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« on: March 29, 2010, 03:26:33 pm »
Along those lines of monitoring fatigue, another thing you can do is measure a particular movement or skill throughout a training week to see where you're at compared to baseline. The supercompensation curve can work off weekly cumulative fatigue as well. For example, the split I mentioned the other day went like this:
Mon 5 x 1 @ 85%
Tues: 5 x 1 @ 90%
Wed: 5 x 1 @ 95%
Thurs: off
Fri: 5 x 1 @ 80% (very easy)
Sat: Off
Sun: Off
Well you know if you can't get wednesdays 95% weight up or if it's really a struggle you're fatigued 5% from baseline, which is really perfect, because you basically have thursday thru sunday off to supercompensate. You could literally take a particular movement and do it every single day fresh until you reach a predetermined "drop-off" point, measured by how much your fresh efforts change on a daily basis, then take some time off to recover and supercompensate. During the recovery period, you have to do enough to maintain fitness and movement efficiency, but the focus is generally on recovery.
The amount of fatigue you want to induce though will vary based on the quality:
strength work: 5-10%
power work: (VJ/10 yd dash) 3-5%
top speed: 0-3%
So, take a movement like depth jumps. Say you have a 30 inch unmotivated VJ. An effort you can do any time. You decide to do depth jumps every day until your VJ drops off a fresh 3% (or about 1 inch) So everyday you do depth jumps and every day you monitor your VJ.
On day 1 you first measure your VJ then do 20 depth jumps (or simply do them until you start to dropoff)
you do the same on day 2
do the same on day 3
do the same on day 4
You keep doing that until one day your fresh (unmotivated) VJ is only 29 inches. It might take 1 day, might be 2 days, or might be an entire week or longer. But once you hit that point it mean's your "system" has accumulated 3% fatigue, so you then take a lower volume period so that you can supercompensate. That lower volume period will generally be as long as the number of days it took you to get in the hole, or you can just use the rule of 3rds described above.
That approach will work, however, it kinda sux for scheduling because you don't know what you're gonna be doing tomorrow or the next day or further on in the week. It also sux if you're doing anything else during a workout or week that might interfere with your ability to monitor fatigue. So what you can do is experiment and use enough intensity and volume each workout to know you'll be fairly close to fatiguing on a certain schedule. The drop-offs don't have to be perfect and the schedules don't have to be perfect, as long as the general concepts hold up. Take that little template I mentioned above:
Mon 5 x 1 @ 85%
Tues: 5 x 1 @ 90%
Wed: 5 x 1 @ 95%
Thurs: off
Fri: 5 x 1 @ 80% (very easy)
Sat: Off
Sun: Off
It can generally be assumed that after performing a given movement at an increasing intensity for 3 days straight that some level of fatigue will have accumulated in most people. That makes the schedule viable for most, but others may need to adjust it as some will accumulate too much fatigue while some not enough. In general it holds up though.
You can also base fatigue off of general accumulative nervous system stress. Fatigue cycles can be over days, weeks, or even months. You can monitor it thru hormone levels, heart rate variability (omega wave does this), and a ton of other things. But the general principles are the same. I think the weekly cycles are cool and easy to grasp for most people. I'm pretty sure that's what Jay Schroeder does. He goes 3 on 1 off, 3 on-2 off doing the same stuff every day.
It is amazing what the body can tolerate/adapt to given 2 consecutive days mostly off at the end of a week/cycle.
There are some posts/articles by Glenn Pendlay over on the DB forum that talk about how he does this with his o-lifters using monthly cycles. Basically 5 x 5 three x per week for 4-6 weeks followed by 3 x 3 once every 4th-th day for 4 weeks.
One more thing: I'm with you Andrew as far as monitoring intra-session drop-offs for power/speed work. In my experience it was more trouble then it was worth. Rather, I'd terminate a workout as soon as their as any drop-off at all, as once workout quality has declined the positive training effect is pretty well done too.
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