Training Around a Physical Job

Hi Coach,

Currently I work a very physical job involving moving tonnes of palletised building materials, so lots of pulling and pushing (like very heavy Prowler/Sled work) and my legs and back are taxed the most.

But I also like to train outside of work and lift heavy for low volume, So my question is, what would be a smart way to train around work and still recover as much as possible?

Currently doing an hybrid upper/lower/full body split with full body on my day off.

Any wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Not CT, but I take on this approach as well due to crossfit and other sports I play. I cannot run a full-on strength program, recover from it, and also do the other taxing activities I like to do. But, I want to keep my strength up and progress, and enjoy strength training.

Here’s an approach: Have you seen CT’s Eternal Warrior Plan? The meat and potatoes of it are:

Pick three multi-joint exercises covering the whole-body: one upper-body push, one lower-body and one upper-body pull movement. Do them for 3-6 quality reps, as a circuit. This is the core of the workout and I recommend 5 sets of the circuit.

This is my base workout, doing 5 sets of 5 at ~75%. For example, Back Squat, Bench Press, and Weighted Pull ups done as a circuit. If it is a day I have another activity, or have something coming up I want to be fresh for, I just adjust down the numbers in some/all of the the movements. So, I might do 3 sets of 5 on back squat while holding the other sets and reps the same if I have a mountan bike ride that afternoon. This gives limitless flexibility while still having a template/base plan to keep things progressing and logical.

I’ll add in some isolation work or calisthenics as my energy levels and time permit throughout the week, but don’t stress about it or track it. Some push ups and hammer curls or similar. I get my conditioning from my other activities (crossfit, soccer, mountain biking), but do try to get in lots of walking and spend a few minutes working on mobility each day.

I recommend looking at Tactical Barbell for ideas of implementing strength work into other activities. Its approach is not ground-breaking at all (pretty much like a 531 protocol or CT’s Eternal Warrior), but they give a bunch of approaches of how to program it into other activities.

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Thanks, much appreciated! I’ll dig into the suggestions. :+1:t4:

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@kez_starr. I have pretty extensive experience with this. In fact, when I was logging one summer, I’d be lifting in the headlights of my truck (standing on a sheet of plywood for a platform) at 10pm! . Not bragging, I was/am a lunatic.

My best advice, from experience: follow Dan John’s Easy Strength or something in the vein of Pavel Tsatsouline: basic lifts done frequently in the 5 rep or less range, avoid failure, frequent (as possible) practice.

Sometimes I’d just nail some overhead presses and squats for multiple sets of 1-3 then call it. I was running a chainsaw from Dawn til Dusk, literally, so I had to be careful. But I always maintained strength beyond what my job required. “Frequent, heavyish practice, avoid failure”.

It works.

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Low-volume is certainly the way to go in your situation.

For low-volume to be effective you need one of the other key variables to be high (load or effort).

This means either heavy lifting, what some call “powerbuilding” or low-volume work to task failure.

In the former you use more free-weights and in the later it’s best to use machines for safety reasons.

It is absolutely possible to get stronger or bigger (or both in your situation). People were doing it before our “technological era”. People were not as soft back then.

For example, a friend of mine was a member of the 1982 Canadian national weightlifting team and had the national record on the clean and jerk in he old 82.5kg class (192.5kg).

He did this while working 9 to 5 in a paper mill THEN in the evening he would tend to his gym until closure at 9. And THEN he would train!

4 of the best olympic lifters in Quebec from the 1980s and early 1990s (all went to either the world championships or Pan Am games) worked full-time as farmers, then would train in the evening.

Bob People, one of the best deadlifter of all time also worked all day on his farm then would train in the evening.

And I could go on.

Recently, I was helping a friend of mine train a competitive bodybuilder (national level) who also worked construciton full time.

It can be done.

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I won’t claim this as wisdom, but consider it as a strategy. When John Parrillo introduced his training strategy, he had a fundamental philosophy:
You can’t overtrain. You can only under eat.
I am certain that isn’t his exact quote, but you get the message. Now, I don’t believe that it is an absolute truth, but it is a method of improving your situation.

But the foods must be quality nutrients, not just calories.

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That’s how I personally like to train

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