I’ve been dabbling in this field for 30-plus years…I 've always belived that most trainers in the last 25-years didn’t give the nervous sytem enough emphasis…ESPECIALLY in terms of recovery. I’m not talking the muscle system.
I’m intrested in the boards thoughts on this…I seem to re-call Bompa saying that it takes the nervous system a full 7-10 days to fully recover from a maximum effort workout…(Ex. 5-4-3-2-1 deadlift) ?
THOUGHTs/discussion ?
Have a GREAT Day! mac~
I do believe that it’s true that the nervous system has been underestimated by most coaches. I also believe that draining the CNS is the biggest culpit for stagnation in the weight room.
That having been said I also firmly believe that it is possible to increase the rate at which your CNS can recover from an intense workout bu a very gradual increase in frequency of CNS stimulation.
IMHO one mistake many strength coaches make is to use a burst-like strength training approach: this revolves around one very large stimulatory workout followed by a relatively long recovery period. For example, training each lift only once per week, but doing a lot of intense work on that day. Then allowing 7 days of recovery before working on that exercise/movement pattern again.
This may be done inadvertently as most coaches ignore CNS stimulation altogether. It may very well be indirectly related to the old “supercompensation” principle of allowing full recovery of the energy systems before doing another workout. This ideology vehiculate large bouts of physical activity to stimulate an important energy substrate deficit, believing that it will increase subsequent storage of said substrates.
It may work for glycogen stores, but it is not entirely applicable to muscle tissue and certainly not to the nervous system!
So what we have is a training methodology based on muscle instead of on the nervous system, which is certainly not optimal when strength and power gains are concerned.
Ok, back to my original point. It is possible to improve the capacity of the CNS to recover and improve from an intense stress. The way to do so is to move away from the burst-like pattern and adopt a systemic training organization.
To maximize adaptation as well as the CAPACITY to adapt, training stress must not be perceived as a random bout of physiological stress by your body (which is what occurs with the burst-like pattern); rather it must be perceived as the new milieu/environement. To do so, it is capital to use a very high frequency of training, which basically “tells your body” that chronic structural and functional adaptations are needed as the changes in daily activity and physical demands are systematic and not random.
OBVIOUSLY it becomes counterproductive to use large bouts of training at each session as this would drain the CNS even more. What we should do is include daily intense physical activity (in our case, strength and power training) but at a very low daily volume. Then you very gradually increase volume (we’re talking over a period of years) as your CNS becomes used to facing intense demands.
Most, if not all, elite olympic lifts train like this. The whole body being worked at every session (since the OL are whole-body movements for the most part) but with a low volume of work.
Basically, the whole body should be worked at every workout using a few basic exercises (no more than 4 exercises per workout). Ideally, the exercises or training means would vary during the week. Not only will this enable you to increase the range of stimulated physical and motor capacities, but it will improve the capacity of your CNS to find solutions to motor problems, basically your CNS becomes better at adapting to new stimuli.
Here is an example of what a week could look like. Obviously this is just an example. It doesn’t represent a training plan, much less a periodized cycle! It’s just to illustrate the basic concept explained above.
DAY 1
a. Jump lunges (using 10% of bodyweight as extra resistance) 5 x 3 per leg
b. Negative natural glute-ham raises (bodyweight only) 5 x 5
c. Bench press (85-90% of max) 5 x 3
d. 1-arm dumbbell rowing (85-90% of max) 5 x 5 per arm
DAY 2
a. Power clean from blocks (75-85%) 5 x 3
b. Accentuated concentric leg curl (30-40% of two legs max, lifting with one leg, lowering with 2 legs to diminish eccentric stress) 5 x 5 per leg
c. Medicine ball throw from chest (15-20lbs ball) max number of throws in 3 minute period (you can take as many pauses as needed to maintain throwing distance)
DAY 3
a. Isomiometric romanian deadlift (50-60% loweing the bar 2" below the knees, hold the position for 5-10 seconds and EXPLODE UPWARD, lifting the bar as fast as possible) 10 x 1
b. Dips (bodyweight only) 6 x 30 seconds, doing as many reps as possible in 30 seconds
c. Chin ups (bodyweight only) 6 x 30 seconds, doing as many reps as possible in 30 seconds
DAY 4
a. Accentuated eccentric back squat (60-70%, lower in 6 seconds, lift explosively) 5 x 3
b. Accentuated eccentric leg curl (60-70% lift with two legs, lower with one leg) 5 x 5 per leg
c. Accentuated eccentric bench press (60-70%, lower in 6 seconds, lift explosively) 5 x 3
DAY 5
a. Power clean from hang (75-85%) 5 x 3
b. Depth jumps (0.6 to 1.0m) 3 x 10
c. Ballistic bench press (using 20-30% of max bench) 5 x 5
d. Medicine ball throw to floor from overhead, arm stretched 3 x 10
DAY 6
a. Back squat (85-90%) 5 x 3
b. Bench press (85-90%) 5 x 3
c. Barbell rowing (85-90%) 5 x 3
DAY 7
OFF
Fascinating Christian. Would the below statement and the program apply to track athletes?
Basically, the whole body should be worked at every workout using a few basic exercises (no more than 4 exercises per workout).
Why train the entire body every workout? Is it CNS related?
I have seen other authors say something very similiar to 7-10 days for the nervous system to recover from a maximal workout. But I beleive by maximal workout they were referring to something more similiar to a personal best in the given lift or workout. I don’t think 5,4,3,2,1 deadlift workout takes that long to recover from (not ment to imply it doesn’t take more than a 2 days).
I find this to be the case as well. I trained for six months with competitive oly lifters and they followed a similar setup. They didnt do the same exercises listed but varied loads a little more. I am using something similar in my program now and it has been working great.
Cheers,
Chris
Great post,Christian Thibaudeau,thanks!
Also Swim Coaches should treat these few words like a Bible for the upcoming years!
Christian thanks for your EXCELEENT response…! Instead of going through your “example”…I tell you what we are doing in a thumbnail sketch !
I’m working with throwers (17-18-19 year olds) that have a very young trainin age. POWER is an issue and we do skill training and SPECIFIC work every other day as well. We normally do 3-exercises per session starting with a compound lift involving SPEED first…then do a related “adjunct” exercise…and A-typically a 3-2-1 MAX EFFORT…the exercises and per-cents CHANGE on a daily basis…this produced a 37% increase last fall (August15th—Dec 15th ) with a HIGHLY gifted NERVOUS system (freaky genetics) …! The average seems to hover around 30% improvement over a 16-week block.
I’ve found anecdotally that IF we work the legs HARD on Sunday evening 12 X 2 and then go and push-pull a VW.(turning the wheel ect.)…that I give them the day off on Tuesday (the legs/system) seems not to want to learn anything in terms of motor learning ect.
So with the training age factored in with the aquisition of “skill” (hammer-discus-shot put-javelin ect.) I ERROR on on the side of recovery as we only repeat a muscle group every six days…! THANKS for the TIME and EFFORT ! mac~
So trying to apply this with a progression for sprinters, could a young training age athlete start with something like 20 foot contacts of power skipping on one recovery (including tempo or light circuits) day of the week and then progress to including it on the other recovery days, then maybe progress to doing this with ATL bounding, and then start upping the volume (maybe by this point a year from the starting point)? Would this be a too conservative or too extensive estimate?
Also, if a will-one-day-be-elite-athlete starts doing this at a young training age what kind of volume can they do by the time they are near elite, but before they have to start dropping CNS elements for intensification?
Amazing post CT, thank you so much for spending the time.
Christian or Charlie?
Christian…in a nutshell you are saying that for example the Bulgarians doing (3) workouts a day and walking in to the gym on the second workout doing 90-plus precent on the first exercise… is raising the tolerance levels or producing a higher nervous system training effect on a daily basis ?
I’ve done some experimenting with 2-3 “freaks” doing rest (15-second) pause waves of (5) single-repititons at 80% adding 2 1/2 percent each wave based on the 1987 studies on the nervous sytem response…“if” the individual could get through (5) waves of this they invariably DON’T sleep very well that night…my take…nervous system EXCITABILITY ect. THOUGHTS/Comments ?
Have a GREAT Day…ehh ! mac~
Mc, what you need to understand is that bulgarians, and elite lifters in general gradually build up to that training frequency over SEVERAL years! A big mistake peoples make is to jump right into bulgarian training, they invariably end up overtraining and draining their CNS.
You cannot ask a 3rd grader to do the work of a M.Sc strudent!!!
Christian or Charlie?