was feeling burnt out and losing interest until I found this weird old bodybuilding trick! Trainers hate me!

Okay, so for a long time now -- months -- I've been struggling to mix martial arts and gymnastics work. To the point where I was finding it hard to even maky myself work out. I went from 4 workouts a week to 2 and then one week had 0 workouts -- it wasn't a deload week, I was just so burnt out I didn't even want to think about things.

So for the last week I've been trying to think about ways I could minimize fatigue in my gymnastics training. And basically it came down to longer rests, terminating work sets when my tempo slowed down and putting all my troubled moves on Sunday (after taking Friday and Saturday off of martial arts) and doing a throwaway gymnastics day on Wed or Thurs with the stuff that was coming easily to me.

Yesterday I stumbled across a bodybuilding method from the sixties popularized by a guy named Bob Gajda who was winning all the top competitions (link to article here) and, most interestingly to me, prefered calisthenics to weights and included flexibility work breaking up his strength training. Kind of like GST.

What it basically comes down to is doing your work as a circuit, but a circuit to make things easier instead of harder. You basically organize lifts so that your body never stops moving and your heartrate never comes down, but your working muscle systems never get hit twice in a row so they get to rest while your bloodflow carries away all the lactic acid and metabolites building up. The F1 workouts are basically set up perfectly for this style of training.

so instead of

FL pe/im 5x60s

sPL pe/im 5x15

HBP pe/im 5x15

RC pe/im 5x15

I did

FL pe/im x 60s

sPL pe/im x 15

HBP pe/im x 15

RC pe/im x 15

x 5 rounds without rest

 My heartrate was high the entire workout, my only rest was dawdling a few times between moves, every move was slow and perfect ... and, without rushing, it was one of the quicker workouts I've ever done.

I'm not tired afterwards. I feel totally rejuvenated and excited to do things with my day. I feel like I had a top-quality workout with no sloppiness or laziness.

This is literally the best workout I've had -- and the best I've felt during/after a workout -- in almost six months. It's such a simple idea and I know that earlier in the week I considered doing this exact same thing to minimize the fatique, but it wasn't until I found PHA that I realized this was a real training modality (and not just me dicking around) that it really clicked for me.

Very excited to go beat people up tomorrow.

Damn. I dont get how people can still do stuff after a foundation workout <.<

Funnily I've just started doing the same thing. I'm finding it let's me get more quality volume in a training session. I'm planning on doing this until I'm at mastery volume per exercise and then slowly changing it up to consecutive sets. Hopefully this will help me get past numerous plateaus.

It is certainly easier, and may be a way to build work capacity if your work capacity is low, which it sounds like it is.  I do this now and then just to mix things up, but keep in mind you're not building the same muscular endurance as you are when you do them as you're supposed to in the mastery requirements. I would suggest, since it seems to be helping you feel refreshed, that you do this for 1 deload cycle, then return to the standard template and see how it feels.  If you've made progress, maybe it's ok to do this periodically.  If you've lost progress then you will know you're not building your work capacity or strength.  My guess is you were a little overtrained with your 4 days a week + MMA and that your progress would be better with improved recovery, perhaps a 3 day per week, cutting back on MMA, improving sleep and nutrition, etc etc could all be used to improve your recovery and keep from getting mentally (physically) burned out.  Good luck.

The rest periods between elements are set the way they are for a reason: building work capacity. If you do your workout "circuit-style" then the increased rest between sets will let you do more reps, but you will not build as much work capacity. If training circuit style helps you progress or improves your spirits then by all means incorporate it into your workout, but remember that mastery for an element requires 5 sets of PE and iM with no additional rest in between. 

Joshua Slocum said:

The rest periods between elements are set the way they are for a reason: building work capacity. If you do your workout "circuit-style" then the increased rest between sets will let you do more reps, but you will not build as much work capacity. If training circuit style helps you progress or improves your spirits then by all means incorporate it into your workout, but remember that mastery for an element requires 5 sets of PE and iM with no additional rest in between. 

MT Nordic said:

It is certainly easier, and may be a way to build work capacity if your work capacity is low, which it sounds like it is.  I do this now and then just to mix things up, but keep in mind you're not building the same muscular endurance as you are when you do them as you're supposed to in the mastery requirements. I would suggest, since it seems to be helping you feel refreshed, that you do this for 1 deload cycle, then return to the standard template and see how it feels.  If you've made progress, maybe it's ok to do this periodically.  If you've lost progress then you will know you're not building your work capacity or strength.  My guess is you were a little overtrained with your 4 days a week + MMA and that your progress would be better with improved recovery, perhaps a 3 day per week, cutting back on MMA, improving sleep and nutrition, etc etc could all be used to improve your recovery and keep from getting mentally (physically) burned out.  Good luck.

Right now it's not an issue because, except for RC, it's not the strength work that's holding me back, it's the mobility work.  Even when I had extreme malaise and couldn't drag myself to do the gymnastic work, when I did finally force myself through a workout my numbers were perfectly fine, though I had to rest more often to generate that strength.

My gymnastics work definitely has the capacity to interfere with my martial arts. When you spend three hours getting crushed by people grinding shoulders into your face and fighting to prevent them from forcing their forearms and knuckles under your jaw... and it's all because you were a little too slow to seize a grip or you didn't have it in you to bridge a few more times to create space ... you feel really pissed off when you get home that night. That shit hurts.

One day the issue of work capacity in gymnastics might be an issue (when my mobility work catches up with my strength), but right now I feel optimistic that what I did today and the other fatigue management techniques available will let me continue training gymnastics for a while yet. I was really starting to worry that I'd have to quit the F1 + H1 courses and replace it with something else, but I feel amazing after today's GST work. It almost felt like active recovery.

Hi Joshua

I completely agree that this circuit style training won't increase work capacity for each muscle group compared to the recommended way of following foundation. What I'm finding though is that I can a) do more reps and b) the quality of those reps is higher.

I got the general idea for this from Escalating Density Training whet the goal is to stay away from fatigue and perform as many reps as possible over a workout that are high quality. In the past when I was weight training this really worked for me. I've been finding that the high focus on endurance rather than strength is really going against my body's natural preferred way of operating.

I figure I've tried that many different approaches to try and get past many plateaus that I might as well give this a go. So far so good.

Cheers

Ben

If this keeps you doing F1 then keep doing it. As long as you can show mastery with the 5 sets before moving on. It does sound like you were overtraining and this variation has given you some new enthusiasm.

I have found that when I combine F1 with Crossfit that doing F7 once a week works best. Combining that with 2 crossfit days gives me enough recovery and keeps my enthusiasm high. When I did higher volume I was dragging the chain and struggling through each workout.

Martial arts uses alot of similar muscles as GST so unless you have great recovery lower volume would be better.

Mark Collins said:

If this keeps you doing F1 then keep doing it. As long as you can show mastery with the 5 sets before moving on. It does sound like you were overtraining and this variation has given you some new enthusiasm.

I have found that when I combine F1 with Crossfit that doing F7 once a week works best. Combining that with 2 crossfit days gives me enough recovery and keeps my enthusiasm high. When I did higher volume I was dragging the chain and struggling through each workout.

Martial arts uses alot of similar muscles as GST so unless you have great recovery lower volume would be better.

Hi, Mark - I'm also trying to find my niche with this and Crossfit/Oly lifting, and to be honest from all the advice I'm reading, I'm actually thinking that less might be more.  I really enjoy Crossfit, and while GST is my training priority I need to also do other stuff I enjoy.

Most of what I've read I think boils down to 'don't rush it, because you can't anyway'.  How are you finding doing one F1 day per week in terms of progress? (I couldn't see it as an option on the template but seeing as Coach Sommer has liked that post I guess its officially OK ).

I've been thinking on similar lines, the big question for me is:

does the increased number of reps actually translate to better performance in achieving mastery and progressing to the next exercise?

I can see a case for both arguments as greater strength through more reps might mean less fatigue when testing mastery.

But by that yardstick why wouldn't you do fewer reps/sets of a harder exercise which would be more efficient at building strength and therefore reducing fatigue?

Or perhaps after sufficient rest or on a different day doing reps of harder exercise in the series would mean you are still chipping at the current exercise whilst also increasing strength with the associated muscle groups.

I know Coach has said you are free to play with what ever you like after Foundation training but does it actually help?

Obviously you'd have to be careful not to go for something beyond what your body is capable of here, being injured isn't fun.

Any experiences to counter my rambling are greatly appreciated, especially on the last idea as I'm trying it myself to progress on elements I've had no success improving on building endurance for.

Chris Clarkson said:

I know Coach has said you are free to play with what ever you like after Foundation training but does it actually help?

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Totally does IME. Sometimes it just feels like providing your body with 'perspective,' by showing it the contraction required for harder elements. No doubt this is mostly psychological and a product of our incredible ability to find ways to get used to whatever we are currently doing and take it easy. That taste of what's upcoming very often gives me the kick required to grit and move through a difficult Rx.