Herbison's Training Log

[Papa09]

I think I know what you're asking, but I want to be sure before I try to answer it. When you say "pick one or the other" what specifically are you referring to? Displaying vs building? Intensity vs volume? Something else?

Displaying vs. building. I may be misunderstanding, but in my mind I see it as peaking and cycling vs. slowly building up consistent volume, while using RPE on singles to auto-regulate intensity. Both have their merits, but I'm wondering from a coaching perspective, if one would be more beneficial than the other depending on the individual trainee, or if it just comes down to each coach's personal lifting "philosophy."

[Sean Herbison]

Well, I ended up running out of time halfway through editing video last night. And now for whatever reason it's just not responding at all to moving the sliders. So, since I have to head to work soon, I'll finish that up tonight if the program works then.

Papa, I don't have time to respond to your question just now, but I'll get to that in a bit as well. If you want the very short answer, I'd say a trainee should primarily be focused on building most of the time.

[Sean Herbison]

Alright, video time! Finally.



The one for today is currently rendering.

[Sean Herbison]

Starting to figure out some of this color stuff.



I also figured out one reason it was taking so long to upload: the bit rate was about twelve times what it needed to be. If you can't see a visual difference between a 200MB video and a 2.2 GB video, there's no real reason to go with the higher file size.

Tuesday, 12 December

Comp Squat: 440x4@8.5, 450x4@9, 425x4x2@8.5
Press: 180x4@8, 185x4@9, 170x4x2@8
Chinup: BWx3x14

Squat: 425 shouldn't have been that hard, but I missed the groove on my last rep of set three and my third rep on set four, and that bumped up the required effort quite a bit. For whatever reason, the video of the third squat wouldn't play, so there are only three sets shown.

Press: I was messing around with my hand position again (I know, stop doing that), and it got to the point where I just decided to stop trying so hard to start from the chest. So, while I wouldn't recommend doing this, I changed my technique between the second and third sets and went back to using a floating rack. I haven't used this form in a while, but it still felt better immediately, so I'm just going to stick with it.

[Sean Herbison]

So when would you pick one over the other? Is it just individual coach's preference or would one strategy work better than the other depending on the trainee's genetic ability?

Displaying vs. building. I may be misunderstanding, but in my mind I see it as peaking and cycling vs. slowly building up consistent volume, while using RPE on singles to auto-regulate intensity. Both have their merits, but I'm wondering from a coaching perspective, if one would be more beneficial than the other depending on the individual trainee, or if it just comes down to each coach's personal lifting "philosophy."

Longer answer time. I'll preface this by saying that Jordan and Austin have probably already said the majority of my thoughts better than I'm going to articulate here, and I highly recommend some of their recent videos for info on this topic. That said, here's my shot.

I think a large part of the difference between trying to build the base and trying to display the fruits of your effort are, as you said, an issue of peaking vs building volume. When you're trying to peak, you're making an effort to keep your strength as high as possible, while also keeping the fatigue aspect low. You can have a huge underlying strength base, but if you're going into a meet, or even a normal training session, highly fatigued, you're not going to show it very well.

On the other hand, if you're not concerned with showing your max strength, you don't need to be as concerned with holding onto fatigue. Obviously, you need to keep it from overwhelming you to the point where you can't train productively, but you can continue to train while partially fatigued, which allows for more volume and, so far as we can tell, generally a better overall response.

However, here's the part I'm more interested in. The discussion I've seen so far pertains primarily to competitive lifters. If you're interested in constantly pushing up your 1RMs, it's probably because you intend to compete against someone else, and those numbers are directly important to the task at hand. But how does it apply to other areas. If we were to apply this to, say, a shot putter. Then you have to look at transferability, and whether the ability to put up a high squat number right now affects how far you can toss a 16 lb metal ball right now.

Take a look at it this way. Let's say I've got two guys who are otherwise equal (natural explosiveness, height, weight, etc.), and they can both squat 405x5 for a 5RM. Now, one guy has been practicing with doubles and singles, and because he's more technically proficient, he can hit a 1RM of 500, while the other guys has only been doing sets of five, so he can only hit a 1RM of 475. Does it matter in terms of how much force they'll produce in the throwing ring?

I don't honestly know the answer to that question, but it's something to think about. If 1RM directly translates to better performance in your event of choice, then it's important to keep it near maximal levels around that event. But also important is getting enough overall stimulus to keep progressing in the long term, which is difficult to do if you're always in the high intensity/1-5RM specific style. While I've always been a fan of keeping intensity jacked way up, I'm slowly coming around to see that despite that being what I personally prefer, it's probably not what's best for long-term progress. And even though I feel better directly following an intensity session rather than a volume session, I do think over time the potential for tweaks and little accumulated injuries is higher if you're always revved up to 11.

So to more directly answer your questions:

So when would you pick one over the other?

When it's important for the athlete in question to display their maximum current potential, I would heavily bias towards training for that display, which would generally mean higher intensity and lower volume. Pretty standard thoughts on peaking there. On the other hand, if they don't have a competition or an event coming up where they need that right away, and they've got time to build, I would have them do so, accumulating more volume and probably allowing more fatigue than I would want near a competition.

Is it just individual coach's preference or would one strategy work better than the other depending on the trainee's genetic ability?

I don't have enough experience here to speak conclusively, so I won't. I will say that just because an athlete wants to do it one way or the other doesn't mean they should. You have to step back and look at what the goal is.

[Papa09]

Thanks for writing that up Sean. I think I understand. Rather than going through short-term waves of accumulation up to a peak, you may as well just stay in the accumulation phase long-term until you have a reason to peak, like a competition.

[Sean Herbison]

Alright, so I was gone for a wedding all weekend, and now I'm supposed to write down what I did Thursday before moving on to Monday. Problem is, I can't match my notes up with my video, and now I'm just confused. Ehhhh, oh well. I did some bench, deadlift, and chins. Moving on.

I put all my deadlift warm-up lifts in, rapid-fire style. Not something I'm planning on doing regularly, but it's an interesting way to visually compare bar speed.



I think I'm going to try going back to 4K next time, and then remove the fish-eye effect in editing.

Monday, 18 December

Comp Squat: 475x2x3
Bench: 305x2x3
Deadlift: 565x1x2
Chinup: BWx3x6

Squat: Hmmm. How exactly do you rate a set where the unrack feels like you're trying @11, the first rep looks/feels like @7, and then the second rep looks like @9 and feels like @10. I don't know, but I do know why it's so off.

Sleep: Yaaaaay. I mentioned to my doctor that I never sleep through the night and sometimes it takes me a long time to fall asleep, and wondered whether there was anything to do about that. It's unlikely that I have sleep apnea, since I don't snore or have other symptoms, but I just generally don't sleep well. He said I should try the sleep class they offer. Long story short, this seems to entail trying to fix a minor, chronic problem, by introducing a major, short term problem. Short story shorter, I'm very low on sleep right now.

Yeah, great lead up to maxing out. Wheeee...

[Sean Herbison]

Wednesday, 20 December

Well, this didn't go as planned. I got sick Tuesday night, and that definitely didn't help. It's now Thursday and I'm getting over it, but my plan was to hit my openers, and I didn't even come close. I only made it to 405 on squat, and that's the first time since I don't know when that I wasn't entirely confident I'd come back up with it. Wheee.

[Adam Skillin]

Wednesday, 20 December

Well, this didn't go as planned. I got sick Tuesday night, and that definitely didn't help. It's now Thursday and I'm getting over it, but my plan was to hit my openers, and I didn't even come close. I only made it to 405 on squat, and that's the first time since I don't know when that I wasn't entirely confident I'd come back up with it. Wheee.

Hope this doesn't mean you aren't going to be able to have a year-end test day and out-total me by 600 lbs or so this week! Get better, man.

[Sean Herbison]

Hope this doesn't mean you aren't going to be able to have a year-end test day and out-total me by 600 lbs or so this week! Get better, man.

We'll see how tomorrow goes. I may end up moving it from the 25th to the 29th, so maybe we'll end up doing it on the same day after all. You may need to take it light if I'm supposed to beat you by that much though.