Question concerning scheduling

Hey guys

I've been following the Foundation and Handstand series for a few months now and I'm absolutely loving it. I have made some great strength gains, increased my body awareness and overall running performance. First and foremost I am a trail-runner and the GB training has helped me to increase my stability on the trails. I have really come to enjoy the aspect of bodyweight training, apart from the benefits to my running.

As with most runners, mobility becomes an issue. I do a fair bit of running specific stretching to be able to maintain my running form but I want to do more. I am thinking about starting with the gb stretch series but am a bit unsure on how to incorporate that into my schedule.

Currently my schedule looks like this:

Monday/Wednesday/Friday: all foundation workouts, core in the morning, upper body and lower body in the evening

Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday: running, on Saturday I will also do some handstand work.

Sunday: rest-day

According to coach's recommendation, I would only do foundation once a week, compared to three times a week. My concern is, that by incorporating the stretch series I will need to cut back on foundation and thus am unsure if once a week is still enough to make strength gains.

I hope you guys can help me out. Maybe someone has been in the same situation and can share their experiences.

All the best

Ben

Hi Ben,

Thanks for reaching out.

If you can fit it in your schedule I would recommend to spread the Foundation Workouts in the week. It will get quite challenging as your sets and reps increases to do it all in one day. Actually Coach Sommer's recommended schedule only includes the Foundation workouts once a week on separate days. 

Maybe you would be able to fit one Foundation workout in before your running/stretching sessions?

Dear Pauline

Thanks for your answer. Sure that is a possibility, but is once a week enough to see strength gains? I feel like for example doing the upper body workout once a week would be enough to maintain my current strength level but not really increase it? I might be wrong, it's just a feeling I have.

Hello Benjamin,

Your ability to gain strength is not attached to the amount of times per week you do your Foundations strength training. It is actually a very individualistic relationship, what I mean by this is that some GB athletes make more strength gain training once per week than they do training 7 times per week. This will completely depend on your unique and individual recovery and work capacities etc. 

How you can find out is by through trial and error only. My suggestion is that you go ahead and begin once a week and time permitting, you broaden it to twice per week and make the call about your schedule from there.

I agree with Luke.

To begin with once a week is enough as you need to let your body adapt to new movements. Foundation Once is primarily focused on building your work capacity so that your body is prepared for heavier load later in the Foundation series. Since you've been doing F1 for a few months already you may consider to add another workout in. However if you are to choose from another day of training or the stretch series, I would go for the stretch series. I think these will benefit both your running and GST greatly. You can do these as a cool down after your training or on a separate day. 

Please let us know if you have any further questions and feel free to share your progress. We'd love to see your strength gains  

Thank you so much guys for the helpful comments. I'll go ahead and add the stretch series and reduce the foundation work and see how it goes. 

All the best to you

Ben

always welcome, Ben! Looking forward to the updates