My most draconian schedule yet

Discussion in 'Health and Fitness' started by Yohan, Oct 1, 2008.

  1. Yohan

    Yohan In the Spirit of Yohan Supporter

    So my gym kicked up the training sessions and I'm still doing some fitness stuff. Here is how I want my schedule to look (realistically, I'm going to end up dropping 1 or 2 sessions per week because it's tough).

    So I'm really just looking for thoughts on volume, the potential to burn out. I was actually considering splitting up my workouts differently and homogenizing them, something like:

    Routine 1:
    Oly lift
    Leg lift
    Bar complexes

    Routine 2:
    Push lift
    pull lift
    intervals

    As you may well guess, my main issue right now is recovery. I tend to get pretty fatigued towards the end of the week. Hell, I tend to get pretty fatigued every day when I hit the weights and then go straight to MA practice. I'm trying to up my sleep as much as possible. Trying to get 9 hours a night but it doesn't always work out like that. The only supplements I take are fish oil and a multivitamin. I'm considering starting to take creatine and my strength coach agreed that might be a good idea.

    I'm kinda putting together ideas before I really present things to my strength coach. It looks like this is going to be the new face of my routine from here on out. The most valuable fitness training for me is the conditioning. The weights are great but I find the conditioning to be much more valuable to my MA training. Should I be thinking about taking some stuff out of my schedule? It is a lot of stuff to get done every week.
     
  2. PlumDragon

    PlumDragon "I am your evil stimulus"

    John,

    Long time no talk; how are things?

    I like the routine and see nothing intrinsically overboard if you are in the right shape (and I assume you are). Do you have any injuries? Sore muscles, joints, etc? Nagging old straings, pulls, etc?

    I dont know how much time you take for warmups but if yorue getting tired, you might try adjusting the overall volume by spending more time on warmups. There are a few physiological reasons why people should warmup longer than they do, and it would be a good way to kind of lower your fatigue levels without taking a whole session off but rather slightly lowering your overall volume in the hope of finding that threshold where you "feel better".

    The other part of this is that, unless youve hit your 100% saturation point, engaging in a progressive increase of intensity/frequency will be met with things like fatigue, but it wont last forever. How long have you felt like you "get tired towards the end of the day"?

    Re: creatine: Creatine is great for strength training where you are *really* taxing the ATP-CP system, but you wont notice much (if any) difference when using it for 1.5 hour long conditioning sessions. However, if yorue feeling fatigued from the long sessions, you might consider upping your aerobic activity a bit to help increase your muscle's efficiency in picking up oxygen and increase stroke volume. Also, if you want to try some, Id be happy to give you a weeks worth supply of creatine to finish the loading pahse (if you believe in all that...I dont), and I can order for you at wholesale in the meantime. Theres also herbs that might help with energy...
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2008
  3. Yohan

    Yohan In the Spirit of Yohan Supporter

    Pretty good. Been quite busy, as you can see.

    I don't have anything bad. I have some periodic inflammation in my knee that goes away with a little ice/ibuprofen. It doesn't get worse with time. I generally deal with my injuries as they crop up - rest and nutrition, and recently here, they've been doing some work on me up at the gym. They have a STEM machine up there that they put across a hip injury recently. I'll probably use that thing when I get injured. It shortened my recovery to about 4 days.

    I generally spend about 10 minutes on a warmup. I do an active warmup and have a "set" that I usually go through before each workout that consists of:

    3x
    (10 jumping jacks
    10 seal jumps
    10 cross jumps
    10 bodyweight squats)
    20 chest passes with a med ball, bouncing it off a wall
    20 overhead passes
    20 side passes (rotating) on each side
    10 straight leg kicks
    10 cross kicks
    10 side kicks (all dynamic stretches)

    If I don't have a good sweat going, I'll typically do a few other things - some bridges, some iron crosses, scorpions, fire hydrants, that type of thing. I'm not generally working my sessions for time. I've generally got some specific things I want to accomplish in each workout, so increasing warmup times and decreasing other things would be counter productive.

    I've actually dialed back all of my fitness stuff a notch or two because of the increase in work I'm doing at the fight gym. I've been doing 2 tabata sets instead of 3, and leaving out any kind of additional conditioning stuff I might put at the end (used to do some sled pushes or a short run).

    I never recover fully from a workout by the next day (obviously, especially from the weights). Then I go work out the next day and I'm a little more tired, and so on. I've generally got a little soreness (less of this) and take a bit of a performance hit. I only get really tired after my workouts, which is understandable. This is my second week on this schedule so hopefully I'll adapt, but by the time I hit my last MA practice on Saturday, I had nothing left. So it's more of an issue of getting tired by the end of the week.

    So you don't think that creatine would help with my recovery cycles at all?? Unless I'm doing a bunch of heavy lifting? I'd say that my lifting volume is not terribly high for the whole week. Got any more info on how aerobic activity helps to increase muscle efficiency? Isn't that the VO2MAX thing??

    Also, what is stroke volume?

    Before making any changes to what I'm doing I'm going to see if I can't adjust to my current program. I'm starting to get my diet right for what I'm doing (it definitely wasn't right last week).
     
  4. PlumDragon

    PlumDragon "I am your evil stimulus"

    OK. First off, I totally recommend discontinuing the use of ice.

    Second, strenghening your prime movers, antagonizers and stabilizers, etc (depending on injury) around an injury may be a good use of your time as they crop up--Main reason I asked about the injuries is that you might be better off working on stengthening associated muscles/sinews and taking some of that time off from the gym. Just food for thought...

    I understand that you have specific goals at each sessions, but, well you know my philosophy here... =)



    Check. Just probing around to see where youre at with things...


    Hows your diet look? Aside from macronutrient this/that, what kind of actual real foods do you eat? People always get so concerned about protein/carb intake and calories that they forget to eat plenty of the green leafy stuff, etc. Have you tried any honey products? Do you use any night recovery aids other than the protein shake? Ive got some other things that you might want to try as well if it interests you...


    Creatine is really only useful for surges of energy, high-intensity power and strength like weight-lifting and 30 sec sprints. Aside from personal experience, I can back that up with studies.

    You may get a *minimal* increase with bursts of power output during conditioning sessions, but its not going to be much. Now that doesnt mean you cant use creatine during your weight training sessions, but if you plan on fighting, the creatine will have an adverse effect on you tryign to make weight.

    Yes, it all pretty much boils down to VO2 Max, but its unfortunately more complicated than jsut that because in reality, your body is going to be using both the ATP-CP system and the aerobic metabolism system simultaneously--its all percentages. As for other factors where aerobic activity will help, your lungs, heart, muscles, and even to a degree blod vessels, all undergo physiological changes that drive up their efficiency to deliver oxygen to various systems in your body. More on that below.


    Stroke volume is the amount of blood you heart can displace each time it beats. This is improtant because as you increase your aerobic activity, your heart becomes stronger and the interior volume actually increase, so is able to increase stroke volume, and hence blood, oxygen, etc. Simultaneously, your muscles mitochondria, etc will learn to optimally take in that extra oxygen, allowing you to work harder but with less strain because yoru muscles "threshold" for switchover has been raised.

    Probably a good way to go...Ill be checking this thread normally, hopefully everythign get sorted out... =)
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2008
  5. Yohan

    Yohan In the Spirit of Yohan Supporter

    I know :D

    I typically do that now. When I got injured recently they gave me a few rehab exercises to do for it, so I'd go to the gym, do a limited session working around my injury, get on the stem machine, and do rehab exercises. Worked like a charm.

    My diet consists of 90% whole foods. All meat and dairy for my protein and fresh vegetables and fruits. I don't even buy frozen, which will change during the winter. Now that I've started doing carbs regularly, I'm going to use quinoa (preferably) or rice. I don't even do the protein shakes any more, I put it in my meals when I need it. I use high carb post workout drinks (choc milk). I've been using reduced fat dairy products and due to a recent post by coma on fat and vitamin absorbtion, I may be replacing that with full fat dairy products.

    I eat a lot of beef and chicken, a lot of yogurt for snacks, I make protein bars some for snacks. I eat a lot of brocolli, oranges, cantaloupe, carrots, tomatoes, less spinach then I should.

    It should be a good fit for me because my lifting sessions are generally 6 reps and under per set, and my conditioning includes lots of explosive movements. Really though, if I want to improve recovery, and creatine isn't going to help me do it, I can't see why I should take it.

    i've also went over the water retention issue with my coach. I would (obviously) cycle out the creatine some time before a competition.

    When it comes to the VO2MAX I'm pretty well comfortable that I'm covering that with the tabata interval stuff. I could probably fit a little running (2 miles) into my routine, but when it comes right down to it, I just don't want to do it on top of all my other stuff.

    I actually enjoy it and wouldn't mind doing it, but dude, I'm tired (generally).
     
  6. Yohan

    Yohan In the Spirit of Yohan Supporter

    A more detailed training schedule. I ended up injuring myself last night and the injury was nagging me today. This is the second week in a row I've injured myself so I'm going to take this to my coach tomorrow and we are going to revise the schedule.
     
  7. PlumDragon

    PlumDragon "I am your evil stimulus"

    I think there is a false perception out there that creatine helps with recovery--creatine is just a precursor to energy synthesis. I wondered if I was totally forgetting something and went and referenced my text books and they say nothing about being used as a recovery, and nothing like that was discovered in studies done. Creatine, in essence, just lets you work your muscles harder.

    When you lift, how much time do you spend with eccentric contractions?



    Tabatas will probably cover it for you, theyre kind of an interesting phenomenon, if your body can handle the 8 rounds of 100+% max...And Im sure youre all over it. =)


    I hear that, and thats what counts.

    Good luck getting your schedule revised. If you decide for whatever reason you want to try some creatine, just let me know.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2008
  8. Yohan

    Yohan In the Spirit of Yohan Supporter

    If you are referring to the amount of time I spend lowering the weight during my normal lifting, I do a 2:1 ratio. 2 counts on the way down, 1 count on the way up.

    If you are referring to negatives, I generally only use them on pullups, and I do them infrequently, usually I'll do 3 sets of pullups then a set of negatives.
     
  9. PlumDragon

    PlumDragon "I am your evil stimulus"

    You might try playing with that ratio at 1:1 for a week or so and see if that that doesnt decrease your recovery time...
     
  10. Yohan

    Yohan In the Spirit of Yohan Supporter

    So my coach recommended that I change my weight training format to the three P's:

    Power clean
    Pull up
    Push up
    With a dramatically expanded warmup. I probably spend 15 minutes on my warmup.

    I'm going to be doing 2 or 3 sets of tabata stuff - bodyweight only.

    I'm going to be doing 3 sets of bar complexes (currently 6 exercises, 9 reps, in under a minute).

    So my schedule will go

    Mon: weights (as it were)
    Tue: intervals
    Wed: nada (long MA practice, though I may end up doing some pull/push ups at the house)
    Thur: weights
    Fri: Complexes
     

Share This Page