Non-optimal programming questions...

[MrButterpants]

Glad I read the sticky because there were grandious post dreams in my head of my training history, bullet point questions, etc. I'll promise to try and keep it succinct, but without including some critical info I don't think anyone can provide decent advice. Just delete the post if for some reason I've overstepped the boundaries.

Age: 37
Height: 5'8
Weight: 200 BF:maybe 18%
Years Training:20
Occupation: Tactical Athlete is the least gay term I could think of that's fitting.
Current 5RM's:
Squat: 340
Deadlift: 405
Bench: 235
Press: 150
Clean: 190

I've been doing Crossfit type workouts heavy in Oly barbell from militaryathlete for years now, but I feel they are too skimpy in the core lifts and you'll never get viking strong doing MA stuff alone. So recently I decided to get back to basics and do a novice linear progression on the 5 SS lifts. I exhausted this rather quickly as expected and now I'd like to combine MA work capacity/metcon and SS but I'm having issues with overtraining and just getting it all to work in my head. I can only train 4 days, but these days are in a row. I eat and sleep like a champ those days but the other 3 shit gets crazy.

Day 1
Squat
Bench
Pullups

Day 2
MA (barbell metcon)

Day 3
MA (sprints, run, swim, rucks, plyo)

Day 4
Deadlift
Cleans/Snatch
Press

I want to space the heavy barbell stuff apart as much as possible due to recovery issues. When I was doing 4 days back to back of SS I felt destroyed for half the week, but still made progress. The MA workouts can be hard to recover from as well but I don't feel they are as brutal as 5's across under a bar. Does my logic make any sense? Would you change or drop days? The 4 days on 3 days off thing isn't changing anytime soon for me. I'm getting to the age where the running, rucking, and metcon are necessary to keep some weight off if I eat solid to recover but it's a delicate balance.

Thanks for any advice

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

That schedule is probably about as good as anything else.....I wouldn't do the barbell metcons and I wouldn't swim. If swimming is part of your job then go ahead if you need to.....barbell metcons are just not good ffor recovery when a serious barbell strength program is in progress.

Do you have access to a prowler?

Also, what are your training goals? Just push up the big 5 lifts as heavy as possible?

[MrButterpants]

Thanks for answering my questions. No Prowler, but thinking about buying one for the boys to use. How hard can you work it before recovery is compromised? Is the entry level/cheapest model adequate?

My goals are to be as strong, fast, powerful, flexible as possible while still being able to shoot bad guys in the face and remain injury free. Yes lofty goals indeed. Lean mass gains are ok but hauling 30 extra lbs of luggage impacts more than just your bikini body.

Why no swim love?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Thanks for answering my questions. No Prowler, but thinking about buying one for the boys to use. How hard can you work it before recovery is compromised? Is the entry level/cheapest model adequate?

My goals are to be as strong, fast, powerful, flexible as possible while still being able to shoot bad guys in the face and remain injury free. Yes lofty goals indeed. Lean mass gains are ok but hauling 30 extra lbs of luggage impacts more than just your bikini body.

Why no swim love?

On the prowler recovery.....I don't think it has any negative impact on recovery if you don't get silly with volume or weight. If you look at my training log you will see that last week I set an all time deadlift PR with 505x3. I probably could have done 4. I set this PR on a Wednesday and on both Monday and Tuesday I pushed the prowler hard for about 20-30 minutes. The tuesday prowler workout was done in the evening and the deadlift PR was set the following morning.....about 16 hours later. Prior to this I had not pushed the prowler in close to a year. Take all that info for what its worth....but to me, it proved that the concentric only work that the prowler provides really has no negaitve impact on strength.

Econo prowler is fine. If you are pushing on pavement, get replaceable skis.

Swimming just seems to have a pretty significant amount of negative carryover to barbell training. I train more swimmers than any other sport and it has been my observation that they have the least predictable strength progression than any other athletes.....i.e. they can't seem to "push through" the weights after a hard swim workout. It might just be the severe glycogen depletion but I'm not sure. I'm not arguing its utility as a conditioning tool. I just think that a strength focused guy should pick something else if he can.