Work capacity and recovery

[Zach Cohen]

I had asked a question of Canthar in another thread, and he suggested I just follow BtGB as it's already well programmed. I wanted to explain I don't have that luxury, but did not want to hijack that thread, so I started my own. Any advice based on the following circumstances is greatly appreciated! Sorry for the long post, but I thought it was necessary to describe the unique project I'm a part of:

I'm a student in a 10 year traditional Chinese martial arts training program located in the woods in the coastal mountains of northern California. I'm getting towards the end of my first year here. The master is one of the world's foremost martial arts experts, but he is by no means a strength and conditioning expert. The first year here is mainly focused on strength and conditioning to prepare our bodies for more intensive martial arts training. We do however spend an hour a day meditating, an hour a day practicing qigong, 2 hours a day practicing taijiquan, and 30 minutes a day practicing reaction training/sparring to build a foundation.

Other than that, there's about 3.5 hours in the daily schedule for physical conditioning, which includes running up the mountain trail carrying weight (need to be at 50lbs by the end of the year, trail is ~1 mile with 900 feet of gain), jumping drills, 20 minutes for single/pbar/ring work, holding low stances balanced on upright bricks, dropping and pinch grip catching 30lb cinderblocks, staff leveraging for the wrist/forearm, speed drills, and holding some easy static positions for the lower back and abs held for time. This ~9 hour a day schedule is followed 5 days a week, with a half day saturday, and sunday off.

The approach to strength and conditioning is haphazard at best. The schedule is extremely strict (enforced with a whip! =P), but luckily there is no strictly enforced protocol for most of the strength and endurance training; I have some freedom to play around with what I do. Still, with no planned strength progressions, and no regard for recovery, it's a difficult year. My master's attitude towards training is more is better, essentially. Rest is bad. I think he takes the attitude he learned growing up training the technical martial arts skill, in which more is definitely better, and applies it to conditioning, where that is certainly not the case. Overtraining injuries are pretty common.

The first few months here I developed an intense case of shin splints which messed up my mountain running for a good 6 months, and I'm only now recovering and progressing again. I also developed pretty painful elbow tendinitis, but it's much better now and I know to back off whenever they feel a bit sore. The first and second months I also developed severe overtraining, unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life. I got incredibly sick for a couple weeks. Time to adapt the workload helped, as did changing my diet to eat a lot more and include free range, unadulterated, local animal products (had been vegetarian). I still felt symptoms of overreaching on and off until now, when I'm finally starting to feel good on a consistent basis.

In addition to the above schedule, I practice handstands for 20-30 minutes a day, spend 20 or so minutes 3 days a week working convict conditioning progressions (mainly bridge and 1 armed pushup) elsewhere discussed by Slizzardman, and 30/30 interval swings with a 24kg kettlebell for between 5 and 16 minutes 5-6 days a week. To help compensate for that, I walk the mountain 2 days a week instead of running, and skip jumping or jump very low volume a couple days a week. I cut back volume of anything I don't feel progress in over time.

I use the 20 minutes of scheduled bar/ring time, plus 20 minutes of my free time to work on static positions from BtGB, as well as the FBEs. I've made pretty good progress. I can get a decent, minimal leaning, not too narrow grip ring muscle up for at least 3 reps, i can hold straddle front and back levers, i can fairly consistently hold a straight body handstand for 5-15 seconds (only about a month in, so I'm still working out the balance), etc.

One other guy (of 5 here) follows this kind of approach with me and is making good progress too. The others kind of randomly do standard pull ups, pushups, and dips for as many reps as they can as part of the routine outlines above, not much else. The information gained from the BtGB book, from this forum and its well informed members, and other sources has been invaluable, so thanks!

I had asked Canthar if he could recommend any reading resources to help me understand the mechanics of work capacity, recovery, and strength development. Anything anyone can suggest would be great!

Thanks for reading,

Zach