Programming

I'm rewriting how my programming falls as far as scheduling goes. In addition to this, I've incorporated some ideas from other coaches than DeFranco, Tate, and Simmons. Ultimately, I hope to have something that I can say, for certain, is the best thing for me, personally. My warm-up routine has largely begun to follow the approach heralded by Athlete's Performance Systems, pioneered largely by Gray Cook and his Functional Movement Screen. That is to say that I begin with mobility drills, assess where my mobility is lacking as it pertains to the strength training of the day, do some corrective exercises for that purpose, and end the warm-up with some dynamic/plyometric work to fire up the CNS. In the short few days that I've been doing this, I've noticed that maximal lifts have been easier and less sketchy, and dynamic lifts have been cleaner. I'm not about to jump out of bounds just because of that, though.

My planned routine shifts maximal effort days apart and looks like this:

Monday: ME Lower Body
Tuesday: DE Upper Body/ESD
Wednesday: Swim/LI Cardio
Thursday: DE Lower Body/Parkour in evenings
Friday: ME Upper Body/ESD
Saturday: Rest/Parkour/other
Sunday: rest/Parkour/other

The weekend will either be for rest or very light work. It'll be nice to have some sport-specific training under my bag again, as well. I'm pairing up ESD with upper body days because it seems like the only time where my body will be fresh enough from the hips on down to get any of that done.

In conjunction with the conjugated periodisation of the Westside template, I may go ahead and incorporate a form of linear/classical periodisation into the program. The reason for this is because I'm not entirely sure if continued maximal strength training is a good thing in the long run. Rather, I want to take a more graduated approach. I know that Westside accounts for this by rotating the ME exercises frequently, but I still have a feeling that it takes its toll on the CNS to lift a heavier weight EVERY week, no matter if the exercise differs. For this reason, I don't intend to rotate my exercises to so many bizarre modifications of the basic and prime exercises to "keep things fresh." Rather, after this microcycle, I'll be going back to box squat/pull-up for my "ME" days... work up to a new maximum if applicable, and then HOLD that weight for all three weeks of the microcycle. Meanwhile, my DE days will increase in weight progressively so as to technically be in a "speed phase" of a linearly periodised method.

This "speed phase" will not consist of the entire 9-week mesocycle of box squat/squat/deadlift + pull-up/bench/incline that I have mapped out for myself. I think that that'd be far too long and result in a loss of maximal strength overall, due to the nature of Westside. Rather, I will only be "resting" for the three-week micro before returning to "strength phase" training. From here, I have two options.. I could go for nine weeks and have the next speed phase fall on the start of the previous strength phase... Or I could alternate strength/speed micros. I think that the latter may be the most appropriate choice, since the whole point of this was to avoid a full nine-weeks of maximal strength training.

While I am in my strength phases, I will probably still be increasing on my speed days as well, but it entirely depends on how "up to it" I feel, so the progression will be much slower. I believe that this is the best approach for now, and will measure out my progress in the fall to really make any additional modifications (though there may still be modifications along the way).

In addition to this, I've included, as a mandatory part of the program, soft tissue work as a post-workout recovery phase. This will take place after the post-workout nutrition/meal/shake as part of the recovery process.