Some suggestions for a 3 day routine

Hello,

I want to focus on general fitness combining deadlifts, squats, and power cleans with gymnastics. I would like to do a 3 day routine which would allow me other days throughout the week to work on hill sprints, swimming, and practice of movement like crawling, climbing, rolling, etc. I was wondering what would be the best way to program these three days. Instead of four days of horizontal push/pull, vertical push/pull, curl/dip, and multiplane movements, could they be combined into three days? Also, could days like todays WOD be rotated in once in a while just to work on work capacity? I also would like to note that I would like to compete in the CrossFit games at some point in the near future. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt

rutgers11 said:

Hello,

I want to focus on general fitness combining deadlifts, squats, and power cleans with gymnastics. I would like to do a 3 day routine which would allow me other days throughout the week to work on hill sprints, swimming, and practice of movement like crawling, climbing, rolling, etc. I was wondering what would be the best way to program these three days. Instead of four days of horizontal push/pull, vertical push/pull, curl/dip, and multiplane movements, could they be combined into three days? Also, could days like todays WOD be rotated in once in a while just to work on work capacity? I also would like to note that I would like to compete in the CrossFit games at some point in the near future. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Matt

Mileage varies between individuals, but you're going to want to use that principal of doing the same types of movements on the same day to maximize your rest time for muscle groups. You'll have to play around with the exercise combos to find what your body handles best. This would be a pretty basic 3 day routine, but treat my advice with a dose of skepticism since I've never enjoyed 3 day programs

Monday

Deadlifts

Cleans

Pullups

Front lever work

Wednesday

Bench press

Dips

Overhead press or HSPU

Planche work

Friday

Squats

[whatever other leg work you enjoy]

[whatever gymnastics work you feel capable of on the leg day]

Personally, I don't do pullups and deadlifts on the same day since it's overkill for my lats, and when combined with front lever work slaughters my elbows, but some people prefer hitting that muscle group entirely on the same day and seem to handle it fine. Up to you, but I would rather move pullups/heavier FL work to the squat day.

Thanks for the reply. Do you think a four day routine would be better to get more work in over the week? I also was not planning on including bench press or overhead press, but maybe I can rotate them in after a period of time just to switch it up.

I was thinking about having one leg day and the other three being planes of movement. The days would be integrated training with 3x5 of the appropriate FBE.

Would there be any efficient way to hit all the 4 days Coach Sommer's suggests in BtGB in 3? And also is there any reason to train a plane 3x5 and then afterwards train a progression in different plane in higher reps similar to many weightlifting based routines where they hit a heavy lift followed by assistance work in higher rep range?

Matt

rutgers11 said:

Thanks for the reply. Do you think a four day routine would be better to get more work in over the week? I also was not planning on including bench press or overhead press, but maybe I can rotate them in after a period of time just to switch it up.

I was thinking about having one leg day and the other three being planes of movement. The days would be integrated training with 3x5 of the appropriate FBE.

Would there be any efficient way to hit all the 4 days Coach Sommer's suggests in BtGB in 3? And also is there any reason to train a plane 3x5 and then afterwards train a progression in different plane in higher reps similar to many weightlifting based routines where they hit a heavy lift followed by assistance work in higher rep range?

Matt

Number of days for a routine really just depends on personal preferences, and you'll see people making great gains on all types of systems. I prefer 4-5 day programs when combining gymnastics and weightlifting simply because there are so many exercises, and jamming them all into 3 days makes it pretty easy to overwork your body, especially the tendons. 3 day programs work great for things like powerlifting where the entire day is really built around a single exercise, and the muscle groups are different enough that you can be shot from Monday's workout, but not really need those muscles for Wednesday's workout anyway. When you add full-body gymnastics exercises into the mix it complicates things a bit.

Bench press is by no means necessary if you're doing other horizontal pushing like planche work, but I'd recommend having at least one vertical pushing movement, be it handstand pushups, overhead presses, or whatever you prefer. I think the idea of one leg day, and three days for planes of movement is great. I'm not too positive what you mean by doing lighter reps in a different plane. Do you mean, say, if you did 3x5 of full planche pushups, to do 3x15 straddle planche pushups for assistance work, or an entirely different exercise in the same movement plane for your assistance work? Lots of people seem to like lighter assistance work, such as planche leans with their planche training. I say give it a shot and see how it works for you.

Sliz is far more knowledgeable about programming than me, so I'd wait for a response from him.

Thanks for all the help I really appreciate it. I mean like say it is horizontal push/pull. I would do PPP and FL rows ,then maybe do HSPU 3x10 and Chinups 3x10. Something like that. Then maybe on 3x5 vertical pull push would be ring HSPU and OAC followed by 3x10 ring pushups and ring rows.

Matt