CF posted something in another thread that got me thinking –
Which has been true for me. I also find that, while I have less “workout stamina”, my ability to actually do the lift I am strong enough to do has increased. In other words, not only is my 1RM higher (duh), but my ability to get there has improved as well. There used to be lots of times I seemed to be a lot stronger than I could actually express, but now my 1RM seems closer to my “true” max strength. It occurs to me that this is a result of the decrease in stamina – that since I don’t have the capacity to do a lot of medium-effort work, I’ve done shorter and heavier weight sessions, so naturally I move towards that end. This may be obvious, but just thought I’d throw it out there.
Well if you lift heavy you can’t do as much volume. Prilipin’s tables show us this. The more explosive you are the more chance of doing yourself damage by killing the CNS. Just as in the tapering thread as you get closer towards raw power you need to separate out the training elements more… at least in sprinting. I assume similar is true in weightlifting. Do weightlifters decrease the amount of maximum lifting they do as they get better in proportion to the lower intensity? Others might like to share thier experiences here.
Re the larger athletes tolerating less work thing, I wonder if that’s why SHW PLers get hurt so much and SHW OLers seems to have short peaks, even compared to elite OLers in lower weight classes. The work capacity doesn’t keep pace with max strength so they don’t do enough work to keep themselves ready for the heavy weights.
Duration of exposure to extreme CNS stress must be considered, not only in the number of lifts and their separation in the microcycle, but the duration of each maximum strength phase within the overall annual plan. This is why shot putters and weightlifters do better with annual plans that have 5 phases and sometimes more.
How do you define CNS strees/fatigue. What causes the fatigue physiologically speaking. Is there a loss of essential substrates which are needed for for excitable membrane action potential. Or perhaps noxious substrates build after intense trianing which inhibit effecient action potential proliferation. I can not find any physiological reason for “CNS fatigue” as it has been described on this site.
It’s been discussed any number of times that the term “CNS fatigue” is a label that we apply to the general phenomenon of training fatigue that isn’t simply due to muscular tiredness.
that is a very blase answer. I would contend that the CNS fatiguing is not akin to that of muscular fatigue, and its adaptive processes are not so easiy defined by adaptive organism supercompensation.
How can these two topics be separated? In other words, why would a given load/cc of muscle (or however you prefer to measure it)change the recovery parameters as the total vol of ccs goes up, even though the load/cc is constant, if not a CNS issue?
As you change the shape of the pyramid, the recovery response changes as well, even though the apparent effort in the weightroom seems the same… Thoughts?
This should have been clear to me – if I am expressing strength closer to my “true max”, of course if will take more out of me and take longer to recover. Thus I snuck up on CNS fatigue without feeling it – I was fine until I was cooked. In retrospect, there was a decline in explosiveness which I suppose should have tipped me off that I was getting overloaded.
The answer can be found in your sentence: “…as it has been described on this site.”
Share common experiences first and worry about the physiological reasons after, otherwise you’ll be back with the sport scientist nay-sayers who just don’t get it.
Charlie, did you see a change in Ben’s fatigue, recovery characteristics as he got bigger and stronger? Obviously he also got faster so you must have balanced anything that did change somewhere. It seems you moved to shorter and shorter distances but was this because you “gave in” or because the changes that occured made it a priority?
I can’t give specifics without knowing more but I can give some general concepts.
Take the total training year and divide into five parts, working backwards from the key meet based on:
1: The cycles will have greatly diminishing GPP portions after the first one and that first one will be shorter than is common in the sprints.
2: The taper periods into major competition will be much briefer than they would be for the sprints.
3: The maintenance phase will be very brief after the max strength phase and briefer each cycle.
4: Following from the previous points, the Max Strength Phase will remain more constant than in other sports models and therefore each subsequent phase will consume more and more of the overall percentage of the time in the phase. The constancy of the Max Str Phase is needed in order to tolerate high loads, even though the increases are diminishing.
5: The strength increase differential will start with a bit less than in a sprint plan and diminish throughout till just matching the previous highs in Ph5. Percentage increases might follow a pattern like…
Ph1: 4%, Ph2: 3%, Ph3: 2%, Ph4: 1%, Ph5: 0%.
6: Rest weeks or portions of weeks will need to be built in.
So… How about taking a 48 week season and creating a plan based on the above. That gives you and average of 9 weeks per phase if you build in 3 weeks of rest divided over the 4 gaps between phases (comp time included in the phases) After you come back with something, we can work on it.
How about High Jump? Would you use more phases here too? The CNS demands of jumping are pretty severe and since you don’t need to build speed endurance or anything like that then I guess more cycles would be needed.