Programming for eventual return to season

[Brookfine]

In my continuing quest to physically outrun my problems it is now time for me to start shedding body-fat and building explosive power for the Miami winter when I can actually sprint.

I'm sitting at (435, 325, 515) on SBD @ 212 and am going to be aiming to take 0.5% off my bodyweight a week, hopefully settling at around 200 in mid-November. During that time I obviously want to maximally preserve strength while also increasing my hang power clean/snatch from their basically untrained 185/155. I'm trying to develop my weekly schedule now.

The research I have done suggests I need:

• High intensity / Low volume powerlifting work
• Bi-weekly olympic work
• Plyometric work to supplement
• Specific strength work to keep hamstrings/adductors/flexors safe from injury

My questions are as follows:

1. With the strength training in particular I don't really "get" how volume can be any lower. I've been running madcow 5x5 and really it just feels like one heavy 5 and one heavy triple in a given week with a lot of warmup.
2. Olympic work I have no idea about how to program. Any beginners olympic program is going to assume a large surplus which I'm not in, so I don't really know how to approach it.
3. Plyo work is a mystery. I have no idea how to evaluate any of this. Even basic principles are a mystery because so much of the web results are junk for teaching short guys to dunk. I can reach out to my clubs coach for this but outside of me our sprinters are early college and very very light, I'm unsure if any of the methodologies he uses will apply well or even be safe.
4. Should the injury prevention work for these smaller muscles move to low volume/high intensity too?

Assistance with these questions will allow me to complete my schedule and develop meaningfully.

Also, my deep and sincere apologies to Rip and Maybach for continually polluting this forum with my ignorance.

[Mark Rippetoe]

What do you think plyometrics improves?

[Brookfine]

What do you think plyometrics improves?

Some vauge notion of explosiveness that I don't know much about. I've been dropping through to an olympic gym that one of my friends who competes trains with and they do them, so I'm guessing that there's at least good reason for it. The coach there is running me through them next Tuesday so that should at least provide some footing.

My current answers after talking to the coach look like this:

M: Heavy olympic work followed by heavy squat 1x5 + upper
W-AM: Track
W-PM: Light olympic work followed by heavy DL 1x5
Fr: Heavy squat 1x3 + front squat + upper + injury prevention

Because the power clean is so technique focused I haven't put any progression or rep ranges in here, and probably won't until at a minimum my upper back and shoulder mobility allows for a good catch.

Anything sound particularly insane about this? Heavy olympic work shouldn't fry my legs of lower back so I feel like that shouldn't destroy the monday squat. I also watched a guy with a 495 squat max run through a 140kg C&J and then pivot to a 5x5 of back-squat+deadlift supersets at 140kg so I know that this isn't so impossible.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Some vauge notion of explosiveness that I don't know much about. I've been dropping through to an olympic gym that one of my friends who competes trains with and they do them, so I'm guessing that there's at least good reason for it.

How old are you? 15? None of the rest of this makes any sense either. Maybe somebody can explain it to you.

[Maybach]

Man there's a lot going on here. What the hell is "injury prevention"? Why are you training a single 5 and a single triple squat? Why are you doing front squats on your heavy triple squat day? It really does seem like you're not approaching this as "what do I train?" But as "what should I do?" Do you think you can add pounds to a single squat triple week after week based on a Monday five? A front squat after that? I don't know you, maybe these are justified, but I don't think you actually know (based on your experience with your training, not based on things you have read or been told) whether they are.

Read the grey book. The 4 day split for Olympic weightlifting cited there is a pretty good starting point for training the Olympic lifts, and is in line with classic programs of this type: two days of strength work, two days of Olympic work. Don't just flip to that program. Read the book and understand it. Don't look at the advanced section yet. You are adding bells and whistles to basic strength programming in hopes of avoiding things that haven't happened yet.

[Martin Shenfield]

How old are you? 15? None of the rest of this makes any sense either. Maybe somebody can explain it to you.

He's definitely not 15 Rip. He's been sprinting with 21 year olds at college. If he was 15 he'd be a prodigy.

I don't know why there is a refusal to answer age, height, weight other than knowing the response already and trying to avoid it but I believe OP is most likely to be fast approaching middle age or already there, maybe a lecturer or janitor, and living in a fantasy world where they can continue doing what the 21 year olds do instead of acting their age.

[SouthernLifter]

In my continuing quest to physically outrun my problems it is now time for me to start shedding body-fat and building explosive power for the Miami winter when I can actually sprint.

I'm sitting at (435, 325, 515) on SBD @ 212 and am going to be aiming to take 0.5% off my bodyweight a week, hopefully settling at around 200 in mid-November. During that time I obviously want to maximally preserve strength while also increasing my hang power clean/snatch from their basically untrained 185/155. I'm trying to develop my weekly schedule now.

The research I have done suggests I need:

• High intensity / Low volume powerlifting work
• Bi-weekly olympic work
• Plyometric work to supplement
• Specific strength work to keep hamstrings/adductors/flexors safe from injury

My questions are as follows:

1. With the strength training in particular I don't really "get" how volume can be any lower. I've been running madcow 5x5 and really it just feels like one heavy 5 and one heavy triple in a given week with a lot of warmup.
2. Olympic work I have no idea about how to program. Any beginners olympic program is going to assume a large surplus which I'm not in, so I don't really know how to approach it.
3. Plyo work is a mystery. I have no idea how to evaluate any of this. Even basic principles are a mystery because so much of the web results are junk for teaching short guys to dunk. I can reach out to my clubs coach for this but outside of me our sprinters are early college and very very light, I'm unsure if any of the methodologies he uses will apply well or even be safe.
4. Should the injury prevention work for these smaller muscles move to low volume/high intensity too?

Assistance with these questions will allow me to complete my schedule and develop meaningfully.

Also, my deep and sincere apologies to Rip and Maybach for continually polluting this forum with my ignorance.

Man, run a Texas Method. And put the dynamic work (olympics) on the recovery day; this is detailed in the book.

[Brookfine]

How old are you? 15? None of the rest of this makes any sense either. Maybe somebody can explain it to you.

I would be surprised if a single person college age or younger has been here in the last 5 years.

Man there's a lot going on here. What the hell is "injury prevention"? Why are you training a single 5 and a single triple squat? Why are you doing front squats on your heavy triple squat day? It really does seem like you're not approaching this as "what do I train?" But as "what should I do?" Do you think you can add pounds to a single squat triple week after week based on a Monday five? A front squat after that? I don't know you, maybe these are justified, but I don't think you actually know (based on your experience with your training, not based on things you have read or been told) whether they are.

Read the grey book. The 4 day split for Olympic weightlifting cited there is a pretty good starting point for training the Olympic lifts, and is in line with classic programs of this type: two days of strength work, two days of Olympic work. Don't just flip to that program. Read the book and understand it. Don't look at the advanced section yet. You are adding bells and whistles to basic strength programming in hopes of avoiding things that haven't happened yet.

I'm not training a single 5 and single triple, but programs like madcow which I just finished have ramped sets, with only the last 5 of a 5x5 on monday being particularly heavy, and the final triple on the friday workout is the only heavy set that day.

The grey book for me is actually the black book, I've had it for a long time and the book is very very clear that I need to be in a surplus for this programming which is exactly what I can't be doing right now. I need to cut to be ready to go back to my sport. I know volume reduction is crucial but I don't know how to effectively trim that volume.

Injury prevention is specific accessory work that I need to do to stop myself getting hurt while sprinting. Things like my abductors, adductors, and hip flexors. This is very standard and you'll see a lot of it online if you give it a google.

He's definitely not 15 Rip. He's been sprinting with 21 year olds at college. If he was 15 he'd be a prodigy.

I don't know why there is a refusal to answer age, height, weight other than knowing the response already and trying to avoid it but I believe OP is most likely to be fast approaching middle age or already there, maybe a lecturer or janitor, and living in a fantasy world where they can continue doing what the 21 year olds do instead of acting their age.

I literally opened here with my weight, which is 212 (now 209). In other posts I have my height 6'3" written clearly, and I've described that I live in the UK part time and compete with a county-level athletic club, and I will be competing with 20 year olds until I'm 35 when I would start competing in masters. Like literally 100% of users here I am past college age and am 30. I'm neither a janitor nor a lecturer but I do machine learning consulting.

Man, run a Texas Method. And put the dynamic work (olympics) on the recovery day; this is detailed in the book.

I just ran madcow, but I can't bulk anymore, I have to cut. If I have to lose weight the book has been very clear that standard intermediate programming will be too much volume.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Well, okay.

[Maybach]

Injury prevention is specific accessory work that I need to do to stop myself getting hurt while sprinting. Things like my abductors, adductors, and hip flexors. This is very standard and you'll see a lot of it online if you give it a google.

Man I thought we took care of this in the other thread. What do you think your adductors need that they aren't getting? I question the actual utility (that is, the actual physiological changes these exercises produce) of anything that can be offhandedly turfed to a "quick Google."

I'm not training a single 5 and single triple, but programs like madcow which I just finished have ramped sets, with only the last 5 of a 5x5 on monday being particularly heavy, and the final triple on the friday workout is the only heavy set that day.

This is a single five and a single triple with excessive warmup volume. When we talk about rep ranges, we mean the working set. The 5x5 has several warmup sets implied. It's still 5x5. My point about training these bizarre rep ranges stands. If these ramping sets are stimulative volume (and therefore, volume which incurs a recovery cost), then why do the structure of these not make into your program? The program as you relayed it to use therefore means *nothing* because it is including a bunch of elided volume.

I just ran madcow, but I can't bulk anymore, I have to cut. If I have to lose weight the book has been very clear that standard intermediate programming will be too much volume.

The book details the way you would make this estimation, and it's based on data you have failed to collect.

What you SHOULD have done, when you were bulking, is run the novice program *as it is written*, not madcow, not 5/3/1, not stronglifts, not greyskull or whatever meme version of the SS program you found, and used that to inform your intermediate training as you transition to a drop in weight.

You have declined to do that, and say you are going to begin an aggressive weight cut. Belaboring this mistake is likely unproductive.

If I were you, I would run the novice progression as written, with aggressive starting weights, realizing that because I am attempting to drop weight I might have to make certain adjustments early on. For all I know, this might be a reduction in overall training volume. At the first sign of hiccuping, introduce a light squat day (80%) and the power clean. Training the power clean will be plenty of Olympic work at first. Wednesday being a light squat/heavy pull day works pretty well.

When you inevitably stall, introduce a medium day. This is a 90% day, usually on Friday. You can introduce the snatch as a light pull, as the power clean becomes the medium pull. I'll leave your upper body programming as an exercise. The volume will be titrated up or down from the novice baseline.

This is IN THE BOOK.