Appreciate all the nods, kudos and love I’ve been getting in your log, haha.
First: full agreement regarding the hard sets per training. I always bring this up whenever I hear someone say they’re taking “every set to failure”. My example is squats. Just imagine what 3 sets would look like for these dudes. Set 1: squat until you crash the bar onto the pins, unload the bar, rack the bar, reload the bar, then do 2 more sets of that. You’d get kicked out of most gyms on your second workout, to say nothing of how goddamn exhausted you’d be.
Hard sets are HARD. Hard training is hard. Most of us can only train hard for a few weeks at a pop, and it requires some good eating to support it. Dan John’s whole “park bench-bus bench” concept.
As for this
You wrote it and it triggered in my mind the “obvious” Biotest solution: Finibar. Be a simple way to add an extra 280-300 calories to the day, and a solid balance of carbs, fats and protein. Could time it right alongside the workouts. I have a whole mess of them in my basement that I might actually start integrating into my weekly carb-up, since I tend to respond a bit better to them than the processed junk I’ve been bombing out on, haha.
This “hard sets” convo got my brain ticking, I like it. One of the beauties of a widowmaker or a AMRAP at the end (assuming you have an idea what that is), is you get one a session. My last block was strength oriented (trying to cut) and while I do sets that are hard, like heavy doubles or triples, I don’t think that means they are “hard sets.”
I think that point of distinction is important among younger trainees, they go in and hit a few sets of 5 that are hard and think they’ve gone hard. I’m not saying they haven’t worked, not saying they haven’t accomplished something but pushing close to your failure point is the magic that isn’t happening there.
I’m trying not to do too many hard sets to recover but I think I’ve swung too far in the wrong direction, glad I read this, going to get at least a few a week.
That’s the goal! I’ve just never had to deal with it, so it’s new to me. I am going to try to the running shoe store down the road like you suggested.
It’s in real danger of becoming a fanpage. I’ll have to lob some insults to balance it out. My wife loves that aspect of my personality, so I feel I should share.
Exactly! Your example was perfect. It’s really hard to explain it to folks that haven’t experienced it though. I also blame the lost culture of sports. You “get it” when you start trying to wrap your mind around playing more than one football game a week… even at 16 years old and maybe only being really involved in a dozen plays a game.
But does it scratch the same itch?? I’ve actually never tried Finibars - I’m allergic to nuts. I confess I don’t even know if they have nuts; I’m just so conditioned that those foods do that I steer away.
Great distinction! I really like it. I do think you have to go light enough to really dig, to your point. Like if you can only do 2, but not 3, there might still be a ton of ability in between those two numbers you don’t get after. If you go for broke with ~18 reps, that’s not the case.
Best of luck! I also like thinking this way because it’s like a “recovery indicator”.
I honestly don’t have said itch to scratch. This is legit like a Saturday chore for me to get in my carbs, haha. Finibars are yummy and too easy to eat a lot of, but unfortunately they contain almonds.
Guess that means only cheesecake bites for you! How awful, haha.
Hah! Yup. This is the second week in a row where, after my carb-up, I felt like I got hit by a bomb. Flu-like symptoms almost. Just absolutely exhausted for 2 hours. It’s why I’m thinking the Finibar might be a better breakin. Ease into the carbs a touch, haha.
Isn’t getting old fun! I remember that exact moment when I was 24 and had 2 fast food meals in a row (lunch and dinner) and the next day thought “I need a salad”, haha. Prior to that, I could live off the stuff for every meal.
@SvenG@T3hPwnisher (maybe even @simo74), this will sounds stupid, but where do you get your “hard” conditioning ideas? When I was playing, the choices were basically:
Run stairs for a long time
Run repeats of whatever distance on the track
Run suicides
That was it. Your logs seem more amusing, so I’m just curious the genesis.
They’re pretty much all ad hoc for me. I’ve done enough stuff that I’ve found the pattern. You make the heart explode by doing 2 things.
Level change (go from the floor to standing, or from standing to jumping)
Putting something that’s on the floor over your head
In the case of the latter, it’s basically “the longer the ROM, the bigger the impact”. Pressing from the chest is going to have less impact than picking up off the floor and pressing, or snatching. In the case of the former, instead of moving the weight as far as we can, we move OURSELVES as far as we can.
At that point, I just combine those two ideas and play around with specific movement, load selection, and timing protocol. Fixed amount of reps as fast as possible? EMOM? Intervals? Fixed amount of time for as many reps as possible? Circuit? So many combinations.
This is all “small space conditioning”: stuff I do in the garage. If I have an open field and a prowler, it’s all different.
If hurting for ideas, the website “wodwell” is outstanding. Too easy to just scroll endlessly through it. @Alpha has some fantastic challenges as well, which you can find on his youtube channel or you can buy some of his ebooks with it. The book “Tactical Barbell II” is an entire library of conditioning challenges. And Dan John is a genius for this stuff too
I do buy Brian’s $25 ebooks every time he launches one, because I think he’s awesome and does a lot for free. Running those is more than easy enough. I did his bodyweight coronavirus stuff for months when we weren’t allowed to leave our houses - definitely soul-touching time.
I like the two coronary methods - those are easy enough to set up.
I have space and a sled (and rowers and track and stuff), so run-stoprun (well, waddle at this point) tends to be my go-to. As I’ve said many times, thinking in the gym irritates me. I was curious where your non-plan ideas come from,a nd I think this helped. Spaghetti at the wall is rarely a bad recipe, even if not gourmet. Thanks!
I’m pumped (so to speak) for the arms challenge by the way. I haven’t been working arms at all, and they really have shrunk. This was a scientific experiment to prove the EMG chin-up people wrong
(I also shamelessly scale them to my capabilities.)
And I’ve totally bought into his level-change and ground-to-overhead concepts, too—those are game-changing, and I try to include at least one in any hard conditioning workout.
He also mentioned the “wodwell” website, which I consult for ideas as well. (But I figured that one out all by myself, believe it or not!)
Even later to the party and I like how @TrainForPain put “maybe Simo”, in recognition of how little hard conditioning I actually do !!! LOL
I am similar to Sven in that I shamelessly steal ideas from @T3hPwnisher and @Alpha
I am a little older that those other 2 machines you mentioned but essentially break conditioning into 3 categories.
The minimum amount approach - This is like a ticket to the show. simple but effective short workouts to get me out of breath but not totally kick my ar$e. Like 10 mins of moderate pace burpees, or weight vest walking. These are the workouts I do most and are my way on convincing myself I am still doing conditioning and can play with the cool kids. 2. The I think I am going to see my lunch approach - This is where I steal the most from those other guys. Sessions are usually 20-30 mins and involve a lot of very heavy breathing. These types of session are usually done as a interval or max for time, or max of something and time it. There is always some time or volume target pressure in these sessions. I also like to combine movements in these sessions. Burpees with squats, burpees with pull ups or rows, burpees with sandbags, sandbags with push ups. Basically I add a movement to when I would usually be resting and get busy. I am limited by what I have at home (me, a weight vest, multiple sandbags, a heavy barrel, some rings, a log). So I just find a horrible combination and then work on rep ladders or amrap for 20 mins or EMOM. These are the session I do least and always hate myself after. 3. The long and slow - These are typically either a skill practice session, like sandbag to shoulder or barrel clean n press, or log work. In these I dont have a time limit or work to a timer. I just get some reps in and get sweaty. Or they are a long slow burpee workout, these are either me chasing a big rep number like 500 reps or a collaboration workout with other burpee crazies. These combine multiple sets of different burpees done in set style with a little breather between. They are always hard work and burn a lot of calories.
Does this mean they have shrunk or do you think that normally you just hold the pump for a week or so?
I find if I don’t work arms they seem to shrink but that doesn’t make sense to me logically as even in maintenance (via compound movements) they wouldn’t shrink. Maybe it’s just the pump we are used to all the time?
LOL. Sven is on the money here. There is no such thing as liking an exercise you do for hard conditioning. They all Suck. I like to think the more they suck the better they are though. I think thats why we do them.
My $0.02 is that this is not maintenance training. I generally don’t believe elbow flexion and extension are effectively trained through a complete range of motion in the compound lifts.