Just looking for some suggestions as to when it is best to incorporate conditioning work into my current routine. For the past week I’ve been experimenting with performing kettle bell swings at the end of my heavy lifting sessions. I lift 5-6 days a week, and while it may be placebo at this moment, I feel a little better since incorporating conditioning work (which I’ve never done in conjunction with weight training). I’d like to continue but am not aware as to sufficient frequency. Is 10 minutes at the end of every lifting session advisable; is it better every other day; or should there be days designated for conditioning?
I highly recommend the works of Thomas Kurz for this. He states that for instance if you perform a high volume strength workout for the lower body(for example) it may take 72 hrs to recover. Now obviously you cant train only 2-3 times(if your an athlete) a week so what you can do is come back to the gym later in the day and do a smaller workout(no more than 60% of the earlier workouts volume - but maybe even 20-30%).
If your early session was 60 mins non stop you want to keep your later session to 35 mins maximum, or maybe even 10-15 mins. The reason is smaller workouts are faster to recover from. A brief anaerobic effort may take only a few hours to fully recover from. That is why volume has to be properly distributed and you cannot have too many extreme volume sessions in a week (Verkhoshansky used 3 major sessions a week with recovery workouts on the consecutive days). It has to be of a different type though(i.e not another heavy strength session). He states that this actually speeds up recovery as a bonus.
What is your main goal?
A tiny guy like me can do some 6 days weekly alternating medium-light intensity.
Let say 2 sets of 2 minutes of swings 3 times weekly plus 3 sets of 1 min weekly alternating the 2 intensities.
The load will take you to feeling the heat and your heart beats.
If your are muscular maybe 4 days is plenty but alternating medium with light days seems to be working for many.
Maybe a day or 2 of power walking about 10 min.
There are lots of good answers find what suits you. I go with seasons, swimming etc…
Personaly i train at home many 5-10 min so maybe finish with a little conditioning or do it later.