Coach
CT,
I play rugby and the club has just increased my rugby specific training to 3 times a week with matches on saturday!
The hardest traning session is on a tues so i like to be fully recovered for this, in particular my legs. Obviously the same for the game on saturday.
How would you reccomend i fit in weight training around this schedule? I’m now training purely to become a better player.
I’m willing to pay you for a program if i’m asking too much!
Thanks.
Hey Coach,
I’m interested to know if there is any way to determine the thickness of a barbell in proportion to the size of an athletes hands? If so, what would the continuum look like?
Thanks for all that you do for us, Coach.
cd
Hi Coach, how are you? Hope you are doing fine.
I am designing a training plan, and have a few questions.
I am 22 years old, a (former semi pro, now recreative) soccer player, who has not trained for soccer for years. I was never really serious with weightlifting, but now want to lose fat (bf 14%) and increase soccer performance. The questions:
-
I have an indoor soccer match (40 mins) on fridays, and outdoor on sundays (90 mins). I can lift on monday till thursday. I was thinking hitting legs hard on monday and do upper body on tuesday and thursday. Would an upper body workout on thursday decrease performance on friday? (neural fatigue?) If yes, what would you suggest?
-
I want to lose some fat too, should I eat low carb mainly except peri workout? And how about the soccer days? Low carb of carbs around the matches?
-
As you always say that training hard is beneficial during fat-loss phase, I want to increase strength and power. Can you recommend a previous training program you wrote to follow? (I am not so advanced as to auto regulate as you recommend.)
-
Is plyometrics beneficial, or will soccer take care of it over time?
-
I know I need to focus on the core lifts. Still I have to ask. Any exercise recommendations?
Thanks so much, and I hope you and your family are fine.
Greetings!
Thibs,
How would you modify phase 2 and 3 of beast building based on your current knowledge? I am incorporating ramp sets and was thinking about adding some “perfect/explosive reps” into the mix.
So for example I was thinking about:
A1) Chest-supported DB rowing (the perfect rep, max weight but still being to explode at the turn around point fast enough)
4-5 sets of 4-6 reps
90 seconds rest
A2) Bench press to neck ( paused, too dangerous to add in perfect reps)
4-5 sets of 4-6 reps
90 seconds rest
B1) Pull-ups (3 twitch reps between reps)
4-5 sets of 6-8 reps *dropping this to 5 reps
90 seconds rest
B2) High-incline (45 to 60 degrees) DB press (3 twitch reps between reps)
4-5 sets of 6-8 reps *dropping this to 5 reps
90 seconds rest
C1) Preacher curl
4-5 sets of 6-8 reps
90 seconds rest
C2) Decline EZ-bar triceps extension
4-5 sets of 6-8 reps
90 seconds rest
Coach,
Would you train females with the same low rep approach?
[quote]inunneley wrote:
Coach,
Would you train females with the same low rep approach?[/quote]
Yes.
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Congrats on the well-earned PR… your home gym kinda looks like mine, only mine is even messier![/quote]
Yeah, it can get pretty messy sometimes, but I love my home gym, wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Sorry about the duplicate posting of the previous message, I was having server errors.
Coach,
I was hoping you could give me some supplement help. I’m 5’7" 150lbs. I just got out of military school and signed up for a bodybuilding competition in August. I have a way to go and was looking for that edge. I am eating 3500kc a day. 200g protein.
I am looking for a good protein shake, t-booster, preworkout drink, and a recovery drink. I’ve been reading and it looks like Metabolic Drive, Alpha Male, Surge, and Power Drive are good ones to start with. Maybe even ZMA, Alpha-GPC, and Receptormanx. With the supplements that are available for purchase, what else do you recommend?
hi CT
question on overtraining.
Currently going for strength/size and my workouts are hitting each body part twice a week. so cheat/back monday, legs/shoulders tuesday…repeat thurs friday.
anyway, for example on chest day, ill ramp to my max weight which would usually take about 6 sets. then do 3 drop sets (6 reps with my 8rm, then dropping weight and going till failure). so effectively 6 sets… Would doing this twice a week be too much? Im not even sure if its an effective way of training??? but it sure makes me sorrrree
thanks
matt
Christian, what technique for barbell rows do you find the most effective? I understand that there are a lot of ways to do it: angle, grip width etc. But which technique would be the most effective one for overallt development?
Thank you!
[quote]krsoneeeee wrote:
hi CT
question on overtraining.
Currently going for strength/size and my workouts are hitting each body part twice a week. so cheat/back monday, legs/shoulders tuesday…repeat thurs friday.
anyway, for example on chest day, ill ramp to my max weight which would usually take about 6 sets. then do 3 drop sets (6 reps with my 8rm, then dropping weight and going till failure). so effectively 6 sets… Would doing this twice a week be too much? Im not even sure if its an effective way of training??? but it sure makes me sorrrree
thanks
matt[/quote]
I don’t like your split. Shoulders are heavily worked by chest work, doing shoulders the day after might not be the best of idea. But otherwise it seems fine, although you are not giving me much details.
Thib,
How should I implement ramping on a movement where I can use low weights, like strict bar curls ?
For example, I can use only 40-45 kg x 4-5, and it goes like this :
20,25,30,35,40,45
It’s laughable to count 20-35 kg as sets, of course I accelerate , but the load is just pitiful to count it as having any effect on the body, so there’re very few actual working sets.
So as you can see I run short of sets quikly and only have 2-3 challenging sets.
Maybe in this case straight sets would be better? I’m thinking of ramping to 3, drop 10-15 kg and do 5x5 straight sets ?
[quote]Thy. wrote:
Thib,
How should I implement ramping on a movement where I can use low weights, like strict bar curls ?
For example, I can use only 40-45 kg x 4-5, and it goes like this :
20,25,30,35,40,45
It’s laughable to count 20-35 kg as sets, of course I accelerate , but the load is just pitiful to count it as having any effect on the body, so there’re very few actual working sets.
So as you can see I run short of sets quikly and only have 2-3 challenging sets.
Maybe in this case straight sets would be better? I’m thinking of ramping to 3, drop 10-15 kg and do 5x5 straight sets ?[/quote]
In that case I might do:
A) Double ramping… perform each somewhat challenging weight for two sets (e.g. 20, 25, 30, 35, 35, 40, 40, 45, 45)
B) Max force maintenance… once you reach the top weight you can accelerate (e.g. 45kg) then you keep on performing sets with that weight until you can’t dominate every rep anymore. DON’T KEEP ON GOING UNTIL YOU CAN’T COMPLETE ALL THE REPS… STOP WHEN THE LAST REP IS NOT SOLID ANYMORE. So it might look like:
20kg x 5
25kg x 5
30kg x 5
35kg x 5
40kg x 5
45kg x 5
45kg x 5 (still solid)
45kg x 5 (still solid)
45kg x 5 (last rep is not as solid…STOP THE EXERCISE)
C) Add one max reps set at the end. Drop down to 85% of the max weight you reached and perform ONE SET of as many reps as you can
D) Don’t do anything more than you did in your example… maybe you are simply not strong enough yet to handle a high workload.
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
krsoneeeee wrote:
hi CT
question on overtraining.
Currently going for strength/size and my workouts are hitting each body part twice a week. so cheat/back monday, legs/shoulders tuesday…repeat thurs friday.
anyway, for example on chest day, ill ramp to my max weight which would usually take about 6 sets. then do 3 drop sets (6 reps with my 8rm, then dropping weight and going till failure). so effectively 6 sets… Would doing this twice a week be too much? Im not even sure if its an effective way of training??? but it sure makes me sorrrree
thanks
matt
I don’t like your split. Shoulders are heavily worked by chest work, doing shoulders the day after might not be the best of idea. But otherwise it seems fine, although you are not giving me much details.[/quote]
Interesting to hear Christian, because of the widely known overlap with some chest exercises, I would usually do delts the day after chest rationalizing that I would then get sufficent rest for the area (chest/front delts) during the rest of my schedule (back,/bis then legs).
Was I completely off base with this line of thinking, or do you think it’s just an individualized thing? My delt work usually consists of a lot more single joing work as opposed to just pounding away with different types of presses (although I always do some pressing, it’s usually at the end).
S
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Thy. wrote:
Thib,
How should I implement ramping on a movement where I can use low weights, like strict bar curls ?
For example, I can use only 40-45 kg x 4-5, and it goes like this :
20,25,30,35,40,45
It’s laughable to count 20-35 kg as sets, of course I accelerate , but the load is just pitiful to count it as having any effect on the body, so there’re very few actual working sets.
So as you can see I run short of sets quikly and only have 2-3 challenging sets.
Maybe in this case straight sets would be better? I’m thinking of ramping to 3, drop 10-15 kg and do 5x5 straight sets ?
In that case I might do:
A) Double ramping… perform each somewhat challenging weight for two sets (e.g. 20, 25, 30, 35, 35, 40, 40, 45, 45)
B) Max force maintenance… once you reach the top weight you can accelerate (e.g. 45kg) then you keep on performing sets with that weight until you can’t dominate every rep anymore. DON’T KEEP ON GOING UNTIL YOU CAN’T COMPLETE ALL THE REPS… STOP WHEN THE LAST REP IS NOT SOLID ANYMORE. So it might look like:
20kg x 5
25kg x 5
30kg x 5
35kg x 5
40kg x 5
45kg x 5
45kg x 5 (still solid)
45kg x 5 (still solid)
45kg x 5 (last rep is not as solid…STOP THE EXERCISE)
C) Add one max reps set at the end. Drop down to 85% of the max weight you reached and perform ONE SET of as many reps as you can
D) Don’t do anything more than you did in your example… maybe you are simply not strong enough yet to handle a high workload.[/quote]
Thanks, nice strategies. I’ll probably do one at the beginning of the week and another at the end.
BTW, is my curl number terribly weak if compared to the other upper body numbers ? (chin-up +30 kg, bench 110 kg @ 65 bw). I’m asking because I need to know if I should focus on bringing this up, or keep doing it with the same priority because I’m just weak all around ?
CT,
1)When doing a chest spec do you suggest shutting down ALL shoulder exercises, or just front delt ones?
2)My first day for chest/tris spec is a standard heavy lifting workout with the following exercises:
Incline Press
Bench Press
Floor Press,
exercises ramped/double ramped/clustered depending on how I’m feeling.
Would it be overkill to add close grip bench or dips to that or at that point have the triceps received enough attention?
hello coach.i want to ask when training for limit strength is better to train antagonists muscles alternately(chest-back for example) or is better to do only exercises for one muscle group and then for another and why?(for example doing exercisrs for chest in the row and theen for the back).when we are train for hypertrophy is better to do tri set or giant set for an muscle group and the same technique for the other or doing supersets for antagonist muscles and why?i am looking forward to hearing for you.
hello coach.i want to ask when training for limit strength is better to train antagonists muscles alternately(chest-back for example) or is better to do only exercises for one muscle group and then for another and why?(for example doing exercisrs for chest in the row and theen for the back).when we are train for hypertrophy is better to do tri set or giant set for an muscle group and the same technique for the other or doing supersets for antagonist muscles and why?i am looking forward to hearing for you.
[quote]Clypher wrote:
CT,
1)When doing a chest spec do you suggest shutting down ALL shoulder exercises, or just front delt ones?
2)My first day for chest/tris spec is a standard heavy lifting workout with the following exercises:
Incline Press
Bench Press
Floor Press,
exercises ramped/double ramped/clustered depending on how I’m feeling.
Would it be overkill to add close grip bench or dips to that or at that point have the triceps received enough attention?[/quote]
If your shoulders are overpowering, I would drop all shoulder pressing work and minimize the amount of direct shoulders work (maybe 6 sets per week).
If your shoulders are average compared to the chest you could perform as much as 9-12 sets, avoiding all pressing work.
I would avoid close-grip press (or use it alternatively with the floor press) but I could see dips as being acceptable, but it depends on how you are feeling.