Competition Programming: The Future

I want to give a brief update and a little insight into the future for those of you following the competition programming. As you have probably noticed by now the barbell weights on the strength portion are much heavier. We are smack in the middle of our maximal strength portion for this cycle which will conclude in about three weeks. Upon which we will deload for a week and then hit some true max effort lifts. After the max effort lifting week is complete you will begin to see the weights drop just a bit as we begin to really dial in our prep for the Open.
On the lifting portion, you will see everything placed into a strict time format and often you’ll see that lifting combined with another movement. Many of those lifting sessions will finish with max effort unbroken reps or max effort reps in certain time domains. Furthermore, the skill development will still remain present in the program but will be cut in half starting in four weeks. Much of that skill development especially the handstand push-ups, bar muscle ups, and ring muscle ups, will show up at the conclusion of conditioning workouts. It is the pattern of the Open to put high-level skills into workouts near the end of AMRAPs as a differentiator between Regional competitors and Open level competitors. For that reason you will be asked to complete high-level skills now in a state of fatigue. We have spent the last 3 to 4 months developing efficiency in those movements and now will spend the next 3 to 4 months developing capacity.
Your conditioning will not change all that much. I will begin to add barbell movements such as the snatch and clean into the conditioning starting in three weeks. However, we are still going to focus on developing and maintaining an aerobic threshold. I like to avoid lactate/pain threshold training until you are 4-5 weeks out from competition. In your case that means the Open. Obviously we are still doing some of that currently but you will see that right now only about 10% to 20% of your training is inside an energy system In which you are not given ample time to flush the lactic acid out of your muscles before being asked to work again. 4 to 5 weeks out from the start of the Open that style of training will increase in volume immensely up to 80% of your training before we taper for the open.
The body can only handle that level of training for so many weeks before progress begins to diminish and eventually move in reverse. For now we will focus on maximal strength and maximal level lifting. After the 4 weeks is complete you can consider yourself fully in a preseason prep cycle and we will continue in that trend right up until the Open.