F7

I've seen some controversies around F7 training split and was wondering if this is still recommended or not. 

Im currently doing F7 twice a week Mon Thur. Any issues with this? Sessions usually last a between 60-90 minutes depending on the level of progression. 

I'm doing F7's on Mondays and Thursdays, too. No issues that I have, nor any mentioned to me.

recently came across this in the fitness portion of the GB hub. Didnt know if anyone had any thoughts on it. Tempted to give the three day split a try and see how I do. 

The 3day split works well, especially if you have other physical commitments  (sport, physical job, etc). It has taken me a fair way and I periodically return to it when time gets short

Hi Ryan, 

There is a variety of different schedules because everybody responds differently to varying workloads. How are you recovering from the F7 workouts? Generally the only way to tell how your body will respond to different volume levels is to do some experimenting.

Let us know how you go.

@Winter Phoenix 

With F7 ive been able to make very gradual progress. Usually sticking with a progression for 3 weeks before bumping up. I think im going to finish out this training cycle for another 4 weeks. Then give the three day split a go in the next 8-12week cylce and then compare and contrast progress. 

- aso in regards to rest periods in between PE's I usually take a 2-3 min rest in between to try and recover so I can continue to push hard in the next exercise. By the end of it there is definitely a lot of cumulative fatigue from the exercises and is often difficult to make progress on the exercise that is at the end of the list. For me this is FL: PE1. Would you advice switching up the order from time to time? Or taking a longer rest period before that PE? Or continue as is? 

Hi Ryan,

I will suggest sticking to your gradual progress. If its working then its best to keep it that way.  Never take longer rest period. You can experiment with switching order from time to time. Keep us posted and good luck with training.

10 minutes ago, Leo Trinidad said:

Hi Ryan,

I will suggest sticking to your gradual progress. If its working then its best to keep it that way.  

Will do! its really only been my FL PE that has been a bit slow on the progression. All of my other PE's are coming along as planned. I will keep at it and let you guys know if I run into any big plateaus in the future. 

13 minutes ago, Leo Trinidad said:

Hi Ryan,

Never take longer rest period. 

- Is the 2-3 min rest in between PE's expectable? 

Yes 2-3 is all good. Don't make it longer.

@Leo Trinidad

Perfect! Will keep as is

I like the idea of these splits because it means you're not doing all the core exercises on one day.  Right now, I'm totally cooked after my Core workout because I'm doing 4x36 Straddle Hollow Body Rocks (for Front Lever), Windshield Wipers (for Side Lever) and Negative Hanging Leg Lifts (for Manna).  And that will only get harder as I progress through the steps and the volume increases.  (5x60 Straddle Hollow Body Rocks seems like a far-distant goal right now!!)

But, if they were split over two days, do you give your core time to recover (or is your core better able to cope with exercise every day)?

As it is, practical considerations mean I need to stick to the Core/Upper Body splits because I have to go to one gym for Core because it is the only one with stall bars and another for Upper Body because it is the only one with parallel bars.

@Paul McLachlan 

-To my knowledge the core is capable of taking a pretty significant beating without being over trained. But with this split it would decrease the amount of volume your doing in one session allowing you to put more of your efforts into training one or two core progressions at maximal intensity as opposed to getting fried up by the time your on your last exercises/sets. However I think the difficult nature of following the F7 protocol is beneficial in the long run, as the sole purpose of foundations 1 is to increase work capacity. By splitting the volume up to different days I feel like your almost short changing yourself by the time you get to more advanced strength work in Foundations 2,3,4. But then again it does sometimes get almost next to impossible to squeeze out those extra couple reps or extra couple of seconds on your static holds as the volume approaches mastery levels.

- My response in itself has me in a internal conflict hahha. which is more important, being able to progress quicker on exercises by splitting volume up or developing work capacity, grinding it out through those ultra high volume phases while following F7? Perhaps a coach could clarify? 

Sorry Paul if I answered your question with another question hahha started to second guess myself half way through this response 

9 hours ago, Ryan Segervall said:

@Paul McLachlan 

-To my knowledge the core is capable of taking a pretty significant beating without being over trained. But with this split it would decrease the amount of volume your doing in one session allowing you to put more of your efforts into training one or two core progressions at maximal intensity as opposed to getting fried up by the time your on your last exercises/sets. However I think the difficult nature of following the F7 protocol is beneficial in the long run, as the sole purpose of foundations 1 is to increase work capacity. By splitting the volume up to different days I feel like your almost short changing yourself by the time you get to more advanced strength work in Foundations 2,3,4. But then again it does sometimes get almost next to impossible to squeeze out those extra couple reps or extra couple of seconds on your static holds as the volume approaches mastery levels.

- My response in itself has me in a internal conflict hahha. which is more important, being able to progress quicker on exercises by splitting volume up or developing work capacity, grinding it out through those ultra high volume phases while following F7? Perhaps a coach could clarify? 

 

Sorry Paul if I answered your question with another question hahha started to second guess myself half way through this response 

I struggle with the same thing.  On one hand wouldn't it be nice to just do 3 progressions a day instead of 7 but then what are we losing if we don't get the full f7 load of work?  I keep threatening to break it up but still end up doing the f7

Developing work capacity is the best way to go. If you advance fast but at the same time hit a plateau quickly then thats useless because you'll probably wonder where you went wrong and will definitely go back to the lower progressions for review. Its better to develop a habit on building work capacity, volume and at the same time bulletproofing those soft tissues.

Hi,

I'm quite new here and thats the first time I hear about F7. So far I do the schedule as suggested, sometimes taking a rest day after the Front Split day.

So is F7 that will be proposed by the program at some point or does one decide that one wants to do it at some point.

On 2/14/2017 at 9:27 AM, Jon Douglas said:

The 3day split works well, especially if you have other physical commitments  (sport, physical job, etc). It has taken me a fair way and I periodically return to it when time gets short

This is interesting. Right now I have some free time so the current schedule works fine for me. But I can see in the future that I wont have time to train on GST every day because of other things I am interested in. Maybe switching to F7 will be a solution to this then.

F7 is too much for me. When I do just 3 progression I m very very hungry and eat tons of food. If I workout F7 I can t sleep good and I have to wake up in the middle of the night to eat and I don t like to wake up in the middle of the night. I prefer sleeping.

39 minutes ago, Michael Vetter said:

Hi,

I'm quite new here and thats the first time I hear about F7. So far I do the schedule as suggested, sometimes taking a rest day after the Front Split day.

So is F7 that will be proposed by the program at some point or does one decide that one wants to do it at some point.

Before the update F7 was the suggested way to go with a download week every 3-4 weeks. The new programming is different and allows for combination of the 3 segments of F1 as individually preferred. In general you should aim to do each block once a week, then worry about doing it a second time. If you can handle F7 great, do it!

I started foundation doing F7 3times a week, but as soon as progressions get to step 8-9  it's 5sets of high repetitions or duration and that can lead to a training session of 2.5hrs. The fatigue was too much for me to recover in time to keep that schedule up. Since I like to exercise frequently I rather split it into sessions that don't take too long and let me recover faster...but that's just me. Try different set ups/schedules and find out what works best for you.

2 hours ago, Antonio Alías Montoya said:

F7 is too much for me. When I do just 3 progression I m very very hungry and eat tons of food. If I workout F7 I can t sleep good and I have to wake up in the middle of the night to eat and I don t like to wake up in the middle of the night. I prefer sleeping.

That's interesting, when I started GST I was in the process of losing weight.  Basically I switched at fast food lunch plus sweets for healthy snacks and a protein shake.  I lost around 25-30 lbs and have basically leveled out at 6' 178.  In happy with that but recently since I've stalled on a couple of progressions I've started thinking i need to add more calories back in my diet.  After a good f7 workout I'm sore and tired.  I think I may just need more fuel.  It would be interesting to know how may calories an hour of GST burns vs a crossfit

I had my best gain with the 4 days schedule.

14 minutes ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

I had my best gain with the 4th day schedule.

What does that mean: 3 on 1 off?

I believe Alex is referring to the old 4 Day Schedule: F4 Mon/Thu and F3 Tue/Fri. A schedule setup like that has always worked best for me too. 

exactly.

Just to throw in a totally different viewpoint, here's my schedule (pre-dislocated ankle/broken leg), which I plan to build back to when I'm healed.  This is a pretty specific plan that I came up with to support my goals: sport climbing and alpine climbing.

Mon, AM: F7 + max effort hangboard. PM: easy run
Tues, AM: bouldering volume, skill development PM: Threshold run
Weds, AM: Core and SLS at ~50% Mon volume.  Front Squats, volume hangboard, press handstand progression as a superset. PM: Long easy run.
Thurs: repeat Tues AM. PM: easy run
Friday, AM: Core and SLS at ~50% Mon volume + H1, hangboard muscle endurance/hypertrophy.  PM: short easy run
Saturday: All-day effort (ice climbing, skimo, long run, full day of sport climbing, depending on the season).
Sunday: total rest or short easy run

All runs are at minimum 60 minutes, unless they say short, in which case they're 45 minutes max.  

The full F7 gives me full body work capacity benefits, and the shorter GST sessions throughout the week keep my body familiar with the movements.  The various handstand protocols ensure that I have pressing throughout the week, and I'll always have 2x5 pushups in my warmups if I'm not training HBP progression that day (because I struggle with press strength).  I don't add any RC work other than F7 because almost all climbing work is pulling.

If I didn't have all the sport specific stuff, I would probably still do at least one session a week of the full F7, and then probably do 4 days/week of 50% volume F7 combined with either skill work (HS sessions) or barbell squats.

5 hours ago, Antonio Alías Montoya said:

F7 is too much for me. When I do just 3 progression I m very very hungry and eat tons of food. If I workout F7 I can t sleep good and I have to wake up in the middle of the night to eat and I don t like to wake up in the middle of the night. I prefer sleeping.

Sounds like you are running purely on fast-burning carbs:) Maybe you should consider giving Thrive a try, as it teaches and helps you set up the eating habits that ensure stable energy levels 24/7 so that there would be no need to visit the kitchen too often. I'm currently in the middle of it and like it a lot.

Hey guys

ive never really fully understood the whole f4 f7 thing and actually have been told in the past this is an old terminology but this post suggests the contrary . For this reason I've only ever concentrated on my schedule as core, lower, upper etc as this is how my scheduler sets out my weekly plan 

This in mind can I just clarify

the "blocks" on my workout programme are classed as 

core

upperbody

lowerbody

these are only ticked completed when all exercises of, for example the core section,  are completed 

doing f3 or f4 would result in me not completing the whole core block on one day and therefore wouldn't get ticked. And like I say this is how the scheduler sets things up rather than splitting them into fl, spl etc.

how would this work in ticking off what I've completed during each day and with the scheduler etc as an I right in saying our scheduler can't decipher f3 f4 only core, upper body etc 

little confused

leigh