|
Strategic Variable Training has not made me a
great bodybuilder or power lifter, but neither has any other training
method that promised great results, and I’ve tried oodles of them.
What Strategic Variable Training has done for me is to help me improve
more than any other training method. Perhaps it can help you as well.
A six week sample for this training plan is listed at the end of this
document. The logical basis for Strategic Variable Training is
explained before the workout plan is listed.
The Basis of Strategic Variable Training 
I believe your body is created to respond in an
intelligent way to life. Strategic Variable Training is a method that
is designed to make becoming stronger the most intelligent choice your
body can make. The most intelligent goal your body can have when faced
with a difficult weight lifting stress is to find a way to make the
stress less difficult. The whole premise of Strategic Variable
Training is based on the idea that your body’s goal is to make life
easier when stressed. If your body thinks that becoming stronger
will make life easier, it will become stronger. If your body thinks
that becoming stronger will not make life easier, it will not become
stronger regardless of your workout method. Our goal is to figure out
when becoming stronger would make life easier and when it wouldn’t. Our
bodies already understand this. We must learn how our bodies think if
we are going to design a training strategy in which it makes sense for
our bodies to become stronger.
When Becoming Stronger Will Make Life Easier
I am going to use Larry as an example of when
becoming stronger would make life easier. Larry did his first bench
press workout with 100 pounds for 10 reps, but he did not have enough
strength to do an 11th rep. Larry’s body is intelligent so
it thinks to itself, “That was hard! I have to find a way to make
lifting 100 pounds easier. I know what I can do, I can become stronger
so that 100 pounds will be easier to lift.” Larry’s body has just made
an intelligent decision to make life easier by becoming stronger. After
working out twice per week for a couple of weeks, Larry decides to add 5
additional pounds to his previous workout weight because he wants to
continue to become stronger. He keeps following the same strategy by
adding weight to the bar every time he becomes stronger. Larry’s
strategy seems to be working as he continues to increase in strength.
When Becoming Stronger Will Not Make Life Easier
Unfortunately for Larry, the training strategy
that caused him to become stronger when he began training is the exact
same strategy that will eventually cause all strength gains to cease.
Harder training is both the hero and the villain. A further examination
of Larry’s case study will help us to understand why. Larry’s body has
been getting stronger because his body is attempting to make the weights
easier for Larry to lift. Larry’s training strategy is to keep adding
weight to the bar in order to make his workouts harder. This means
Larry’s body is trying to make life easier but Larry keeps making life
harder. Hopefully you can see the conflict. Easier and harder are
opposites. Larry’s training strategy is in conflict with the
intelligent goal of his body. Eventually Larry’s body is going to say,
“Every time I try to make life easier by becoming stronger, Larry makes
life harder by adding more weight. Why should I keep becoming stronger
when it always results in life becoming harder? I see no advantage in
becoming stronger.” Larry thinks that he must always train harder and
harder to continue to make progress, but his body thinks differently.
The
Pattern That Kills Progress
Larry has just run into the pattern that kills
progress. The pattern that kills progress is when the body’s attempt to
make life easier is always paired with a specific stress that makes life
harder. This training pattern must be broken. Larry will have to find
a way to make his training easier because the goal of his body is to
make life easier. This strategy sounds illogical because if Larry makes
his training easier, it would seem that his body would have no reason to
become stronger. However, knowing how to adjust training variables will
help Larry solve this problem.
4
Training Variables
There
are several ways that you and I can make our training harder or easier
by adjusting training variables. For the sake of simplicity, I will
list 4 training variables that we can base our training strategy on.
-
Total Volume
which equals the amount of weight being lifted times the number of
repetitions.
-
The amount of
weight on the bar
-
Percentage of
intensity to failure
-
Number of
training sessions each week per body part.
Larry’s training strategy has been to focus on
training with one set of 10 repetitions to 100% failure. In doing
this, he has emphasized variable number three on the list of training
variables to the neglect of the other 3 training variables that are
listed. His body is now tired of going to failure. However, Larry has
not pushed his body in regard to the other 3 training variables. If he
will decrease the percentage of intensity to failure and increase the
difficulty of the other three training variables, his body will be
pushed in the areas where it has not been heavily taxed from previous
training. At the same time, it will be relieved from a decrease of
training stress in the area where it has been over taxed for a long
period of time. For instance, Larry could do 6 sets of 4 repetitions
with slightly heavier weights for three days per week instead of two.
His total reps per workout will increase from 10 to 24. His weights
will have increased and his workout days will have increased. Yet his
body is resting from having to train to all out failure, which is the
training variable that had been pushed to a maximum for so long. By
making training easier in the area where previous training was
difficult, and making training harder in the areas where previous
training was easy, Larry can avoid the pattern that kills progress.
Larry has found a temporary solution to his
problem. However, the pattern that kills progress will repeat itself if
Larry continues to progress by increasing the difficulty of the other 3
training variables. How can Larry solve this problem? One solution is
to choose just one new variable to focus on while keeping the difficulty
of the other 3 variables at a low level. For example, if Larry chooses
to increase the weight on the bar, he can also choose to decrease his
total training volume, his training sessions per week, and to keep the
percentage of training intensity to failure at a low level. Larry has
just made his training easy in three ways and harder in only one way.
His body will not go into the pattern that kills progress because
training has become easy in more ways than it has become hard. If
Larry’s body becomes tired of lifting heavy weight, he can reduce the
weights and increase the other three variables in which his body has
been rested and fresh. A systematic increase and decrease of training
variables can keep the body from perceiving that an increase in strength
is always being paired with a specific training stress that will always
increase in difficulty. In doing this, a person has a better chance of
avoiding the pattern that kills progress.
Strategically Using Training Variables
There
are a lot of possible ways to use training variables in a strategic way
so that the most intelligent choice the body can make is to become
stronger. I personally use a training strategy where I alternate back
and forth between a single variable emphasis for a week, followed by an
emphasis of three training variables the next week. The combination of
training variables being stressed is different every week for a six week
period. The best way to demonstrate this is to look at the six week
training plan. This training plan could be used for an exercise of
your choice or for training your whole body with several exercises. If
training your whole body with this training plan, I recommend keeping it
simple and choosing a few compound exercises, but the exercises are up
to you. You can combine opposite (antagonistic) muscle groups and
quickly alternate back and forth between them each set to make workouts
go faster. Long workouts are not necessary. I see no need for long
rest periods between sets except where specifically indicated in the
training plan.
A Six Week Strategic Variable Training
Plan
Week 1
Strategy is to stress 1 training variable listed below:
1.
Total Volume
Monday
Sets
reps
12 x
4 @ 60% of 1 rep max (1RM)
Wednesday
7 x 3
@ 60% of 1 RM
1 x
reps to failure @ 60% of 1RM
Friday
5 x 3
@ 60% of 1 RM
1 x 3
@ 85% of 1 RM
Week 2
Strategy is to stress 3 training variables including:
1.
Total Volume 2. Intensity to failure 3. Training sessions per week
Monday
10 x 3
@ 65% of 1 RM
1 x
reps to failure using 30% of 1 RM
Tuesday
7 x 3
@ 65% of 1RM
1 x
reps to failure using 55% of 1 RM
Friday
4 x 30
@ 35% 1RM
Saturday (optional)
1 x
reps to failure using 25% of 1RM
Week 3
Strategy is to stress 1 training Variable listed below:
1.
Weight increase
Monday
8 x 3
@ 75% of 1RM
Wednesday
6 x 3
@ 75% of 1RM
Friday
5 x 3
@ 80% of 1RM
Week 4
Strategy is to stress 3 training variables including:
1.
Weight increase: 2. Total Volume: 3. Training session per week
Monday
8 x 3
@ 80% of 1RM
3 x 30
@ 30% of 1RM
Tuesday
6 x 3
@ 80% of 1RM
2 x 30
@ 30% of 1RM
Friday
5 x 3
@ 85 % of 1RM
1 x
100 @ 20% of 1RM
Saturday
3 x 3
@ 85% of 1RM
5 x 6
@ 40% of 1RM
Week 5
Strategy is to stress 1 training variable listed below:
1.
Intensity to failure
Monday
2 x
reps to failure using 65% of 1RM: 3 minutes rest between sets
Friday
2 x
reps to failure using 70% of 1RM: 3 minutes rest between sets
Week 6
Strategy is to stress 3 training variables including:
1.
Intensity to failure: 2. Training sessions per week: 3. Weight
Monday
Warm
up
1
Giant Strip set as follows:
1 x
reps to failure using 80% of 1RM
1 x
reps to failure using 70 % of 1RM
1 x
reps to failure using 60% of 1RM
1 x
reps to failure using 50 % of 1RM
No
rest between sets
Tuesday
A mini
strip set as follows:
1 x
reps to failure using 70% of 1RM
1 x
reps to failure using 65% of 1RM
No
rest between sets to failure
Wednesday
2 x 3
@ 85% of 1RM
1 x
reps to failure using 65% of 1RM
Saturday
1 x
reps to failure using 70% of 1RM
Final Words of Advice
If
there seems to be unusual extremes of varying weights and rep ranges in
this training plan, don’t panic. The extremes are planned in a sequence
that creates a positive training effect. Personally, I don’t mind
weight training pain. If you don’t like pain, you may be tempted to
quit this type of training if your body is not accustomed to high reps
or strip sets. Don’t let temporary soreness or weakness keep you from
taking the necessary time for your body to adapt in a positive way. If
you stick with it, you’ll be fine when you go through another 6 week
cycle.
If you
plan on repeating this 6 week cycle, do very little training in week
seven and then start the six week cycle again at the start of the eighth
week.
If you are
stuck in the pattern that kills progress, or just stuck, you have
nothing to lose if you give Strategic Variable Training a try.
Thanks -
Mark Sherwood
Natural
Bodybuilding at its Finest - Lift for Life.com
|
