Hi Friend!
Happy windows open Sunday to you! It sure feels nice to sit outside in the cool air or be inside, especially to sleep inside with the windows open.
Peaking Phase I hope you had a great week and you're ready for the peaking phase. Some people aren't fans of taper weeks during race training preparation and some people are. Count me as part of the fans of group. Taper weeks for those that aren't familiar is when you cut the volume of training down to allow an accumulation of energy to let your body rest, recharge & heal before a big event.
Taper weeks not only cut the volume, but the keep the intensity high. For example, if we're talking marathon training, you may have heard of people running 20 and 22 miles during their long runs and then cutting back to 15 and 12 miles during their tapers. They overreach on the 20 & 22 miles, stretching their capacities, then the bring it back, allowing their bodies to recover, then they go for the 26.2.
Keeping the intensity high, means during your taper weeks, just because you don't do a lot of volume (reps, sets & rounds), you still train explosively to keep your nervous system sharp. You bring it close to max effort and then stop just short. You may even hit max effort, but you do fewer reps or fewer sets or lighter weight or a combination of some of those variables.
I find it very fun because you feel so energized as the week progresses, kind of like a bottle of shaken champagne and it feels amazing.
Peaking for Fall Sports When I used to do more Athletic Training than Strength & Conditioining, most of the preseason injuries my athletes experienced were due to insufficient conditioning. They weren't durable enough to withstand the long practices, multiple days of practices, double sessions, repeated sprint efforts, cuts, stops, turns, collisions, etc... that they experienced as part of their sport.
This frustrated me. It frustrated me because it was a lot of work in the preseason that didn't need to happen; it frustrated me because the amount of injuries could have been reduced significantly if the athletes had strength trained and sprinted in the off season prior to their sport; it frustrated me because as a former athlete I felt tremendous empathy for my players who came in with such high hopes and excitement and had it muted by an injury.
After a while, I got sick of being on the reactive side and decided to be more on the preventive / risk reduction side and use my strength & conditioning credential more. And that's what I did and that's what we do together.
One way to peak for fall sports is to proactively train for them in the season prior. Check! You did that. Peaking for fall sports, means timing your training, so that you arrive ready to go for your sport (football, field hockey, soccer, volleyball, cross country, cycle-cross, fall baseball & golf). You don't necessarily want your most intense phase to end right before the season starts because your body may not have recovered enough to handle the hard practices, long practices, increased number of practices, etc... Usually you'll need an unloading week / taper week or two to allow your body to recover and get loose and then that intense phase will shine through with resiliency and durability. In some cases you may only need a day off or some stretching / yoga days, but my preference is to address the accumulated fatigue by unloading and tapering to recharge your body, so the supercompensation effects from your efforts are prodigious allowing you to be fast, explosive, strong, quick, durable, resilient and more.
Peaking for Fall Races Another thing we train for is to peak for fall races. People who live in high altitudes with thin air have a tremendous advantage when they train in the thin air and then go and compete in races, events at sea level. It's really unfair. In the sports world, when our Boston sports teams have to go to Denver it's always a challenge because the athletes aren't used to the thinner air, so they get fatigued more easily.
What New England and the East Coast does have is humidity. If you plan for and take precautions to reduce your risk of a heat illness, and train in the heat and humidity of our summer weather, when the humidity cuts like on a day like today and in mid-September / October, you'll have a tremendous advantage over others that trained only early in the morning before the humidity started. It's our answer to altitude training. Go race somewhere or at sometime when there's no humidity and you'll feel faster because you don't have to run in tough weather.
So we peak you physically for fall sports and fall races and I encourage you to time your race selections for mid-September / early October so you can make it your end of season Personal Record.
Peaking for Fall Photos I can't speak for the rest of your family, but if you're training in our program, you're going to be most photogenic starting from the middle to the end of September. I know this because when you race in events over the summer and then race in the fall and you look at your photos from the summer races and compare them to the fall race, your fall race photos are always your best photos.
If you want to take pictures for a holiday card, profile picture or for your websites, set a date for anytime between 9/19 to 10/10. Your glow, assuming you've been training regularly and following the plan, should be brightest during that window.
Power Endurance What we're going to do is train for 4 weeks straight on power endurance. The large majority of you don't currently play a fall sport, though some of you do. Many more of you do train for and participate in endurance events. The majority of you are busy people, ages 30-60, with our mean member age in the 40's, and most are parents. You value your health and make time for it. You need to be strong and you need to be fast. For most of you, you need to get to a certain strength level, so you don't get overuse or injuries because your de-conditioned. After that you need to get fast, quick and be able to do it again and again.
That's where power endurance comes in. If you're going to play a fall sport, you've gotta be able to handle those repeated bursts. If you're going to do a fall race, you've gotta emphasize running fast without the resistance from humidity and hills. You've gotta get used to being explosive and fast, without having to work through or around the side effects of being tired from intense load phases.
We're going to do what's known as High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) / Tabata Training. Short explosive bursts (20seconds for example) with insufficient recovery (10seconds) using lighter loads to reduce injury risk, and aim for a hypertrophic response through an accumulated volume of work in a short period of time. What this means is you're going to do a simpler exercise progression or an exercise using a lighter load or both. You're going to move as fast as possible with perfect technique because you can because the load and skill level are easier and because you're going to try to. This emphasis on speed, explosiveness and power is going to help charge your nervous system to be faster and more explosive.
You're going to lose a little bit of size because we're going to taper your body armor to match what's needed for someone who's peaking for their sport / race. The multiple sets you'll do per exercise will allow you to keep your muscles hypertrophied and strong so you don't soft and weak, allowing you to remain durable and resilient.
It's quite fun and it's VERY energizing.
Back to School, Back to Work I don't know what's happening with school and work for most people this year, but traditionally, the end of summer brings the return to school and the return to focus on work production to prepare for the final quarter of the year.
This return to school / return to work, fall quarter is like a Monday for some people. It's a strong contrast from the carefree, low structure, vacation mindset of summer or a weekend.
When you're talking about a Monday for some people, the antidote is getting grounded by planning your week and your day, by spending your time on paper and scheduling what's important.
When you're talking about a return to school, work and fall, it's planning out your quarter, your month and the first couple of weeks, then building out a weekly and daily schedule. You know this.
What really happens though is all of this change takes time, physical energy and mental energy. If you have kids, these resource demands get compounded with even more time, physical energy and mental energy required. Then there are meetings, new wake up times, meal planning and appointments. Your September schedule is a lot different than your summer schedule. It's all a lot. Then your weekends get filled with all the fun extra-curricular activities. It's all worth it and you love it, but again it's a lot.
Well, when life stress goes up, training stress goes down. You peaking for fall sports, fall races and fall photos by having a power endurance phase, is perfectly timed to decrease your training stress when your life stress goes up. It gives you energy and doesn't require much extra recovery outside of the normal sleep, nutrition, hydration, stretch stuff you do if you're in our program.
As someone who does the same programs you do and planned to be in this same life stage that most of you are in, were in or one day may be in, it's a welcomed and perfectly timed plan for this summer to fall, back to school / return to work period of time.
16 Weeks Straight August 31 - December 19, 2020 - 16 weeks straight*
*Except for Holidays - 9/7 Labor Day
- 10/12 Indigenous People Day
- 11/11 Veteran's Day
- 11/12 Holly Harvest Fair @ Mackenzie Center
- 11/26 Thanksgiving Day
- 11/27 Black Friday
- 12/20-1/3 Year End Break (2 weeks)
You know what that's called? It's called MMMMOMENTUM!!!!!!
Phase 10: Aug 31 to Sept 26 It's a power endurance phase. Dumbbell (DB) Load is 15-35% Body Weight (BW) for the core and the DB complex. It's 20-40% BW for the strength exercises except for the 1-leg squat progressions in which case it's 1-10lbs per hand. With the exception of the 1-leg squat load, these are a dramatic difference from last phase's 30-50% BW, DB Load. The weights should feel real light, you should feel real strong and it should enable you to train fast and train fast safely with good form.
Here are the pdf's for the gym based workouts and the virtual workouts. The difference is the gym based workouts use pull up bars, TRX's, med balls, partners, whereas the virtual workouts use only the 7 pieces of equipment our members have, plus the need for a wall and a bench / ottoman / chair or box spring.
P10, Warm Ups, Workout Cards, Cool Downs, Nutrition Habits Please print either the gym based or virtual workout cards (workout A & workout B), so you can follow along and record your results and daily habits on them.
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