Have recently invested in a power rack and barbell following ~12 months of interrupted access to the gym due to COVID-19 restrictions in the U.K.
I have a young child in the first year of her life & currently coming towards the end of a part-time masters degree in between full-time work.
Whilst accepting that I don’t have the luxury of energy that I may have had before, in addition to probably a lower tolerance to CNS stress, I would like to focus on improving the Anderson Front Squat - with little interest in other lifts due to the AFS’ ability to strengthen the core, lower back and quads.
What would you suggest for just using a one lift approach? I would prefer to train higher frequency & shorter sessions if possible.
Just do oly lifts. Whole body. Plenty of oly lifters do high frequency short sessions. Tough to learn proper technique, but nothing gets you big and strong like picking up stuff and lifting it over your head. I’ll bet @aldebaran is pretty proficient at putting together some high frequency oly stuff.
(I know you asked CT and his opinion comes first, just putting an idea out there in the meantime)
This is indeed the best approach if you want to get better at a given lift. You should check Thib’s approach on a specific lift, it might give you ideas:
If I were to chose a single lift I wouldn’t chose the Anderson Squat for sure, and would rather have a pull than a push. Olifts indeed would be the best like @flappinit said
Or if you have little time to spare for training, CT has busy people programs on his own website.
You could also get some nice ideas from this article:
Here you have 3 samples workout which are 14, 20 and 28 minutes long.
When life got crazy for me I narrowed it down to two: front squat and strict press.
I don’t think OP is looking for mastery of a lift to the exclusion of others, hes looking for the best return on the investment of his time.
Anyway lots of great ideas given above!
These are two awesome choices and exactly what I was about to recommend him. He wants to focus on the Anderson front squat, he can simply add the military press to that and it will be an effective workout.
You could use the Anderson front squat an military press and do something like this:
Day 1 - Work up to an RM for both lifts (a RM is the most weight you can use for a selected rep number. For example working up to a 5RM means that you gradually add weight to the bar, doing only sets of 5, until you reach the max weight you can lift with good form)
DAY 2 - 3 sets with 80% of your RM for the same number of reps
DAY 3 - 4 sets with 90% of your RM for the same number of reps
DAY 4 - 1 set with 70% of your RM for as many reps as possible (after warm-up)
DAY 5 - 3 sets with 80% of your RM for the same number of reps
And you would cycle the RM…
For example:
Week 1: 5RM
Week 2: 4RM
Week 3: 3RM
Week 4: Deload, using the week 1 weights but only doing 3 reps/set instead of 5 (except for Day 4 where you still get as many reps as possible)
Then repeat.
As for the schedule, it really depends on your weekly schedule. You can do the 5 days in a row. But I would like a day off between Day 1 & 2 and Day 5 and the next Day 1
All of the feedback to date really of value - thank you to everyone who has provided their thoughts.
The 5 day plan that allows for both the Anderson FS & strict press looks great and achievable - really appreciate the advice and looking forward to giving the workouts a go!