1) I liked to work hard, really hard, all the time 2) Injuries and stagnated poundages told me that I shouldn't work hard, really hard, all the time!
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I had cycled exercises before. Switching between Deadlifts, Squats and Front Squats enabled me to bring each up. While this was a good for a while, the degree of variation had to be tempered with many rest days and I ended up coming back to each lift within 2 weeks. I wasn't ready to accept this.
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I had also tried longer western cycles, the Coan/Phillipi cycle and even Korte's 3x3. Neither left me with any appreciable gains as i would burn out weeks from the supposed peak.
It was around December last year I was revisiting some training ideas on peaking and fat loss. One of these sources has
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been a guy called Dan John who writes a regular online mag called Get Up. While looking up some ideas on peaking for my next Meet I ran into his mention of a tactic the bulgarian & russian lifters have been using for years. Something called unloading weeks. The basic premise is to work all out, as hard as possible for around 2-3 weeks and then take a week where
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the volume & intensity is severely reduced.
This went along with the pattern i had seen in my own training. I looked back at my logs, for near 3 years and saw patterns. Not quite so obvious at first but looking at them now I saw it. I would go great guns for a few weeks and then I would hit a wall. I generally responded
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by changing something up, which would keep up for another couple weeks and then bang, another wall.
Being the overly analytical type I am, I looked at some other sources of training info and saw many of the same recommendations in other writers. Guys I respect like Tom Bourg and Casey Butt emphasised this type of cycling. I had read it all before, but didn't really assimilate the
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idea as I should have. WSB is really also very similar, a change every few weeks instead of the unloading week provides them with the avenue to go heavy all the time and the high variation which they need to continue setting records.
This all seemed to make sense to me. The way I saw it was you had to work out hard most of the time, strength is attained through
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damn hard work, there's no way around that and neither should there be. Time spent babying yourself is time wasted. But you also had to temper this with occasional rest to keep you fresh. Later I would realise this type of intensity cycling is very common in other sports and institutions where funding has resulted in better theory. The sport of cycling
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and the army in America are good examples where this type of loading is employed to good effect.
This type of cycling has formed the basis of my training since the start of the year and the gains have been nothing less than awesome!
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Bench has improved from 100kg to 120kg
Squat has improved from 160kg to 185kg
Press has improved from 65kg to 80kg
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(I'll write more on the Bench later, it's still not a good lift for me but my recent improvements also have to be put down to another particular training method which i'll write about later.)
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Gains in the Deadlift have been far less impressive, partly down to training it after the Squat. As it is, this is what is required in competition so that's how i'll train it. Besides the squat and bench remain my markers for progress for the near future. The Squat will build my Deadlift and with some direct training I expect to go well over 230kg
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by the end of the year.
So, how to set this up. Quite simpy go heavy for 2-3 weeks and then take another week where you cut the workload and intensity to around 80%. These are general guidlines, if I feel particularly beat up I may lift token weights, something in the 50% range and get out of the gym.
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If i'm feeling very good then it is common for me to get back to heavy lifting after only 5 days of active rest.
A typical weeks training now see's my lifting 4 days a week. Some form or pressing, squatting and pulling is done 3 times a week with another day for some extra overhead Pressing (currently a weak area). The extra recovery afforded to me by the unloading weeks has me currently
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experimenting with Speed work for my Press and Squat on Fridays, isn't this stuff fun! My week "off" see's me cutting down the number of sets per exercise and see's me in the gym only 3 days a week for about 20 minutes per session. I'll run through the exercises with no psych up and minium rest and get out of there.
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Where before I wondered how these Bulgarian supercycles could be endured with so much work over a short period of time, now I know what's possible given the right conditions.
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