Reply With QuoteEnd Of 2022-2023 Maintenance Season Summary
Looking at my schedule and my headspace, I've decided to transition to my warm month training program. This is the earliest that I've ended my winter maintenance season. Typically it's May (or later) when I end it, as I'm aggressively chasing spring conditions on my snowboard right now. But this entire snow season has been a wash. I started late, scratching out the remainder of the year's training plan in mid-October, long before the snow started to fall, and scheduling my Mock Fitness Test for mid-December. Then the snow started dumping in November. However, the great conditions piling up didn't distract me, as I was very focused on the lifting, wanting to break the 1,000lb Total mark.
Once the mock meet was done and that 1,055lb Total had been achieved, the holidays were upon us, a time when my bride and I typically avoid the slopes due to the crowds. Then a long, dry January followed, where snow conditions, while deep, weren't very good. Then February rolled around, with a quick, unplanned trip to go help my son and his wife welcome their first child into their life. That was a fantastic trip! A week back home, then another trip out to the new family, this time accompanied by my bride. We returned last week, and with no significant improvement in the snow conditions forecast in the coming weeks, I decided to make the transition. We may get a day or two on the mountain, but I'm not going to plan my lifting around that anymore this season.
So where I saw a fair bit of backwards slide during the 2021-2022 Maintenance Season which ran from December '22 through June '23, I kept pretty steady with the lifts and improved some.
SQ — 320x5x4 (11/22/22) → 330x5x3 (3/21/23)
DL — 350x5 (11/25/22) → Rack Pull 410x5 (3/24/23) alternated with Halting Deadlifts 320x8 (3/3/23), programming that I will continue
OP — 142.5x5x4 (11/20/22) → 140x5x3 (3/20/23)
BP — 207.5x5x4 (11/24/22; Close Grip, as I was still rehabbing a shoulder injury from August) → 225x5x3 (3/23/23; regular grip, as the shoulder is fine)
Going forward, I will be resuming my 4-Day Heavy/Light Split programming as outlined in BBRx, which seemed to work for me pretty well last year. Just to recap, it's a three-week cycle that increases intensity while decreasing volume through that cycle, then starting the next three-week cycle adding the appropriate amount of weight to each lift. So something like this:
SQ - 5x4 (20 reps); +20lbs @ 4x3 (12 reps); +40lbs @ 5x1 (5 reps); repeat 3-week cycle +5lbs
OP/BP - 5x4 (20 reps); +10lbs @ 4x3 (12 reps); +20lbs @ 5x1 (5 reps); repeat 3-week cycle +2.5lbs
Haltings/Rack Pulls will follow a standard linear progression, alternating the lifts for the heavy pull each week, +5lbs over the last x8/x5. I talked this program out with Chase when I was in OKC last fall, as I couldn't wrap my brain around how to make haltings/racks work in the 3-week cycle. He correctly identified that I was making it too hard, and just stick to alternating them independently of where I was in the 4-Day Split. Of course.
Next week starts the first cycle of the year, although I pretty much did it this week although with 3x5's. It wasn't until yesterday that I firmly decided to move forward with the transition, so next week's programming will be the same weights, but more volume as I move the three (SQ/OP/BP) to 4x5's. Consistency will be the plan for the next many months, but I will make sure that I run my mock meet mid-November to make sure that I'm ready for snow. Plus, I had a talk with the kids about making sure the next birth is not during snowboarding season. Priorities, you know.
