This is very interesting to me. I just started on a new Push/Pull/Legs/Full split that I am running in addition to a structured cycling training program (3 days on the bike for a total of 4-5 hours depending on the week). My full body day has just naturally become my optional day for the reasons you mention. I was feeling guilty about that but the fact that some smart people also do/did this makes me feel better.
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Yeah!
Smart people doing it is Good. And then to see coaches recommend it because it also works for the masses is Good too. The 3rd level was to see dudes running Meadows programs, trying it out, them commenting that it “worked.”
It’s like Months of trial and error all done for me.
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4-5 years ago a lifter I follow did a one-off post about their workout that day, using German Volume Training as a deload. The idea was that the light weights you use with 10 sets of 10 would let the CNS recover.
I tried that shit and couldn’t sleep that night. It was like the opposite of a deload.
A couple years after that I got one of dude’s official manuals, and GVT was in there as a cycle of regular training days. Not a deload. And the official deload was down to just 3 sets instead of 10.
So it was like they tried it out at the gym and even filmed as Cool Footage. But then they had to kick it around and try it on some normal people and figure out how to use it before they could give it the official Recommendation.
I guess you gotta break some eggs to get an omelet. And learning is cool. But now I’m getting old enough to let somebody else be the egg.
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Did he happen to quantify “light weights” as a percentage of his 1RMax? And how much rest between sets?
But I do believe if you had the conditioning for the 10 sets of 10 reps, it would rest your CNS.
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In the first gym footage type video, he was just benching like 50%, no details.
Later, in an instructional type video the advice was to start lighter and work up to about 50% by the end. And dude made the same point, you need to be in shape or its too much.
Looking in on you and Dave, I was surprised by how carefully and deliberately Meadow’s programs are put together. A bunch of times you guys mentioned how one particular workout was great, or tough, or a welcomed change to the lifts, or whatever else, because of how it was different than last week.
Sometimes people criticize all the variety in John’s stuff, but watching you guys, it was clear it was all planed for a purpose.
It’s not surprising messing with the order of things threw the whole scheme off kilter.
Weaving in light days would probably work great in a different, more “stable” program.
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GVT is definitely not a deload… the original protocol was 10 x 10 with 1:30 min between sets iirc
Did it with dips, squats, barbell deads, and pull ups…
How did it work out?
What do you think about 8 x 8?
It is waaaaaay too much.
8 x 8 was the Gironda method… used it in high school. Still too much
After over 30 years of experience ive pretty much settled on HIT style training.
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Ugh! HIT! It’s just so hard to get to failure.
I leave 1 or 2 RIR now actually. Failure is used sparingly
IMO, this makes the most sense. The rep you miss (failure) rarely seems to “feel” like anything was accomplished.
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Haven’t been an athlete for years, but I do have the fancy degree that qualifies me to give armchair opinions on these things.
Think of the deload week like an alcoholic or caffeine or nicotine addict going cold turkey for a week.
At the end of that week, they aren’t going to need as many drinks, coffees, or smokes to get the same effect as they did before the deload week.
The same goes for your body and training. All these mechanisms in your body that detect and respond to training stimulus slowly habituate to that stimulus and they respond less and less over time until eventually they don’t respond at all. In Arnold’s day this is when they would do a huge damaging workout and then take a week off. Joke’s on them though the magic wasn’t in the torturous “plateau-breaking” workout before the week off the magic was in the week off.
When I was in competitive biathlon one of my teammates who made it to the Olympic development team (but then found a girlfriend and you know the rest) would squeeze his prescribed 4 weeks of training into 3 weeks and then take the entire 4th week off to have a chance to be a normal teenager through twenty-something. So if we were prescribed 30 hours of training for that 4 week block while most of us were doing 6-8 hours of dryland cardio per week for the 4 weeks he would do 10 hours per week for 3 weeks and 0 hours the fourth week.
Dude also ate massive amounts of junk food and was always ripped. Meanwhile I was watching my macros and always eating out of food containers and just barely holding it together maintaining like 12-14%.
He wasn’t the best athlete on the team but he was solidly top five in every race up to the national level before “taking a break” which meant getting a job and freedom from his parents and coaches and then he decided he really liked not being an athlete anymore and I think he’s a firefighter now.
That was the 00’s and I thought he was crazy to train that way at the time but now it seems like he had the right idea. He gave his body a week to heal his developing injuries before they could become chronic problems, it gave him a mental health break from training so that he could do the things he normally couldn’t due to training commitments, and most importantly it re-sensitized the complex systems of his body to training.
Also I think there was a study not too long ago comparing a long term bench press program between one group that trained every week and another group that took every 4th week off and their progress was nearly identical between the groups. So at the very least taking every 4th week off doesn’t hurt your progress and if you only need to train 3 weeks out of every 4 to get the same training effect as every week then it doesn’t make sense to train on that 4th week if those efforts don’t bring any additional results. Use that 4th week to do all of the things you normally can’t or don’t do because you’re training.
On a similar vein there’s an Olympic speedskater who only trains 5 days per week, Monday through Friday, taking the weekends off so that he can socialize and do normal-people things with his normal-people family and friends. He goes to the Olympics so it’s not like we can criticize and say that’s not the “right” way to train. Also he does 90% of his training not even skating so what the hell is that about but hey it’s working for him.
Anyways the point is take every 4th week off and you can even train 5 days in a row taking the weekends off like a reverse-weekend-warrior if you want to. People are making it to the Olympics training this way.
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More of a metric than an actual effective rep. I train in the 4 to 8 range typically so I’m avoiding too much CNS overload.
The Russians were onto something in the 80’s and 90’s with their Olympic wrestlers… Gable was grinding our athletes into the dirt… Russians were far more cautious about fatigue, optimizing performance and recovery. I’ve seen the same results in myself with both weights and fighting.
Stimulate > Recover > Repeat
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