Programming Advice

[jdavis5]

Hey Brent,

Thanks for all you do here for everyone. Need some advice from you, due to work and life (wife and I just had a new baby girl, pretty proud obviously) constraints, I'm unable to train during the week for the next few weeks, I am able to train on the weekends. Things will settle down in a few weeks and I just want to try to keep what progress I've made.

Can you give me some advice on programming a session or 2 on the weekends to try and maintain my lifts during this busy time?

If this has already been posted on here I apologize for bringing it again but I couldn't find it searching. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Brent Carter]

You are basically limited to training once a week with this schedule as there is not enough time between the two exposures to constitute a stress, recovery, adaptation cycle.

You will just have to titrate up to a heavy set of 5 on each of the lifts and do about three sets across.

[jonfla]

Brent,

Just curious: why wouldn’t you make use of the second day? I can imagine at least two ways:
1) a split, maybe something like days 1+2 of the 4-day TM
OR
2) a regular heavy day followed by a light day.
Sure, SRA won’t finish between Saturday and Sunday, but the bigger stress will have a commensurate bigger recovery time (than usual on LP), with maybe a bigger adaptation?

Also, I may be missing background info on jdavis5 as a lifter that would help.

Obviously nothing about this is ideal, just trying to better understand your approach. Hopefully not hijacking the thread too much...

[Brent Carter]

1) What is the point of doing an upper lower split in this scenario?
2) Maybe, but probably not. It's hard to predict whether there will still be some adaptation or if he will just be running in the hamster wheel. I think some weeks he will likely go heavier and others he will stay the same or get worse. This is not really training so all bets are off...

[jonfla]

1) What is the point of doing an upper lower split in this scenario?
2) Maybe, but probably not. It's hard to predict whether there will still be some adaptation or if he will just be running in the hamster wheel. I think some weeks he will likely go heavier and others he will stay the same or get worse. This is not really training so all bets are off...

1) More work than could be done in one day (comfortably at least), which might offer a better chance of maintaining/improving strength (depending on the person's level of advancement)?
2) Fair enough.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[Brent Carter]

1) yeah, maybe. My guess is the guy is not terribly advanced or he would have a. figured this out already or b. make training a bigger priority (not a knock on OP) That said at SSOC we have nearly every client work up to a challenging set of 5 on each of the four lifts for their "first workout" and I would treat this guy as if each weekend was his first workout since I just don't know how much we will have de-trained over the course of the week.