Another conditioning question for HLM

[Ryan Hirschman]

Greetings,

I'm currently doing an HLM template as follows

Tuesday: Heavy Squat (5x4), Med Press (Incline 6x3), Light Pull (PCs 3x3), BW Chins (2xAMRAP)
Thursday: Light Squat (5x3), Light Press (Press 5x3), Heavy pull (DL 5x1), Barbell Curls (10x2)
Saturday: Med Squat (Paused Box Squat 5x3), Heavy Bench (5x3), Med Pull (SLDL 5x3), sometimes abs

So, I'm thinking of adding in some prowler work after my medium day (Saturday) workout. I've read that some people like doing it at the end of their heavy squat workout, to maximize time between the conditioning and next heavy squat day, but my heavy day is already pretty long. I also don't want to do the conditioning after my light day, because I just don't want to do any conditioning after DLs. Furthermore, I don't want to do it on a separate training day, because I love having true "rest" days. So, Saturday it is. My question is, have other people had success/struggles with doing conditioning on their Medium Day/last training day of the week, and then been able to go in the first training day the following week recovered enough to perform their heavy squats? I'm going to add some in tomorrow at the end of my workout, but I was just curious as to what other people have experienced.

[Brian Goldstein]

May I suggest:
Tuesday Heavy Squat, medium Press, medium pull

Thursday Light Squat, Heavy Bench, light pulls, Chins, [conditioning]

Saturday - Medium Squat, Heavy DL, Light Press, [curls/abs/condition optional]

I too love having complete rest days. Heavy bench shouldn’t smoke you so bad you can’t condition after.

[Ryan Hirschman]

Thanks for the reply Brian, sorry it took so long for me to get back to this. Have you done a split like this before? How are your legs for the DL on Saturday after conditioning on Thursday? Otherwise, this looks like a pretty good template.

[poser]

I've experimented with conditioning on every day of the week while on HLM. If you're training on days 1,3, & 5 and wish to maintain absolute rest days, I see no problem with doing the conditioning work on Medium day. That should ensure 16+ hours of sleep before your next session. As I also am doing paused squats on Medium day, I do find my legs are deceptively fatigued after squatting, noticeably more so than on Light day, so that might be a consideration at least until your body adjusts to the conditioning load. It is of course all about recovery management, but I've found that supplemental conditioning fatigue doesn't effect M and L performance enough to really worry about it, but it will absolutely effect performance on Heavy day, so whatever you do, show up sufficiently recovered for that.

With that in mind, I would consider perhaps adding in the conditioning following light day for the first couple of sessions and then moving it Medium day. This would allow you to gauge the additional fatigue midweek and allow an adjustment period.

[Brian Goldstein]

Thanks for the reply Brian, sorry it took so long for me to get back to this. Have you done a split like this before? How are your legs for the DL on Saturday after conditioning on Thursday? Otherwise, this looks like a pretty good template.

Yes, I have done something like this.

The caveat is exactly *what* and *how much* conditioning you do.

When I did this I did 2x20-30 minutes, fairly easily, on the rowing ergometer so virtually no interference with my [shitty] lifting. But my abs were nice. YMMV if your conditioning is tougher, obviously. I don't have a prowler, but there's no reason you can't program your prowler work just like your strength work, using load, distance, and intraset recovery as variables. (You could also use surface b/c of the different co-efficient of friction, but for simplicity sake let's just use the same surface here). These are simple examples - yours would be what suits you.

Thursday - "light" prowler: 10x 100 feet lengths, on the 2' minute mark, with 2x45 pound plates
Saturday - "heavy" prowler: 20x 50 feet lengths, on the minute, with 2x45+25 - why is this harder? b/c the load is greater and the rest between sets is shorter.

or whatever works for you. this is just an example, not a prescription. You can progress by going farther in total with heavier weight, but remember you're not conditioning for conditioning's sake, so, figure out a reasonable goal (say 1000 feet/session at X load), start at 50% of that, and work up to that over 6-12 weeks (again, YMMV).

Your legs shouldn't be beat up because of the lack of eccentric stress incurred in the movement of pushing a prowler. If they are then you simply need to adjust the loading parameters to cause less stress via distance or load. Last, be sure to set your lifting up for success - set the cycle up so you're getting a few weeks or so to let your body adjust to the added demand.

So for your heavy pull it might be:
Week 1: 5RM - 20 pounds
Week 2: 5RM - 10 pounds
Week 3: current 5 rep record
Week 4: new 5 rep record
Week 5 on: continue setting records

or something to that effect.

[Brian Goldstein]

edit: that's 2x 20-30 minute sessions/week, most weeks, just as I laid out above, one after light, one after medium.

[Ryan Hirschman]

Thanks again for the feedback. I decided I would suck it up and did some prowler work yesterday at the end of my light day (after DLs). It wasn't fun, but I didn't die, so I think I'll try that for a while and see how it goes.