Power

Makeup sessions.  I moved the scheduled workout from Tuesday to Saturday.  

Warm-Up:
Mobility stuff - leg swings, marching, skipping, squats, etc.
2x5 squat jumps easy
2x5 tuck jumps easy
More mobility stuff
Sled drags - 4x forward @45kg, 4x backward @ 45kg

These warm ups are not really planned, but include mobility and task specific stuff.  I wonder if I should be doing more focused work here.  Take this opportunity to get some of the "other" stuff done, like pull ups and dips and what not.  The ancillary work, things like Glute Ham Rise (that would be very important to everything I do), KB carries, sled work...I just get so lazy sometimes.  Sometimes these "warm ups" are more for my mind than my body.  I love working out, I hate the pain I know that is about to come and the warm up is part procrastination part mental prep, part physical prep.  

Then:
5x10 Depth Jump-Vertical jump - 24"
5x10 Lateral Box Jump - 24"
5x10 Depth Jump-2nd box - 18" to 30" (stack of 3x15kg plates on top of 24")

The polymetric workouts are new and strange.  The measure of intensity is mostly dependent on either how high or far I chose to make myself jump.  The depth to vert was interesting to play with which foot leads off the box.  When I lead with the right foot, my timing gets wacky on the ground to the vertical leap.  When I land on both feet, I can get off the ground quicker and higher.  

I'm starting to wonder about complexing, combining strength and power by doing a "slow grinding" movement immediately chased by an explosive complementary exercise.  Like Front Squats and Box Jumps for example.  This is supposed to be more effective than doing them individually.        

Then:
60 min run at recovery pace

I found a pretty sweet loop that takes me about 30 min to complete at this recovery pace (not sure exactly how fast or slow it really is though, just going on the feel of it).  I think I'm operating at about 6mph or so.  I finished about 6 miles in the 60 min soooo...6mph.

While I run at this pace my mind wonders.  When the intensity is high, my mind focuses on breath.  It's always been this way ever since I can remember playing sports.  Swimming sprints and racing especially all I can hear or think about is the breath.  In the water it's clearer because the air is rushing past my ears, in the gym it's different but still the breath I focus on.  Long(er) steady state my mind wonders.

Today I thought about simplifying the concepts of working out.  Glassman and CrossFit have done a very good job of it and so has Mark Twight at Gym Jones.  I started thinking about the overlap here.  The goal of CrossFit is work capacity; everything else is secondary to it, everything.  Work Capacity is Work/Time.  Work is Force X Distance.  The distance portion is relatively fixed for a human so that leaves force and time the only two variables that we can exert any kind of control over.  Force is manipulated by strength, maximum force production.  Time is manipulated by velocity.  Velocity and force are inversely related.  High force, low velocity, high velocity, low force.  There is an optimum point though at which force and velocity are at their peak.  This is generally 35-50% of a 1RM effort.  Theoretically of course ;)  Then I remembered the law of specificity, which basically says that you get good at what you do most often.  In order to increase my velocity, I need to practice at high velocity.  To practice at high velocity I have to use light weight and move super fast.  

So Strength and Power affect the work capacity the most, but when I do a "work capacity" workout my tolerance is a major concern.  Pat O'Shea referred to this as power-endurance, repeated bouts of high power output creates this weird blend of power and endurance, strength endurance, strength speed, speed strength, these all refer to relatively the same thing just different emphasis'. 

So now we're talking Strength, Power, and Power-Endurance.  Then I started thinking about the importance of endurance, the third energy system.  (Over)Simple version: Cardio-endurance is the control mechanism for re-synthesizing the other energy systems.  It's obvious that I need to develop the cardio-endurance to maximize the other systems, but how?  If I do steady state the cost is muscle mass and strength, if I do intervals, I don't get the same cardio-endurance adaptations on a cellular level.  Or do I?  Either way I'm left with this, Strength, Power, Power-Endurance, and Endurance.  Now simplify; what's the most effective way to do each of these.  Strength - max efforts,  sub-max load and max reps, or sub max load at max velocity, all produce strength; Power - shock training (polymetrics), explosive lifts (Olympic lifts), and Litvinov sprints/drags; Power-Endurance - IWT's, CrossFit workouts; Endurance - Steady State, Medium, Threshold, and MaxV02 sets.

My thought was that I only have so much time, so let's narrow this down a bit to the most important towards my goals.  Strength - I don't have the equipment for velocity (bands, platforms for them, a way to measure velocity etc) so that's out.  Max reps tend to make me super sore and it that makes things very difficult to deal with the following days so I'd rather do max efforts.  So the most effective, efficient and safe for me is to do max effort strength training and percentage based stuff.  

Power - Litvinov sprints/drags - The jury is still out on these.  Twight loves them; I don't understand them enough to see the benefits yet.  Out.  Explosive lifts - I do these in the strength portion already so I'm not sure that adding them in here will help any more.  Out.  Shock training (polymetrics); IN.  

Power-Endurance - IWT's IN, no question.  CrossFit workouts, IN, no question.  

Endurance - oh man.  After an email exchange with Mark Twight I was convinced that Base Endurance and Mvo2 are my main concerns so medium pace and threshold stuff is out.  

The eustress typically happens at about 2-3x/week.  Meaning if I want to get stronger I have to lift about 2-3x/week then deload the bar for a bit.  Power is roughly the same, Power-Endurance is roughly the same and Endurance can be way up there, but for simplicity let’s keep it at 4-5x/week.  So we're talking about 14 workouts/week.  That's 2x/day 7days/week!  That's way too much to adapt from.  So what if I combine strength and power by using complexing?  Now I'm down to 11 workouts/week.  That's roughly 2x/day for 5 days and then a little bonus workout at the end.  Not too bad, that leaves 1 full day off.  I really doubt I could keep the schedule for any real length of time though.  What if I cycle things?  Two cycles; Strength/Power, Power/Endurance and Endurance work in the AM.  


4-6 weeks is about the max before things fall apart on the stuff I'm not focused on so at most I could do 6 weeks of Steady State (or oxidative intervals) in the AM, Strength/Power in the PM 3x/week and 1x/week Power-Endurance (IWT or CrossFit) in the PM.  Then deload, rest a bit and pick up cycle 2; 6 weeks of MaxVo2 in the AM and Power Endurance in the PM 3x/week and Strength/Power 1x/week in the PM.

This gives me 4x/week of hard work and 3x/week off.  Enough eustress and rest to adapt.  It also focuses on all the important things and none of the useless things (at least useless to my goal of general broad fitness).  

This was my thought on my run.  I had 60 minutes of uninterrupted time to think about this.  I think it could work.