Question for Coach Sommer Regarding Steady State Cycle

Hi,

I have a question regarding steady state cycle training. I have been performing a steady state cycle for the past 7 weeks or so and have been feeling a little stale. Do you ever have your athletes perform at least 1 day of exercises that deviate from the original plan? I am just a little worried I might need a new stimulus to see the strength gains.

I understand that Coach Sommer is a busy man so if anyone else has any input on this that would be great too.

Thanks!

Hi

If you read parts in the book like the section covering sets and reps, you'll find that coach Sommer says that different people

need different stimulus to get the same result. You find the same answer in this forum about specific questions regarding work loads and exercise setup.

My point is that it looks as if SCCs should be individually tailored to get the optimal results from your time spend training. Starting out you'll have no way of knowing what is optimal for you, so you'll have to find out trough trial and error. There's different ways of going about this, one would be to finish each SCC and evaluate afterwards. Another could be to make minor adjustments along the way.

And SCC should by definition be held constant, but a prerequisite is a correct setup.

All that being said, I'd like to ad that strength gains take time, and you need to know how much progress you could expect in each state. This to will vary across individuals, so no one can give you an exact answer. One way of checking your expectations could be to cross refrence this forum with your own personal goals. See how much time people have used getting to these goals.

Get an idea of the average. Depending on where you are compared to the average person, you'll get some idea.

I've been doing SCCs since january this year, so I'm a noob/rookie/newbie at this working out according to the method of

coach Sommer, so regard this answer with that in mind.

What do you mean by "stale?"

OliveStrip said:

I have been performing a steady state cycle for the past 7 weeks or so and have been feeling a little stale. Do you ever have your athletes perform at least 1 day of exercises that deviate from the original plan? I am just a little worried I might need a new stimulus to see the strength gains.

Patience. The whole point of a Steady State Cycle is for the end of the cycle to require little perceived effort while the body finishes its adaptation and recovery from the stress of the training early in the cycle.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Thanks Coach Sommer. I really appreciate your response. I will continue my steady state training.

When doing most of these exercises, especially the planche stuff, you are working on tendon strength much more than muscle strength. Muscles get strong fast and you can hurt yourself if you don't do steady state for a lot of the statics. Trust me, I did it to myself! I was strong enough to hold a straddle planche after 4 months or so, but my tendons were nowhere near ready, and I have been recovering for 3 months now. I'm getting better, but that was a totally avoidable injury, as most are.

slizzardman said:

When doing most of these exercises, especially the planche stuff, you are working on tendon strength much more than muscle strength. Muscles get strong fast and you can hurt yourself if you don't do steady state for a lot of the statics. Trust me, I did it to myself! I was strong enough to hold a straddle planche after 4 months or so, but my tendons were nowhere near ready, and I have been recovering for 3 months now. I'm getting better, but that was a totally avoidable injury, as most are.

Brandon Green

Absolutely, but that would really only be useful once the athlete is no longer focusing on building strength, and has instead moved on to primarily working on reactive and explosive strength as the top priority. There comes a point in every athlete's training after which additional maximal strength doesn't improve performance enough to be worth focusing on any longer. That's the point at which you have to shift over to a focus on the reactive and explosive strength, and at that point a steady state cycle will allow an athlete to SLOWLY build on their already prodigious maximal strength while continuing to focus on their reactive and explosive abilities, which is where their higher level performance will come from. The only real exception to this would be powerlifting, and even then I think that may be debatable. This obviously applies primarily to An-1 and An-2 athletes.

To clarify that, reactive ability relies on the stretch reflex, which means you're either absorbing a lot of force quickly or you are absorbing and immediately redirecting a lot of force. Explosive strength does not, it is speed-strength expressed from a dead start.