PRIME TIME COACHES ROUNDTABLE...

Coach Staley, (or anyone)
When do you introduce advanced techniques such as isometrics, iso-concentric contrast, rest/pause etc. into an athlete’s program to assist in progression?

I read CT’s Continuum Series, and my head nearly exploded. How or when can one introduce one or more of these techniques into a program that uses standard set/rep/intensity guidelines? Are they even necessary? Thanks.

Sore rules of specialization:

  1. Increase the frequency of training for the target muscle(s)

  2. Do not work any other muscles than the target one(s) during a given workout

  3. Reduce the amount of work for the other muscle groups, especially of the muscles that might have some overlapping with the target groups (e.g. if you specialize on your chest, your shoulders will also get a lot of work)

  4. Do NOT add any weekly training sessions, keep your frequency at 4 or 5 days per week. If you train the target muscle(s) 3 times per week, that leaves 1 or 2 sessions for the remaining body parts.

  5. Use different intensity zones or training techniques during the 2-3 specialization workouts (e.g. day 1 might be a strength/functional hypertrophy workout; day 2 an hypertrophy workout and day 3 a strength-endurance workout)

  6. Do not work the target muscles two days in a row (two workouts in a row is fine IF you have a day of rest).

So you start out by planning your specialized days…

Monday: target
Wednesday: target
Friday: target

Then fit in the other muscle groups…

Monday: target
Tuesday: 1/2 of the other muscles
Wednesday: target
Thursday: OFF
Friday: target
Saturday: 1/2 of the other muscles
Sunday: OFF

[quote]Xfactor88 wrote:
Hey! This one is for Mr.Thibaudeau! Sorry, but this question is irrelavent to the subject. Still hoping I can get a response. Here goes

Mr.Thibaudeau, in your thread “Super Beast in the Making”, you briefly explained a specialization rotation program for dafreak, in terms of quads and triceps. I have heard that you wrote an article based on this “emphasis rotation program”, and I was wondering if you would possibly go further into detail on this subject. How to setup the split, arrange the exercises, which techniques to imploy and just a basic outline of how one would approach this type of training. Will this article be published in the near future? If not, would you start a thread, explaining this subject in further depth. Well thanks for your time, your input would be greatly appreciated![/quote]

[quote]neilbudge wrote:
Coach Staley, (or anyone)
When do you introduce advanced techniques such as isometrics, iso-concentric contrast, rest/pause etc. into an athlete’s program to assist in progression?

I read CT’s Continuum Series, and my head nearly exploded. How or when can one introduce one or more of these techniques into a program that uses standard set/rep/intensity guidelines? Are they even necessary? Thanks.[/quote]

If you read Part II of CT’s Continuum series he provides a breakdown of how to include these techniques in the General Preparation Phase, Specific Preparation Phase, and Pre-Competition Phase.

Whether the techniques are necessary would depend on the demands of your sport. I’ve noticed that adding heavy eccentrics (a fancy name for heavy negatives) has resulted in improvement in my max strength.

Hey Thibs! Thanks for the great reply. I was wondering though. In one post, you stated that 1 day would be intensity work, another would be volume work, then another day density work. Would you mind explaining this a little bit further as to, how many different exercises to use on each days, incorporating techniques for the appropriate day? such as supersets or trisets on intensity. How many sets to use, and everything above, for density. Thanks for your time and help, it is very appreciated!=)