Hey, been away for a while. I'm in the process of finishing my exams for my 2nd year of uni. So after this I'm going to have the whole summer off. I don't fight when I'm in my home town so I'm planning to use the 14 weeks off to develop my strength. I'm using these standards to meaure my strength. http://www.t-nation.com/free_online...d_out_right_now_with_these_strength_standards As I'm a fighter I think the good level is something to aim for. Anything beyond this I think will see little transfer to improving my fighting ability due to diminishing returns. So my current weight is 78kg, I will focus on the big 3 three, squat, deadlift and Bench Press. I will update these values weekly My current lifts are. Squat 120kg 5x5 Bench Press 90kg 5x5 Deadlift 130kg 5x5 Using a 1rm calculator I worked out I need to improve these lifts as following before attemping to reach my desired 1rms in each one. Squat 140kg 5x5 (to attempt 160kg 1rm - 2x bodyweight) BP 105kg 5x5 (to attempt 120kg 1rm - 1.5x bodyweight DL 140-150kg 5x5 (to attempt 160kg 1rm - 2x bodyweight) So essentially I'm looking at improving my bench by 15kg, my squat by 20kg and my deadlift by 20kg in 14 weeks. My strength training will be as follows. Mon Deadlifts 5x5 Bent Over Rows 5x5 Romanian deadlifts 5x5 Pull ups 3x5 (weighted) Core Wed Bench Press 5x5 Military Press 5x5 Dumbell Press 3x10 Dips Core Fri Squat 5x5 Front Squat 3x5 Good Mornings 3x8-10 Bicep Curls (for the girls) 3x8. I will train boxing Muay thai 4-5 times a week but not that intense, will mainly be working technique. I will also be running 5 miles on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. In terms of diet I will mainly be sticking to fats and proteins and starchy carbs such as rice. My caloric needs are crazy when I train like this twice a day along with biking to and from training. I expect the macro split to come to around 33/33/33. As I said before my current weight is 78kg. I don't want to go above 81kg as I will need to lose it after the 14 weeks to get to my fighting weight again (hopefully keeping all my strength). As for supplements I will be on creatine, will start loading it monday. Whey protein as part of breakfast and periworkout nutrition. Omega 3 capsules. Nothing crazy. I have a full plan drawn up if you can be bothered to read it Week 1: Dl 132.5kg, BP: 92.5kg, Sq: 122.5kg Week 2: Dl 135kg, BP 95kg, Sq: 125kg Week 3: Dl 137.5kg, BP 97.5kg, Sq 127.5kg Week 4: Dl 140kg, Bp 100kg, sq 130kg Week 5: dl 142.5k, bp 102.5kg, sq 130kg. Week 6: dl 145kg, bp 105kg, sq 132.5kg. Week 7: DELOAD Week 8: dl 140kg, bp 100kg, sq 127.5kg Week 9: dl 142.5k, bp 102.5kg, sq 130kg. Week 10: dl 145kg, bp 105kg, sq 132.5kg. Week 11: dl 147.5kg, bp (Deload), sq 135kg. Week 12. dl 150kg, bp: try for single, sq 137.5kg Week 13: dl (deload), bp 105kg, sq 140kg. Week 14: DL 150kg, BP 105kg, Sq try for single. I will begin updating this on Monday. I'm fairly confident I can maybe even beat my squat and deadlift goals. The bench Press will be hard for me to acheive though. I'll record all training undertaken as well as macro nutrient break downs for each day on here at the end of eaach day.
Sound's good Axel, quick thing, those 5x5 aren't thaaat precise for an ORM measurement, meaning at times you might be able to 5x5 more than that but only have an ORM of 160 on the squats say, sometimes you might be able to do less than 5x5 but still hit that ORM. I tend to change up my exercises every 4 weeks or so and take a break of a week after every 8 weeks. My training originally started very similar to what you are doing but now instead of the Squat, Bench, Dead day format, I do Squat, High Effort Bench, Dead, Mid effort bench. I also found the bench to drastically improve by using the dumbell variation instead of barbells, so after 4 weeks of dumbbell bench, I might check what my gains or try the same 5x5 on a barbell instead, you will be pleasantly surprised. Also for ORMs I suggest overloading at the end of the session, after you have done your major exercise, say for example the 5x5 90kg bench, (and that is the most you can do) (I tend to work in pyramids working up to a fake ORM, so the last one is 1rep) I like to over load, so my last bench rep might be one at 165kg, then I'll have my spotter hand me 175 or 180, push it up for me, and let me just "feel" the weight and slowly make me push down. Good luck! EDIT: Also with the last set of the 5x5 you could have your spotter provide some pressure so theres that tiny little extra weight, even if you don't completely finish that 5x5 you can guarantee you got those motor units firing!
any particular reason why you're doing 5x5 deads right at the start on the monday sessions? methinks you'd likely be able to put bigger weights on all other exercises with fewer, heavier deadlifts done at the end, since they're an extremely taxing lift (and particularly as you're going to do rows and romanian deads after them. lower back fatigue is not very amusing when you're trying to lift). something like 1x5, heavy triples or singles, or a particular amount of reps to be done in as few sets as possible. good luck!
I always do the big 3 first, and this is common practice amongst power lifters no? It's so you can spend most of your energy, and motor neurons being used on the main and most important exercises, the idea is the others are supplementary exercises, to contribute to improving the main lift, while working on a similar muscle group, considering the next workout is a Bench, and then Squats, and provided you have adequate rest and nutrition, it allows the muscle groups to heal quite nicely.
I'd agree with you, though wouldn't do 5x5 on deadlift, say 3x5 or 5x3 or even 3x3. That said I do more reps, upto 15 in 5/3/1. Also as you said 1RM calculators can be misleading, as my Squat could be 115kg and Deadlift 155kg!
so you are lifting three says a week, running three days AND doing 4 or 5 skill sessions, only deloading at week 7 and you think this is a plan to build maximum strength? Hope im wrong but i suspect massive burn out by about week 6 seriously if you want to get strong you need to cut back on the cardio and skill work and concentrate on getting strong with pleanty of rest, you cant run a powerlifting routine on an MMA schedule it simply leads to mediocre results
Thanks for the advice. Yeah I know those 1rm calculators are not that accurate, I wont consider it a sucess unless I actually lift the 1rms, and ill prob give them all a go at the end of the 14 weeks anyway. With the deadlifts ive always done 5x5, I always found squats more draining too. I will see how it goes though and will considee reducing the volume if I burn out. Same with all the other training. I guess if I eat enough I will be fine since im used to running and skill training every day. I normally do 2 strength sessions a week anyway. I can always take off a day or so running if I burn out though. Thanks for the replies
honestly you might be fine but you wont make the gains you are looking for Consider this probably the two best known S and C coaches in MMA (who actually train fighters AND put information out there) are martin rooney and Joel Jameson, both of those suggest only 3 or at most 4 extra workouts on top of their athletes MMA/Thai training (Joel suggests 3 days, rooney used to sugget 4 now its 3), and both suggest if you are going to try to increase one capacity, ie strength, you reduce the volume of work on the other capacity, ie endurance because of 3 reasons 1) You get stronger when you rest and recover, not when you workout and 2) MMA / combat sports have to be treated like year round in season training and volume has to be changed accordingly and 3) if you have built a good base of endurance and are training skills 3 days or more a week, that should be ample conditioning work to keep you at the level you have got to, maybe throw in one conditioning days if you have to but their is no need to push both strength and conditioning hard at the same time but hey you know your strength levels better than i do so ill shut up now !
I take your point and I'll look into those coaches cos I never heard of them. I would say though that my skill work is not going to be paticularly hard. I am effectively in 'off season' until September as I don't fight when at home. I also am going to be living the lifestyle of a pro athlete since all I will have to worry about is training. If I stall though I will hapilly drop some running. We will see what happens I guess.
So went to the gym this morning. My legs were still killing from DOMs due to squats on Friday (hadn't done them for two weeks previous), made the whole workout uncomfortable as they kept cramping up. Deadlift: 5x5 132.5kg (belt went on at 100kg and straps on after my 1st working set) Bent Over Row: 5x5 72.5kg Romanian Deadlift: 70kg (just started using these so building up the weight slowly) Pull ups: 3x4 5kg Plank: 3:05 Minutes Side Planks: 1:05 minutes. I think my technique suffered a bit due to my legs cramping a lot during dls, by next week I should be used to squatting again and the w/o will be less painful... hopefully. My assistance lifts are all low for me but I'm starting light, especially with the RDL which I only just learnt to do. Are they normally higher or lower than someones DL? Food: Oats with cinamon and honey for breakfast with protein shake. 2:1 carb and protein shake during taining and frijj shake after. will update again later.
Ok so full food list for today Oats with cinamon and honey for breakfast with protein shake. 2:1 carb and protein shake during taining. frijj shake after training. 3 rice cakes with natural peanut butter 225g Lean Steak Mince fried with onion, tomatoes in butter in 2 pitta breads with salad 5 eggs scrambled with lettuce and tomatoes. Also consumed 20g of creatine monohydrate in 5g doses throughout day and 4 omega 3 capsules and a multivitamin. Calories: 2742 (i didn't include vegables so probably a bit more) Protein: 195g Carbs: 240g fat: 106g
I find with Squats I have to foam roll (post workout) or get stuck with unbearable DOMS for the next 3-4 days. It's only with Squats, I lift about 25-30% more with Deadlift and don't have the same issue.
Thanks mate will give that a go, been meaning to do some foam rolling but mines at home and I'm at uni for another 2 weeks. It's always really bad if I dont squat for a week then come back to it. I expect legs will hurt a little after this fridays squats then not at all the friday after. I thought I had pulled a muscle in my leg at first, luckily it was just cramp.
Yes, and I did say the 1RM calculators are a bit random, and, err it's worse I used this http://www.strstd.com/ put Kilos, my weight in as 64kg, Female, Reps 12, Weight 107kg (which I did on May 5th) and get 1RM of 160kg lol A couple of weeks ago I did a 1RM at 125kg, but felt I could have lifted at least 5kg more, maybe 10kg [I'm on month 5 of 5/3/1 programme on the training logs]
Not really, it's just suprising because it's impressive. Woman are naturally weaker and I dont know any girls that even DL let alone can do near enough 3x their BW, really impressive and shows that I need to train harder
ahhahaha!!! You might be surprised man... get out there... there are tons of gyms where women lift and they don't mess about. Boom! harukoraharu is defo an example of that!
I need to meet some of these women! Today was no lifting. I went to the gym to do bagwork. Did 3x3 minutes round shadow boxing to warm up. Then I did 10 x 3 minute rounds on the heavy bag. I can only box when using the bag at the weight lifting gym as they have a problem with kicking the bags. I worked on throwing combos, then moving round the bag and back out. Or at least moving my head after the combos. I often throw shots then just stand in front of my opponent so they can counter easily, so thats why I've been working on the above. Finished off with 10 mins light shadow boxing to reign in the techniques and cool down at the end. This evening I went for a 5 mile run, took 42:33 which is very slow for me considering my pb for this route is 38:55. I havent run for about 2 weeks though so it's ok. Diet was crap, really need to sort that out as a priority. Edit: also did bout 20 mins static stretching after my run.
