Volume per week question

Hello All,

I've been enjoying GST since June - worked through Fundamentals and started on Foundation about 6 weeks ago.  I'm addicted!  This kind of workout is exactly what I was looking for - great job to those that put this together.

I've been lurking around the forums here off and on over that time, learning the ropes so to speak and while my question is sort of answered in other threads and I think I know the "right" answer, I thought I'd post to get others thoughts.

Basically, my schedule (and body) enjoy working out about an hour a day, 5 - 6 days a week. When I worked through Fundamentals, I would do the daily exercise along with cardio or my usual (amateur-style) strength training.  I was excited to start Foundation because I assumed that I would be able to dramatically increase the number of GST exercises I did each day (and thus, over the course of a week) and drop my "typical" weight training altogether. This has not exactly played out that way, as described below.

If I understand correctly, the F1 course is designed to work through the current progression for each of the 7 components (FL, SP, etc.) once per week. However, I started out by doing 1 workout (e.g. on a Monday) with all 7 of the current set of exercises e.g. (I did FL/PE1 step 1, sPL/PE1 step1, ... etc. all on one day).  I was sore, but felt good.  I waited a few days, and did all 7 again.  I have since gotten into a rhythm of doing all 7 of my current set of exercises about twice a week with 1-2 days rest in between. 

My first question is, is this an acceptable way to move through the course?  After 6 weeks, my body feels good doing this, I don't have any pain and I'm progressing through (PE1 for all; FL step 3, sPL step 5, SL step 5, MN step 2, SLS step 5, HBP step 4, RC step 3). Note that I'm not doing it this way to "speed up the process" but rather because it's fun and my body feels good doing it this way.  I guess I'm just curious what the recommendation and/or how much leeway we have in managing the volume per week of the F1 exercises.

Of course if I'm doing F1 2x per week, that leaves 3-4 days without a workout and over the last 6 weeks I've primarily been doing the Daily Limber from Fundamentals on those days and cardio. So my second question is, is there another course (besides Fundamentals) that would be complementary to F1 that I could work in on those days I'm not doing F1?  Or perhaps if I did F1 differently per week (i.e. differently than I described above in question 1) it would make more sense to work in another course in a different way?

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

Hi Joseph,

You are totally okay doing F7 2x per week. As you progress and the movements get harder, you can consider splitting up the Foundation workouts over more than two days.

For now, on the other days of the week, I suggest stretching and handstand training. Those courses are going to speed up your progress and make your GST more complete. Since you're doing cardio already, I suggest stretching after that. Handstand 1 & 2 can both be started immediately and will complement your F1 training nicely. 

Thanks for the quick reply Everett!

Another question I thought of after posting, when attempting step 9 (mastery) for any particular PE would you advise doing that attempt on a separate day?  I guess my thought is that if I'm doing 3 core exercises in one day, for example, then naturally I will be more fatigued on the third exercise and thus perhaps not accurately measuring my progress.  I suppose the general form of this question is, should mastery sets be attempted when I'm "fresh" to get an accurate measure of whether or not I'm ready to advance?  Thanks!

Hey Joseph,

You should be able to master within your workout so I suggest sticking to your normal schedule, regardless of what step you're on.