Hello Mr. Thibaudeau,
I was wondering if you would ever do a SGHP layer workout as well as a military, incline tilt bench press or push press layer workout in one training session, maybe with lowered volume.
It seems like this is how most olympic lifters train, pull and push in one workout, 3-6 workouts a week.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
I was just wondering if you would do something like that, how you would split it up over the week and how you would change the layer set up (Ramp to max, HDL, Clusters and percentages of these).
Thank you in advance.
PS: Your layer system is amazing and I am using it every since you wrote about it.
[quote]Pat from BS wrote:
Hello Mr. Thibaudeau,
I was wondering if you would ever do a SGHP layer workout as well as a military, incline tilt bench press or push press layer workout in one training session, maybe with lowered volume.
It seems like this is how most olympic lifters train, pull and push in one workout, 3-6 workouts a week.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
I was just wondering if you would do something like that, how you would split it up over the week and how you would change the layer set up (Ramp to max, HDL, Clusters and percentages of these).
Thank you in advance.
PS: Your layer system is amazing and I am using it every since you wrote about it.[/quote]
That cannot be done with the layer system, too much intense work.
Keep several things in mind:
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The way elite olympic lifter train has been built up gradually over time. They didn’t start out training 6 days a weeks, twice a day doing both competitive lifts 6 days a week.
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Except for Bulgarians and a few other countries with Bulgarian coaches, very few countries max out (or even go heavy) at every session. A lot of work is spend working on technique with lighter weights. These do not have the same impact as a layer session.
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Elite olympic lifter basically do this professionally: they do not have anything else to do but train, it’s their job. As a result they can recover from a lot more training stress.
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Elite olympic lifters are genetically gifted to handle training stress. It’s a natural selection thing… as the training volume and frequency is gradually increased over the years and at every new level you have a lot of lifters who can’t keep up and drop out. Those you see at the end are those who are built to handle the load AND have maximized their capacity over the years.
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You cannot shorten a layer workout for an exercise too much as it will not be as effective and you cannot make up for it with more frequency.
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Not all olympic lifters do a lot of pressing. Russians do the push press fairly often and some do the bench press from time to time (not a regular thing), Chinese also do push presses once in a while as well as some dips. But for the most part the only thing they do that resemble a press is the jerk part of the clean and jerk. But it really is not a press since most of lifting is done by the legs, th arms are just supporting the weight.
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I’m a frequency lover… I used to compete in olympic lifting and I like training a lift as often as possible… heck I even squatted twice a day, 6 days per week at once point. If it were more effective to do layers for a press and a pull every day, I would do it.
Dear Mr. Thibaudeau,
thank you very very much for your detailed and long reply, I am really grateful for your guidance.
I had some of the reasons you wrote in my mind while posting the question, but seeing them all together makes it perfectly clear why you chose one movement or movement pattern per layer workout.
I will keep using your pre released layer system as prescribed.
The layer training sessions have been some of the best workouts in my life so far.
Again thank you very much for your knowledge and help.
Cheers Patrick