Friday WAR Strength & Conditioning

"Reflection"

WAR Stength & Conditioning WorkoutA. Hang Power Snatch 5 Reps X 2 (115,65); 5 Reps X 2 (125,75); 5 Reps X 2 (135,85). NOTE:Total of 30 reps. Rest 1 minute in between sets. Choose from the three different loads depending on strength and skill level, increasing the load by 10lbs Rest 1 minuteB1. Bench Press 5 Reps X 5Rest 2 minutesB2. HSPU AMrepsAP X 5 Rest 2 Minutes+Row 350 meters (100% effort) X 3 Rest 2 minutesCheck out the below article, it's pretty interesting. Not sure if I totally agree with all of it; but interesting.  I think the implementation of CrossFit's "functional movements at a high intensity", such as the snatch, Power Clean etc. has only highlighted the importance of these lifts.  CrossFit, in a sense, brought these important movements out of the dark and into the light.  Sure, I don't always like how broad CrossFit is; but CrossFit doesn't claim to make a person good at one particular thing.  CrossFit's claim is that a person will be average at a variety of things.  I do, however, like the portion on adaptation: "The body can only adapt sufficiently to chronic stressors, which are stressors that are applied with enough intensity and regularity to cause a change in the physiology or architecture of the body necessary to the adaptation".

Adaptation: Period, Persistence, and Prioritization

by MAJ Damon Wells

The recent surge in the quest for a “well-rounded” and/or “functional” training program (and visible abs) has become the greatest inhibitor to effective training programming. The current trend in “fitness” training involves a complex array of what most perceive as balance of fitness parameters: strength, flexibility, skill specific, and high or low intensity endurance training. Becoming proficient in many skills or modalities is an attractive proposition and has become the fashionable gold standard for flashy, trendy workouts. Often, these techniques are applied haphazardly or in a method that emphasizes variety over consistency and progress. Terms like “muscle confusion” and “broad time and modal domains” are common and many will tell you that these are sound exercise principles. In fact, they are useless techniques that are the opposite of progress and are often gimmicks promoted by greedy entrepreneurs. These training methods can even be used to hide the fact that paying clients are making zero improvements following the routine. If you are always doing something different, how can you know if you are improving?In reality, most of the new fads like CrossFit, P90X, Insanity, etc. are simply glorified and well marketed versions of circuit training. Circuit training is the sequential performance of exercises with little to no rest between sets. This type of training has been around since the 1950’s and certainly isn’t original to any of the programs that are cleverly marketing it today. To the layman, this is seen as a quick way to get multiple training methods into one workout, and thus introduce variety. Typically, a sequence of moderately difficult exercises is chosen at random and strung together to form a circuit. The workout seems “hard” because at some point your performance is going to suffer due to fatigue. This, in itself, does not comprise a legitimate method of training. Hard does not equal good. This type of training, while not completely useless, usually boils down to some form of flopping around for 10-30 minutes. There is no magic in this. There are also compromises that must be made if one attempts to integrate strength, conditioning, and endurance into the same circuit (which is common). Unfortunately – circuit training or not – if one tries to conduct strength and endurance training in the same program, neither will be realized to their optimum potential. This has been shown in numerous studies; attempts to combine strength and endurance training concurrently lead to diminished (or zero) gains in both. Thus, the training is ineffective. Although these methods do induce a calorie burning state for the first month or two, they are not designed for longevity and long term progress (see The Novice Effect). They inhibit it. The combination of modalities and the trend towards variety leads to a weaker workout program.The muscle confusion theory leads to a paradox: training that leads to no significant muscular adaption. The body can only adapt sufficiently to chronic stressors, which are stressors that are applied with enough intensity and regularity to cause a change in the physiology or architecture of the body necessary to the adaptation. If you frequently change the nature of these stressors, your physiology can only adapt to those aspects which are consistent between workouts. The cardiopulmonary system may respond and adapt to every circuit training session you conduct, but if the exercises are not consistent, your muscles will not adapt. There may be some latent, insignificant adaptation to the muscular stress applied to the lower body, but not to the level required for improvement. If, for example, you choose a different lower body exercise for each session, your body will only accommodate strength into those parameters which are consistent from workout to workout. To the untrained eye a variety of exercises may seem like a good idea, but in reality it limits strength because the body’s inherent motor learning capacity is attenuated. The bottom line is this: training the same exercises regularly allows the body to adapt and thus grow stronger, while training a large variety of exercises equates to doing the same workouts with little to no adaptation. This is the paradox of “muscle confusion” training.Another part of the problem is the mainstream’s failure to acknowledge that different modalities stress the body in wholly different ways. These issues stem from the general public’s lack of knowledge about the application of effective training techniques and principles in each domain. For example, the majority of people in the gym are working under the assumption that they must train a certain number of body parts or “muscle groups” per day, usually until that body part is incapable of functioning properly. Their schedule most likely involves working this body part on a regular schedule every 4-7 days, regardless of training background. It is fully feasible to this person that the workout they pulled from Men’s Health magazine – because it looks rather cutting edge and seems moderately challenging – is good for them. Most people, including trainers and coaches, have steadfastly held to the simplistic notion that every muscle requires 48-72 hours to recover from a workout. Any workout. Many people believe that every training session requires a specific recovery period regardless of the level of experience or type of training. The idea that a training session should stress a system just enough to require an appropriate adaptation, and just enough so that training can be resumed as soon as possible, is foreign. A common practice instead is to train a specific muscle into oblivion, then give it around a week to recover. Any attempt to change this behavior is met with resistance and an immediate reference to an article written by Mr. Olympia. This inability to accommodate new ways of thinking when it conflicts with an illogical but well presented and widely-accepted paradigm is common. Revolutions in training are sometimes plagued by holdovers; hard won remnants of the old regime that are reluctant to die. Training methods, recovery techniques, and our understanding of adaptation must improve concurrently and if one changes, the others must follow suit.