Abbreviated training, volume isn't the only way...

I origionally posted this on my Workout log but thought it'd help to have it here:

I've been at this very abbreviated McRobert training for a solid 7 months now after years of niggling injuries and can definitively say it's the best move I've ever made. Although it’s a big book to read I'd advise everyone who's serious about training and averse to steroids to read it. If you don't want to fork out for it there's a brilliant article summarising it here:

http://www.ironaddicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9704

It took me a good 3months of experimenting with different rep ranges, volume, frequency and intensity but I think I've got cracked now. I just do a whole body workout once every 6-7days depending on how much sleep I get due to my shift pattern. I do all exercises at 3 seconds down, 2 up and never go to failure. This is all I do now:

Squats

3*50%

3*75%

3*100%

Calf Raises

5*50%

5*75%

5*100%

(Straddle stretch)

30s, 30s

Prone Row

3*50%

3*75%

3*100%

(Pike stretch)

30s, 30s

Bench Press

3*50%

3*75%

3*100%

L-Fly

5*50%

5*100%

By switching to this much lower volume of only 5 work sets a week I've consistently made modest gains every workout without fail so far. I simply add 1-5kg to the squat & calf raises every week and 0.5-2.5kg to push/pulls depending where in the cycle I am, making the smaller gains towards the end of each cycle. I realize this isn't really BW work any more but the this is the only I've found will work for me from years of fruitless training. Sadly when I looked back at my GB workout logs I actually found a steady decrease in strength over the 18months that I stuck to it due to the chronic over-training. This isn't surprising now when i compare the 75work sets a week (3 full body workouts a week) to the 5 work sets a week that now work for me. This isn't to say that I've given up on GB, I just intend to build up slowly as I am doing to certain safe movements such as handstand push-ups and weighted pull-ups, dips etc. Anything of the Bulgarian variations where the elbows flare out I've found to play havoc on my rotators and have completely omitted from my goals. Cuban press for one. Within days of stopping this exercise and simply doing L-flys I noticed a massive difference in my shoulders. Another point of note I found from this is that I found the idea of higher reps for joint health to be a complete at utter myth. Although low impact cardio seems to help recovery immensely this does not apply to doing compound exercises with slow tempo for higher reps (15-30) just exacerbated my over-training issues and tendon pain. I started out at these numbers and as I gradually dropped the reps and frequency over months he jumps in strength seemed to be inversely proportional to the reps used, with the best results coming at the 3*3 format I'm now using for most exercises. This ties in very well with this article that I would advise anyone interested to read on low volume AND low reps:

http://www.dragondoor.com/articles/the- ... fault.aspx

The idea if only higher reps working for calf raises I also found to be utter rubbish for me and was only able to start progressing when I dropped to below 10reps, the gains increased dramatically when I dropped the reps to 5. And surprisingly my calfs have actually started growing for the first time ever for me as well despite all the lit' proclaiming higher reps being the only thing that causes calf hypertrophy.

Although I've now converted to a completely weights based routine now, I've written this I hope some people will learn from my experience and years of fruitless training & injuries. If you've been doing a routine for months on end and had little of no improvements or started getting tendon pain, just give lower volume a try with your BW exercises. What have you got to loose? A couple of months of exercise out of lifetime? Even if it's just dropping your work sets to 1 and only doing a 2-3workouts a week. This may help many people with restricted recovery capacity. I realise I'm at the extreme end of the spectrum to have to drop to a volume this low but many may not have to go this far. There are undoubtedly genetically gifted individuals who respond much better to a higher volume regimen. However if you are one of these people I doubt you'd be reading this as you're already training every day for the Olympics and have been a very gifted athlete for many years already. Also notice that I said strength and not skill, I realise that skill work simply requires more practice than the volume I train at and I accept that. Although my hope is that once I'm strong enough that certain skill work such as handstands could be considered 'medium' or 'light' intensity and therefore within my recovery capacity. If this bloody long article even helps a select few on this forum reach a little further in their pursuit of strength then I'll happily accept the inevitable abuse that's sure to come from the volume fanatics for even suggesting this format of training.

I've had similar problems to you, but not with BTGB - possibly as a result of my age. (55 v soon).

I've also read Stuart McRoberts book cover to cover. I think there is something in it (but I don't claim to be a training expert).

The abbreviated training method is working for you so I wouldn't try to persuade you to abandon it. However, there may be a problem with this kind of training. The problem is that the infrequency of the training probably makes it difficult to learn gymnastics skills. One of those skills is the skill of strength. That is, gaining strength through learning to generate tension in the muscles and not just by getting bigger muscles. As I understand it, you need to train frequently to gain the skill of strength. It may be that you are getting stronger, but you are probably failing to some extent to develop this element of strength. You might want to consider a variation to your abbreviated training routine which should address this issue: train up to 5 days a week, whole body training every day, but only one set of 5 reps a day (and one or two reps of your static holds).

That way you can train almost daily and you'll still only be doing 5 sets a week. It works very well with integrated training - static hold followed by 1 x 5 of a related exercise (e.g., frogstand followed by XR pressup variation). This approach might even be safer for you than what you are doing at present - at present you probably give yourself 3 - 5 minutes to recover between sets. With this approach you'll have 24 hours to recover between sets. And you'll be training frequently, so you'll be giving yourself more of an opportunity to learn the skill of strength and gymnastic skills in general. There is a fair chance that you will gain strength more quickly and that you will will develop more as a gymnast, not just as a strong man/bodybuilder.

This approach provides the opportunity to train almost daily but in an abbreviated format.

The only problem you may find is that compared to your present training regime you'll probably feel alarmingly energetic when you've finished your sessions. You may feel so good that you find it hard to believe that it works. It does.

I'll bear this in mind if I reach a point where I can lo longer progress thanks Andy. McRobert Does actually suggest breaking up your workouts throughout the week as much as possible for extra recovery time, usually 2 or 3 a week. But as they say, if it's not broken, don't fix it. I do realise though that this is is solely a strength focus training and not skill, which requires more practice. I can live with that.

I've just noticed the Dragondoor article link doesn't seem to work. If anyone's interested it's called 'The Holy grail of speed training' by Barry Ross on the Dragondoor forum. I'm sure if you search in google you'll find it fine.

Here's another article I forgot to post within the same vein by Pavel Tsatsouline, who's normally also a volume advocate:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/20 ... our-lifts/

This was a very interesting read - thanks for the link. Any ideas how this set/rep scheme could actually be applied to bodyweight movements though (where adding incremental "poundage" each workout is not actually possible)? I'd be very curious to try something like this!

Cheers

I am doing very similar abbreviated workouts with my shoulder prehab and HS work, including pressing and freestanding HeSPU... I work out every day but only do 1-2 sets and none of the sets are all that hard. Consistent strength gains that way too. I perform SLS on a bosu ball with 25 lbs now for 2 reps at that pace per leg almost every day with the same result, stronger and easier each time.

Once a week I will perform multiple sets, and then take a few days off where I either do no work or just very light stuff and I always come back significantly stronger. This does work well when properly applied.

I move very slowly right now. 5-10s each way on each rep, often not more than 3 reps per set.

What I think you have finally figured out is that numbers are meaningless without context. If you have bad movement, more reps = more damage. If you are just starting out, high frequency = overtraining. Some people naturally work better with low frequency training, and in my opinion everyone should start out this way and very slowly add in more days of training until you find what works best for you.

Not every workout session needs to have hard work either. Just engaging the proper neural patterns daily is excellent strength work. Light work is often the best work most days.

Eventually you will benefit from having a fast set and a slow set, but in the beginning I think that just moving slow is smart, and when beginning "fast" work you limit speed to what you can do with good form. Over time the maximum speed with good form will increase and you will slowly build an excellent explosive strength base.

Personally, I think you are doing good things for yourself. Glad to hear the good results, keep it up!

A.J. said:

This was a very interesting read - thanks for the link. Any ideas how this set/rep scheme could actually be applied to bodyweight movements though (where adding incremental "poundage" each workout is not actually possible)? I'd be very curious to try something like this!

Cheers

I think Coach Sommer has already set up a similar programme whether or not he realizes it or not, simply with more volume. For instance a good 50/75/100 preogression could be push-ups, push-ups feet raised and dips for your work set etc. I found it easy to get the right angles for them by simply balancing your hands on some scales and work out the that weight as a percentage of your total weight. Increase or decrease height as desired. Same applies to pulling movements by doing rows with feet at certain heights for the first two sets, then pull-ups as you're work set. Warm up sets don't have to be bang on but you could easily adjust ring height by an inch at a time to get near as damn it, then just do weighted pull-ups as your work set, which can be done without having a full gym of weights. I honestly don't know how you'd do your second warm-up set with squats though just with bodyweight. Your first set could be normal squats and your third SLS's. Not sure about the 75% set though. Exactly the same problem with calf raises.

Also the incremental increases are hard to do with bodyweight since with weight you can increase intensity by fractions of a percent, but even a single rep increase can be about 3-5% increase in resistance depending on the intensity of exercise. However I think Coach Sommor has circumvented this problem by inventing SSC's which are essentially a normal weights cycle in reverse, with the hard part of the cycle first and gradually turns into underloading over a month or two, which I've found to be pivotal to my improvements. You'd probably improve by the same intensity over a year or so, it would just be in bigger jumps less often.

From what I understand, as you get closer to your maximum potential, you can add a little volume, but only within the context of abbreviated training. You're not suddenly going to be able to do 10sets per exercise 4 times a week. But an extra work set may illicit hypertrophy slightly better than a single work set, but would produce smaller increments or strength per cycle. Including 'light' and 'medium' workouts can also be helpful in recovery at these later stages according to Rippetoe and Starr. Although even they seem to advocate a lot more volume than I think I could ever see progress on. All you can do is experiment with it and see what works for you. Hope this helps

Longshanks