Progress even on 1 day per week

It seems very interesting to me that i am progressing while training only "Once" per week .

Maybe i am just a very low recovery guy ! 

Is it fine to keep this schedule ?

There have periods when I only train about once per week too and I've gotten stronger during that time. So keep it up if it suits you!

If you are improving, absolutely it is fine.

Why spend more time for the same result?

Thats exactly what i was thinking 

You will find that as the exercises become more complex (F3-F4) then once a week it is not enough.

Perhaps. But 'not enough' is relative, no? Coach Somer himself has talked about how some athletes can progress on 30 minutes a day, and others have needed 3 hours. I fall under the former, but I think biological predisposition plays a last some role in this.

As long as their is adequate recovery and you are making progress, then it's fine. Eventually though, once a week will be not be enough.

Daniel, it is spending time to learn complex skills - complex skills most often need continuous refinement in order to progress on wards. I apologize if I interpret you wrongly but we need to distinguish between strength training in skill training. Although those to some degree are inseparable, advanced strength skills requires a huge effort of learning it correctly because of the "skill component"

As an example, it is very unlikely to learn a handstand by practicing 1 time a week. It is, however, possible to progress on basic strength with very little time spent if you are "primed" towards that.

With strict strength training, you can see results from training a movement once a week (Wendler's 5/3/1) or even less (Body By Science).  When there is skill involved, you often need to practice the skill more often than the minimum necessary to build strength.

It depends on what the length of time is we're looking at and how quickly you want to learn a skill. You could learn a handstand practicing it once a week. It would just take a very long time. It is obviously NOT preferable, but it is still possible. I don't expect that everyone who trains GB or Foundation anticipates being a competitive athlete, gym owner, personal trainer, or what have you. So to say that they must do x, yes it is ideal but it not always the easiest thing to do. I'm simply speaking hypothetically. I train handstand twice a week, and foundation three times a week. While I'm traveling this summer, I may cut down on that frequency because while it may be ideal to maintain my workout frequency to two times per week with Handstand and three with Foundation, that might not be possible. Being too dogmatic about anything is problematic, because nothing happens in a vacuum -- unless you're a competitive athlete being paid to exercise or you literally work in a gym/athletic environment. Frankly, I wish that weren't the case but that's the society I was born in to. 

I cannot find you a source right now but I am fairly sure that the neural connections made in the from training a skill fade quite rapidly in comparison to muscle fiber concentration gained from "typical strength work".

I we take that as a fact there should be a general guide line saying that skill practice for this reason (but also for many other reasons) should happen more often than strength work for optimal benefits.

That could also be why Zach stated (somewhere) that HS training could be done every day. I am not saying that even training skills would be optimal every day, but I am saying that skill training should happen more often than strength training no matter your workout frequency, for the best results - in GST.

I think you missed my point. I wasn't saying that skill training shouldn't be trained every day. I was saying that sometimes, in life, that is not feasible. With that being said, that training once a week is better than not training at all. But it's worse than training more than once a week. Obviously, you should train more than once a week. I know this. I implement this. I was simply saying for the sake of argument that everyone's body is different and as such holding to and prioritizing dogmatic structures such as you must train x amount of times per week is not always possible. That was all I meant. If I could train every day, all day, I would. But I can't--no one can. But if you could, and still recover, people would. Anyways, I'm starting to ramble.

Okay, gotcha. Sometimes life gets in the way of training.

Life gets in the way of training.. yeahh.. but sometimes training gets in the way of life.

Hollow Man said:

Life gets in the way of training.. yeahh.. but sometimes training gets in the way of life.

Sometimes, they are the same

Alessandro Mainente said:

You will find that as the exercises become more complex (F3-F4) then once a week it is not enough.

It is important to keep in mind also that at this point in their development the student's work capacity will have improved also; and they will benefit from the additional training days.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Alexander Egebak said:

I cannot find you a source right now but I am fairly sure that the neural connections made in the from training a skill fade quite rapidly in comparison to muscle fiber concentration gained from "typical strength work".

 

In my experience, if you have mastered a skill, its takes very little to retrain after long time off.  The physiological adaptions of strength, however,  take MUCH longer to get back.

jules said:

In my experience, if you have mastered a skill, its takes very little to retrain after long time off.  The physiological adaptions of strength, however,  take MUCH longer to get back.

I agree although it would vary depending on how much time you have spent on refining the skill.

One of my girl friends, an ex gymnast, who have turned fat now can still hold a stacked handstand effortless and walk on hands although it was 10 years ago since she last trained it. She is 22 now.

I noticed that for me it changes a lot based on the type of exercise as well.

For example I'm getting the best out of just 1 day/week of RC progression, but I "need" to get much more frequent stimulation for core-related stuff. I'm currently doing HollowBodyRocks 3 times/week and HangingLegLifts twice and it seems to work great.

I'm pretty sure that if I did the same with PPP or RCs I'd be smashed by the end of the week

Alexander Egebak said:

I agree although it would vary depending on how much time you have spent on refining the skill.

 

That's why i used the word 'Mastered'