscles work in a strange way and have good endurance but little strength. For example in school I ran 1 mile with the same speed as 60 meters - 5:04 for the mile and 11.7s for the 60 meters.

So what I'm trying now is this. Let's say I train HBP/PE1 today. I do 4x9 in the morning (the week 6 volume), then 4x9 more after a few hours, and a third 4x9 later. If the muscle doesn't feel tired I continue the next day with more 4x9s until the muscle says "OK, enough, got it". Then I feel a pleasant fatigue and the need to rest for a few days. So the new schedule is like:

1. Monday with follow up on Tuesday
2. Saturday with follow up on Sunday
3. next week Wednesday with follow up on Thursday
4. then back to Monday

It does feel well so I'll stick with it for 3 months and see how it works long term.

how is your sleep and nutrition? mine could be better

sleep is solid and i eat like a pig what problems are you having?

not eating enough and not best sleep quality due to the summer heat/humidity

Sleep and nutrition are the most important aspects of recovery. You don't necessarily have to eat like a pig just make sure you get enough of the right stuff. As for sleep try to get 8 hours a night. Here are a few tips to help you KeilaniG:

• don't be too active close to the time of going to sleep.
• don't eat just before you go to sleep.
• stay away from any entertainment device at night such as the T.V.
• read a book just before you go to sleep.
• get as comfortable as possible.
• leave a window open or turn the fan on during the day.
• take a cold shower just before you go to bed.
• eliminate any noise by closing your door.
• sleep with a bottle of ice to cool you down (I am not responsible for any leakage ). 

get an aircon man, they are very good for the night.

I would oppose leaving the air-con on at night. This can lead to a running nose and sore throat the next morning.

SuperBru said:

I would oppose leaving the air-con on at night. This can lead to a running nose and sore throat the next morning.

so this....i've never been one to have allergies, but leaving my AC on at night gives me the gnarliest boogers and sore throat in the morning. 

once I opened my filters to clean them(after not cleaning it for a month or two) and it had mold. effective that moment onward, I sleep without it and clean it(with the anxiety of years of repressed OCD). 

my first thought when I saw it was "why do people bother buying this S%^&, if it MOLDS on the part where it SUCKS IN AIR." #firstworldproblems

if people at one point slept with out, so can I. it's been around 5 yrs since that incident and i only have trouble sleeping in the summer. 

Mold is seriously dangerous for your health. I heard it can cause lung disease! I'm glad you clean your air-con. I would be too lazy myself to clean it.

I don't know, I use an AC, don't get a sore throat, get full nights of sleep in the summer. Plus I live in an attic and all the heat in the house comes up to me, so without one I would simply die. People in the past did not have a lot of things. I'm not giving up refrigerators or cars or medicine just because my ancestors managed without them.

im not denouncing technology

just not succumbing to my geographic disadvantages

for years, I wanted a RAW frame to ride bmx. it was powdercoat or bust, because anything not powdercoated(even the chrome from my rear rim would literally flake off in months because i live close to the ocean and yes, i cleaned my rims with a rag ceremoniously) would just rust to crap.

I do possess the maturity now to go about cleaning my A/C in a certain way and use my A/C every night, but im just not used to it anymore.

kind of like how soda tastes like perrier with aunt jemima's syrup....