been a good christmas i am close to being a 94kg lifter weighed in at 84.4kg today ha ha ha ha
the following is geared towards my own training and what i have learnt about myself and does not apply to freaks like byrdie or other lifters that recover at a redicolouse rate
been thinking a lot about my training and reading a good bit and the more I think about it the "bulgarian" (focusing on the competition lifts or their power variants every day in training and for heavy singles) way of training that is just does not work for everyone and more importantly i think not for me. the last 12 months of my lifting have not resulted in any increases in my lifting the only thing that has increased is my rate of getting injured and constant knee pain !!!
i am looking back through my training and thinking when i have felt the strongest and when i performed to my capabilities i think my three best competitions or periods of training were just before christmas 07 in the galway open last october 09 in cork at the club before the world unis and this year was towards the end of the trip in scotland and when i came home from there.
looking at the sort of training i had been doing none of these periods were intense competition periods with maximal work multiple times per week or most days they were periods when i was doing large volumes of muscular work mixed in with some planned heavy loading above 90%.
note before byrd has a canary
although in scotland we did reach a high % of lifts most days this work was intersperesed with a massive volume of muscular type work and also this was a small period of time
i feel as if this way of training is what benefits me the most and i think importanly this is the way of keeping me injury free after my annoyance with injuries. i believe that muscle growth and protection i get from the higher volume more muscular type work is too important to just overlook. i dont doubt that the "bulgarian" type training gets you amazing results but i dont think you can overlook the injury factor i know some people will say suck it up and train but i think when you get to the point that you cant walk up or down stairs or pretty much do anything without constant pain or require a bucket load of meds to train i think you need to rethink the way you are going about it.
i am a firm believer that you need the heavy heavy work throughout most stages of the year however i think that this work needs to be interspersed with large amounts of more muscular type work i.e. treble double power snatch power clean combos from different position clean and jerk combos front squat jerks and pulls and deadlifts from various positions along with some back extensions push presses and presses oh yeah and fucking squats !!!!!.
i think the importance with these types of work is not to push the intensity too high on the power variations and combo or repetion lifts i think 70-85% of your lifts would be optimal on these keeping the repetitions at a minimum of two and towards 3 the majority of the time and in the squat pull type assistance a minimum of 3.
i still believe that the lifts and the squats to a lesser exetent should be hit heavy but out of a 6 day programme i would say a maximum of once in the clean and jerk and maybe twice in the snatch and i would say once around every 12 days to hit heavy singles in the front or back squat.
over the last while i have ignored the more muscular type work and i have suffered for that in inury and performance levels.
i am not going to make those mistakes again i will post later on about what i think exactly i need to be doing and how i am going to go about getting some decent lifts together
84.4kg?! You crazy legend.
ReplyDeleteNice post Murph, I would agree with what you say, this approach probably does and will suit you better and should hopefully allow you to get back to your best. 2010 will be a good one. Four-in-a-row...
Murph, good post. Probably the best grammer, sentence structure and punctuation in the blog so far. A big step forward for you.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of the points in your post. I do think when someone is training with more sub-maximal lifting, more volume and greater variety of exercises than the Bulgarian approach that you need to be much more thorough and solid in your planning. I think you have to have a very clear training program and pay more attention to periodization.
I think you also have to have fixed days, in specific exercises, where you go to max whether you like it or not. Otherwise it can be too easy to coast along at sub maximal percentages without really forcing the body to adapt. I know that is something I am guilty of in the past. Also, I think even with the ype of training you are suggesting that you can still go to maximum every week if not every session (or every 2nd session). These max efforts can be across a variety of exercises though. In one session you might go to max in power snatch and do sub-maximal technique work or hypertrophy work afterward. A couple of sessions later it could be to max in a strength exercise like squats or push press.
I think this can help to keep the mindset of a competitive weightlifter in which you have to be willing to push your body to its limits regularly. But as there is great variety in this approach and many of the lifts such as power snatach or push press are not as taxing as the traditional full lifts, I don't think it will lead to the niggling injuries you have experience. I personally think that for some lifters with a poorer base of conditioning and muscular development (I am talking about myself here) that it is the lack of variety of Bulgarian training that leads to injury, not the intensity.
ps you are fat. we should try to compete in the same weight class at some point in 2010.
ReplyDeletecheers for the comments lads
ReplyDeletegood points made by both of yee i definitely plan to have a much more structured plan in place now that i have some sort of autonomy in my life ie the masters dya like the use of my new favourite big word ha i plan to have one day a week where i will go close to max in the lifts. i am going to be wary of trying to max out in the different exercise quite often that is what i have done the last while and has achieved nothing. i had quite a variety in my training in terms of exercises but i was hitting the 90% and trying to hit 95% every day which looking back on it was pretty stupid anyway i will post my plan for the next while when i get a chance it is new years eve after all