Jacked 31 Conditioning

Training
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Hi CT,
Just coming off completing your ‘Ultimate Cluster Program’ which yielded incredible strength results. Squat was up 30kg, Deadlift up 40kg, Floor Press up 15kg and Push Press up 15kg.

Looking for a change in training stimulus so decided and excited to work through your Jacked 31 program.

Just a quick question I have on conditioning done throughout the program:

  1. In terms of conditioning after each performance workout for around 15 minutes, my aim during the program is to be in a calorie surplus to gain mass, how should I treat conditioning so it does not affect achieving maximum gains. Is it still ok to do 10-15 minutes of conditioning after each week’s three performance days?

Thanks for the help, looking forward to getting started,

HL

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It absolutely is. It allows you to eat more food without gaining too much fat.

See, people have a misconception about caloric surplus and muscle building.

It’s not so much the caloric surplus that is beneficial for growth. The body doesn’t regroup at the end of the day and looks whether it was in. deficit or surplus to see if it can add muscle.

The anabolic part is FOOD.

Food is anabolic. Not only by providing the nutrients and energy to fuel the muscle growth process but, mostly, by increasing the level of several anabolic hormones and enzyme… things like insulin, IGF-1, mTOR all increase in direct response to food intake. And the more food there is, the great the anabolic state is.

The downside is that eating a lot of food, is likely to put you in a state of caloric surplus which might also lead to a lot of fat gain.

By doing conditioning, cardio or increasing NEAT, you can eat more food (more anabolic state) without being in as large of a surplus (you will still be in a surplus but maybe by 250-500kcals rather than 1000 -1500).

This means that you will get the growth with much less potential fat gain.

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Appreciate the learning/reassurance here.

Just another thing. Reading your article ‘Unpopular opining you don’t need chains’ and it really resinated with me the bit about ‘Strong lifters’ (grinders) vs ‘Explosive lifters’ (accelerators). I am a grinder (never responded for instance to Westside Speed day workouts), so I’m keen to fill out the Jacked 31 program with exercises that will cater/benefit to my grinding style for my performance days ie speed-strength and strength-speed days.

Particularly the Strength-Speed day taking a note from this:
‘If a “grinder” wants to become more explosive, the best approach is to do jumps and throws, or maybe power variations of the Olympic lifts. Doing basic barbell lifting with a high level of acceleration will have limited benefits for him.’

The Strength-Speed day consists of:

  1. Power Clean from Hang
  2. Back Squat
  3. Push Press
  4. Pendlay Row

Question-

  1. Are all these exercise selections beneficial to a ‘grinder’, as I’m not sure about for example the Back Squat, would a ‘grinder’ be better off doing a loaded squat jump instead? Love to hear your thoughts about setting up an appropriate exercise selection for the Strength-Speed day.

Thanks again,

HL

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I’ve also noticed that calorie flux moreso than calorie balance is huge for me to feel at my best and get optimal gains. However, I’m pretty short on training time right now. What conditioning protocol would you recommend for maxing out the calorie burn in the context of being the last 5 minutes of a one hour training session with a calorie surplus for mass gain? I was thinking a 20s on/10s off KB swing tabata.

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