For those of you who like to see what's going on with our blogs I wanted to give each of y'all a quick update with what each workout plan is focusing on right now and give you a little insight into where we are going.
If you're following the weightlifting blog then this is a relatively easy thing to pick up. We are in week 9 of an 18 week cycle that ends the same weekend as the American Open. That's the first weekend of December. What you will notice is we have been doing a ton of block work and a ton of technique and positioning work at relatively low intensity. Your average intensity is going to be somewhere close to 80% or 82%. That's the percent we want to land on for trying to fix technical error and positional error. On the strength side we are at an incredibly high volume. If you're completing the weightlifting portion you see this. Lots of squatting lots of pressing lots of pulling. Ironically, in an 18 week cycle I am given a really unique opportunity to spend 12 weeks focused specifically on getting stronger. The goal would be then to use that strength in the final six weeks of the program to lift heavier weights at higher intensity. You will see that shift here in a couple weeks as we begin to pick the intensity up and bring the volume down on the strength portion. We will also have a 14 day competition taper at the very end of the cycle allowing you to peak properly for a competition max. For those of you competing in the American Open this is obviously required. Those of you who will not be competing in the American Open this weekend I would advise setting up a competition style day for you in order to hit true competition numbers. We will use those numbers in the next cycle.
For those of you following the competition blog. You should've noticed by now that the lifting has changed from a technique focus over to relatively high volume complexes. We spent a lot of time in the off-season fixing technical errors and hopefully perfecting movement. The goal would be that that perfection of movement would now transfer to complex work at higher intensity with less technical value. The complex cycle we are currently working through will end in a maximal effort phase. The goal being to get as strong as possible before entering a six-week lactate buffering cycle in preparation for the Open workouts. On the conditioning end you will begin to see more and more integration of higher-level skills into the conditioning. For the past three or four months we have left much of that out of the conditioning in an attempt to help you perfect those high level skills and get rid of bad habits. You will slowly see those skills dripped into your conditioning pieces as we approach the Open The mono-structural running work on Mondays will begin to drop off and periodically show up less and less the closer we get. You can expect that transition to happen in November. Eventually six weeks out from the Open workouts, the lactate buffering cycle begins and you will see very little aerobic work. We have spent the entire off-season building an aerobic base and attempting to create a large aerobic threshold. We are hoping that the work in compiled months of effort will hold you through the final stages and through the open. This ideology has worked for Regionals and Games level athletes in the past and we assume that to be true for those of you prepping for the Open.
I hope this gives some clarity to what's going on in your workouts and gives you the ability to see why we do certain things each week and why there is some repetition to the work. If you ever have any questions about why we are doing certain things by all means feel free to shoot us an email. We would love to help clarify that for you. In the meantime keep training!