Which Training Schedule To Choose?

All things being equal, which training schedule (3, 4, or 5 day) is most optimal for working towards mastery of the Foundations elements?  I am curious because there is no noted difference in intensity between the 3 options, only difference in total volume accumulated.  So how can one achieve the same goal, in the same time frame, using less volume (3 day vs. 5 day)?

I personally would like to use Foundations 1 merely for strength training (in addition to hand balancing plus other activities throughout the week) and so am tempted to use the 3 day per week scheduling but want to make sure that I will actually reach the mastery goals.  Or maybe even do a 2 day program that works all elements each time.  Any suggestions?

Please open up your copy of Foundation 1, go to the "Individual Recovery Varies" Section and read the 4th paragraph.

Cannister, I have already read through the entire book, including the section that you allude to.  This is why I stated "all things being equal" when asking my question (ie. recovery equal).  Perhaps this is just for me to figure out on my own though...  My main curiosity was why there is no difference in intensity across the 3 schedules.  For example, one might expect the 3 day template to have more intensity compared to the 5 day template since there is more allotted recovery time in between.

I would expect that a high recovery individual who is able to tolerate a higher workload is going to progress more quickly. However, as the book clearly indicates, if you are not a high recovery individual and follow the higher volume template in an attempt to accelerate your progress, it will be counterproductive.

There isn't a difference in intensity because 3 vs 4 vs 5 days are based solely upon recovery time. If you can recover quickly and easily from a 3 day you might think to add a day. In the same way that some people have enough work capacity to workout all 5 weekdays. 

Having the same intensity across all workout schedules makes it so that no one has to scale down any given exercise.
 

Thanks for clarifying guys.  As a general note, how does one "know" how fast they recover?  I like to exercise in one for or another every day, but how do I know if I'm overtraining?  Or if I haven't yet recovered from the previous workout?  Sorry if this should be posted somewhere else...

usually if you have a poor immunological response(starting feeling worn down) and also making no progress or like if you've hit a "wall" of some sorts

Yeah it seems strange to me as well that the 5 day schedule is essentially just two more days of the 3-day schedule each week. Given that it's on the same 12-week cycle, I can't really figure out why you would want to do the 5-day schedule rather than the 3-day. 

jfslocum said:

Yeah it seems strange to me as well that the 5 day schedule is essentially just two more days of the 3-day schedule each week. Given that it's on the same 12-week cycle, I can't really figure out why you would want to do the 5-day schedule rather than the 3-day. 

I assume that if you recover enough for a 5 day program that you will also progress faster. I may be wrong, but that's my interpretation of it. 

Vincearoo said:

I assume that if you recover enough for a 5 day program that you will also progress faster. I may be wrong, but that's my interpretation of it. 

The scheduling does not take this into account, though. So maybe you could progress faster, but you'd have to break the carefully laid out progression schedule. 

After a given 4, 8 or 12 week cycle you may have increased strength in a particular area more with more volume.  When you then start the next progression you may find that having done 5 days a week when doing the previous progression as opposed to a 3 or 4, you are now strong enough to start the next progression in week 5, 9, or are strong enough to complete the week 11 prescribed reps/sets and thus have mastered the next progression already.

You may also find training more frequently increases your neuromuscular efficiency at the movement quicker and you can progress in sets and reps faster than with a less frequent training cycle.

You could even start a 12 week cycle and realise when you get to week 5 that it is possible for you to EASILY do the week 9 stage because you have been training it with more volume and are more efficient so you move there for example.  The thing that you would have to be careful of here is that you overestimate your abilities and end up getting stuck which is why I stressed the word easily.

If this is incorrect then I hope someone corrects me but this is my understanding of the use of the carefully laid out progression cycle.

Bottom line:  If you find that you are able to complete the week 11 prescribed reps and sets for a movement (AND ITS MOBILITY OF COURSE! ) then you have mastered it and can move on to the next progression.  How you got there shouldn't matter.  Again, correct me if I am wrong.

The way I am looking at it is each cycle is 3 mini cycles.  The third week of each is the mastery of that mini cycle.  If I can get mastery of the third week of a cycle then I move on to the next mini cycle after completing the deload week.  This is how I am personally assessing myself and then selecting which week to start on of a given progression:

Mastery of the first mini cycle (ie: week 3) indicates you are ready to start the second mini cycle (ie: start at week 5)

Mastery of the second mini cycle (ie: week 7) indicates you are ready to start the third mini cycle (ie: start at week 9)

Mastery of the third mini cycle (ie: week 11) indicates you are ready for the next progression.

dbirchall said:

The way I am looking at it is each cycle is 3 mini cycles.  The third week of each is the mastery of that mini cycle.  If I can get mastery of the third week of a cycle then I move on to the next mini cycle after completing the deload week.  This is how I am personally assessing myself and then selecting which week to start on of a given progression:

 

Mastery of the first mini cycle (ie: week 3) indicates you are ready to start the second mini cycle (ie: start at week 5)

 

Mastery of the second mini cycle (ie: week 7) indicates you are ready to start the third mini cycle (ie: start at week 9)

 

Mastery of the third mini cycle (ie: week 11) indicates you are ready for the next progression.

That makes sense

jfslocum said:

The scheduling does not take this into account, though. So maybe you could progress faster, but you'd have to break the carefully laid out progression schedule. 

Well if you can keep up with this recovery programme then you would progress faster. If you stay inside the progression schedule then I think a 5 day programme would make it far less likely that you'd fail mid cycle and that the Week 11 work would be suitably easy by then.

In short, I think it will give a bit more of a buffer to being beaten by the rep schemes

dbirchall said:

The way I am looking at it is each cycle is 3 mini cycles.  The third week of each is the mastery of that mini cycle.  If I can get mastery of the third week of a cycle then I move on to the next mini cycle after completing the deload week.  This is how I am personally assessing myself and then selecting which week to start on of a given progression:

 

Mastery of the first mini cycle (ie: week 3) indicates you are ready to start the second mini cycle (ie: start at week 5)

 

Mastery of the second mini cycle (ie: week 7) indicates you are ready to start the third mini cycle (ie: start at week 9)

 

Mastery of the third mini cycle (ie: week 11) indicates you are ready for the next progression.

This is a great observation!  I'll try re-testing myself in mini steps on those elements which I initially failed... (Although I think I'll try out the 12-week programming first anyways to see how it goes!)

Increasing overall weekly volume is a distinct advantage in stabilizing strength; if your recovery ability will tolerate it.  Hence there is an intrinsic advantage in the overall volume of a 5 day schedule compared to the 3 day schedule.  

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer