Conditioning and Fatigue

[mgage]

Hi Jordan,

Background
I posted a thread in the past where you mentioned Zourdos having preliminary data showing good results for conditioning with the competition lifts compared to more traditional HIIT.

http://startingstrength.com/resource...esistance.html

I also noticed Layne Norton recently advocating conditioning with 6 sets of 8 @50-60%. In the back and forth in the YouTube comments, Layne said he didn't think this workload was affecting his gains in a negative way.

Questions
So, I have two questions related to this:
1. Has there been any further development on the Zourdos study or any follow-up work on that topic?
2. You've talked about gradually increasing volume and tonnage over time. Would throwing something like this in 2x/week be adding on too much volume or is it a low enough percentage of 1RM that it won't have adverse affects? I tried 6x8x50% the other day and it definitely elevated my heart rate and left me pretty sore for a few days. I'm wondering if Layne's percentage is higher than it should be for a regular intermediate person because of his higher work capacity.

Thoughts? Thanks for your time!

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

1) Not that I've seen. I just searched around and couldn't come across any new publications, unfortunately.
2) I don't think loads this light contribute to "useful" or "meaningful" volume from a strength or fatigue perspective, but the jump in ~50 reps definitely could cause some soreness until you're used to it. I'd also be worried about possibly exacerbating an existing overuse injury, if there is one lingering or something. As with anything else, starting lower and gradually increasing is probably the best option, maybe 3 sets of 8 would be a better option or maybe your 50% was actually significantly heavier than 50% of your true 1RM on that day.