Gain O'clock!

Side note: I had all of the sessions do the KStar mobility wod from the video a couple posts down during the warm up. So if you're in the AM sessions. Do it!

So by now, many of you are saying "YEP! Sign me up! I want to get strong and then condition myself at a new, higher strength level so that I may be even stronger, faster, more powerful, and even harder to kill than ever before in the history of life!!"; "I want to REAP the rewards of being stronger than others so I may swagger around and push the earth away behind me along with others who are weak." Or if you're like me, you just let out a big roar, crack your neck and knuckles, stomp around and then break something. (Testosterone issues.. no biggie). Either way, the idea of being stronger; being more than you are now, gets people PUMPED and hopefully many of you are wondering how..

First, I'll address the shortcomings of BHIP. Essentially, what we do in BHIP is straight-up conditioning. I try to throw in as much strength work as I can into the cycles but we really can't periodize strength in BHIP. We mainly periodize intensity. A single hour-long session is just not enough to fit in a full warm-up, a strength workout, and a conditioning workout. Many wouldn't be able to physically and psychologically handle it.. We have too many people out there and it would be chaotic if we even tried. Basically, it's just impossible with the resources we currently have. Heck, we don't even have the squat racks anymore (we only have 4 or 5 anyway) so there you go.. The strength gains we incur are "incidental." This is a good thing in the sense that the strength is legit and comes from a deep down place inside that pushes you to do more.. These strength gains will withstand the test of time. If you dead lifted 200 pounds in BHIP, chances are you'll keep that for a long long time.

The workouts we do focus much more of structural and metabolic work capacity at high intensities. That means conditioning. Nothing wrong with it. It's awesome, as many of you know. We get to do a lot of cool stuff with it and it's fun to do in a group setting. Basically, the workouts serve everyone and everyone will benefit from them in some way or another.

Real "specific" strength training involves periodizing incremental linear progression over short and long intervals of weeks and months. Basically, you try to increase your weight-bearing and weight-moving capacity every week or so. This involves meticulously monitoring progress. So lets say this week I squatted 100 lbs for 3 sets of 5 repetitions; next week I'll try to squat 105 lbs for 3 sets of 5. And so on. I keep doing this overload training to provide a stress for my body to adapt against; I eat and sleep to recover and the cycle works and continues. It works in small increments over various periods of time. You can do it in short cycles to gain strength for a purpose or a competition, or you can do it in long cycles for a career or for fun. This is essentially how any simple, beginner program works. But it takes time and commitment.

The strength gains have to be your main focus and you have to adjust your other training to facilitate the strength gains. So if you're coming up on a some huge weight that feels like a near-death experience, you'll have to hit it fresh and rested, so no conditioning the day prior or more.

I'll get more into this later, but it's pretty simple. We know our lifts (the squat is by far the most important) and we know our numbers, now we do them and get stronger. Since the squat is king, we do it twice a week and dead lift less frequently and press once a week.

Here's a simple model broken down by day:

Monday:
Squat - 2x 5, 1x 5+ (do as many as possible on last set). (Add 5 lbs from previous Monday)
Assistance work..

Tuesday:
Press - If you can go heavy 3x 5+ (try to add small amounts of weight). If light, then 3x 8-12 to develop shoulders.
Assistance

Wednesday:
Off

Thursday:
Squat - 3x 8 (5-10lbs less than on Monday)
Assistance

Friday;
Dead Lift - warm up light. the 1x 5+. Go heavy and go for broke. (add 5 - 10 lbs from previous).
Or, cleans - 5x 3 (try to add 2.5 lbs)

*The weights stays the same for all of the "working sets".

*Assistance just means 1 or 2 things that relate to the lift. eg. Arms on press day. Sit ups on squat day. etc.

*Push ups and pull ups (or development of pull ups) and dips should be done throughout the week.
eg. 100 of each per week.


This is a simple program that I just threw together which will build a lot of strength very quickly.

I did a program similar to this for an entire year last year and made big gains. I conditioned 2-4 days a week depending on how I felt. Conditioning workouts were short and furious. Just like what we do in BHIP.

So now obviously you're asking "well, what happens when I reach a maximum strength?" Sometimes it's called a plateau and sometimes it is just boredom. Let's say you're squatting one day and you fail to complete all 5 reps or 8 reps or whatever you had to do. You may have reached the upper limits of your developments for this cycle. What you do is you find the last SUCCESSFULLY completed 3x5 you did. Probably the one you did the previous week. You take 90% of it and start THAT particular lift from there. So the sets that have a "+", you'll just be able to do more reps now and the strength will build there. It looke much like the graph I drew up last week about "shape".

I know I've simplified it a bit here and I'm just giving you guys an example of a strength program. If you only have 2 days to lift the it looks like this:

Day 1:
Squat - 2x 5, 1x5+ (add 5lbs from previous day 1)
Press - 3x 8+ (add weight from previous)

Day 2:
Squat - 3x 8 (5-10 lbs less than day 1)
Dead Lift - 1x 5+ (add 5-10 lbs)


Either way you go, the key is to make progress, so you have to start light. If your squat is like 135, I'd start you at like 85 or 95 lbs so that you can progress and build a good strength base long before you start getting into the unknown.

Now that you're all nice and confused, try to draw up a strength program that might fit your schedule and post it in the comments and I'll give you some feedback.

Have fun!