Lately energy system work has caught my attention.
I’ve been reading Joel Jamieson, as far as I understood quite a knowledgable man in the conditioning realm, and he got me quite crossed.(Is that from a song?)
Has anyone tried some of his programs/protocols and how do you feel about them?
His protocols seem so easy. This is a summary of what he told on Breaking Muscle:
Anaerobic Lactic system: 30-40 s. work, 1-4 minutes rest, 2-5 sets, 1-2 series
Anaerobic Alactic system: 3-6 s. work, 60-120 s. rest,10-20 sets,explosive work
Aerobic system:method 1:HR 130-150, 30-90 minutes
method 2:8-10 s. work, 60 s rest,8-16 sets, moderate intensity
method 3:5-6 s. work,60 s rest,mod./high volume,high resistance
Do you feel this kind of protocols will be effective, or should conditioning be harder? This kind of ease makes me sceptic.
I feel like conditioning should be about pushing yourself hard for a few rounds, hold back the puke and call it a day.
Effective for what exactly? A firefighter’s going to need to go about conditioning a lot differently than a bodybuilder wanting to lean up for aesthetic purposes.
What specifically are you looking to accomplish conditioning-wise?
Well, I need conditioning for a couple of reasons: I’m quite a fanatic martial artist, currently consisting of Muay Thai and Full-contact karate. I’m hoping to get to a gym soon where BJJ, Boxing, MMA and Muay thai are all taught. I’m not competing at the moment, but I would like to partake in a couple of Muay Thai fights and grappeling tournaments when the time is there.
Also I would like to join the police in a couple of years (after I finished my initial study). There is a fitness test for this, consisting of a cooper test (minimal 2,4K in 12 minutes) and a parcours which should be completed in 3 minutes.
It would also be nice to be a strength AND conditioning beast. Tnations Alpha always inspires me greatly.
So that would be conditoning for police duty, a fight and just being a lean monster.
Aerobic and anaerobic conditioning is universal so if you’re solid in both when you have to train for a specific task you’re halfway there. Plus the PT standards of most police and fire academies are not very demanding. Joel is the man when it comes to conditioning and his programs will better prepare you for the stressors of you potential career than just doing couch 2 5k will.
Joel seems legit indeed .
It just feels very unnerving to be doing conditioning with 3 minutes rest, where I could be killing myself.
Feels too good to be true.
[quote]Panopticum wrote:
Joel seems legit indeed .
It just feels very unnerving to be doing conditioning with 3 minutes rest, where I could be killing myself.
Feels too good to be true.[/quote]
So why not test it? Self administer a modified Cooper’s test (say max vertical jump, 1 rep max bench, max sit ups in 60 seconds, timed 300m, max push ups in 60 seconds, timed 2400m, max pull ups without dropping off the bar with maybe 5 min rest between events as needed). Record your results.
Then follow whatever protocol you’re evaluating for 6 weeks and re-test. You’ll be able to tell right away how effective your protocol has been. It’s really not about what makes you wanna puke but what makes you faster, stronger and more explosive.
Also, I’m not familiar with Joel Jamieson myself but if you find, say, 5 x 200m shuttle sprints starting each set on a 4 minute interval (which should put you right around 30-40 sec work/3 mins and change rest) to be easy right to the end, especially if you’re doing 2 series, well then I’d say you’re not doing them quite right.
That might be a great idea. I just hoped to hear some reviews/experiences before I bought the dvd and book. There everything should be thoroughly explained
Trust me, the conditioning will be hard! For example, if you are training the anaerobic lactic system and you do 30’s of all out effort (~200m sprint) and I mean all out, you are going to need 4 minutes of recovery before you being the next set. I am not to familiar with Joel, but from what I have heard he seems to have produced well-trained athletes. Is that the only way to train those energy systems, no, is it a good program, yes.
What type of exercise or movement does he recommend for training the alactic system (ATP-PCr)?
not everything needs to be balls to the wall otherwise another part of your training will suffer, Joel trains MMA fighters who have to train a lot of other stuff so if a fighter was to totally trash himself during conditioning then the most important stuff (mat work etc) would suffer and you’d have great conditioning but a shitty win/loss record
basically you get faster or stronger (anaerobic alactic system) then improve your recovery btw these high intensity bouts (aerobic system) so that most of your kicks are near your hardest for the entire fight rather then throw 3 good one’s that get blocked and then the rest wouldn’t knock your sister over
training "in the middle’ (anaerobic lactic system) is not forbidden but rather inefficient and builds up a heap of fatigue (local and systemic) so is used pretty much in the 2 - 4 weeks leading up to competition because training while under fatigue will compromise your knock out power and technique…which is what you said about training to almost puking then going home except you’ve trained to get tired and not much else
I use all his stuff for my sport (aussie rules football) - the go to guy for sports conditioning for mine
This is a bit of an old thread, but yes, I have done many of his programs. They are very effective for what they are designed for. I have his ultimate MMA conditioning book which is very informative, and yes, the protocols for the adaptations that you desire for conditioning will be very taxing.
After several years of always-near-100%, everything-is-a-competition conditioning, his ideas on the subject are rather refreshing. You don’t always have to go full bore, in fact that is actually detrimental to progress. He wasn’t the one who came up with that idea, obviously. I just like how he puts it -
Our goal is to do the least amount of work necessary to get the adaptation we’re after. (paraphrased from one of his videos)
If you aren’t sure where to start, dig through his older articles till you find his 4-week conditioning plan. It introduces you to several of his training methodologies (tempo intervals, high resistance intervals, threshold training, etc) in one short go, and you can easily adapt it to a longer period of time.