General Training Overview - Weekly Loading

[Robert Frederick]

The fourth week looks like the deload week to me. I think Boris really likes variant 2. In Pozdeev's latest interview he said he ramps up all the way to a week out so he could be using something like the 3-1 variant.

[hurril]

Pardon me if this has been asked and answered someplace.

What are some of the reasons behind selecting the "extremeness" of a loading scheme. As I can imagine, the usual suspects as far as parameters go are involved in this, I'd just like to hear opinions and reasonings from you guys.

(The parameters are: lifter qualification, weight class, age, position relative to the meet date, etc.)

Thank you!

[Robert Frederick]

Pardon me if this has been asked and answered someplace.

What are some of the reasons behind selecting the "extremeness" of a loading scheme. As I can imagine, the usual suspects as far as parameters go are involved in this, I'd just like to hear opinions and reasonings from you guys.

(The parameters are: lifter qualification, weight class, age, position relative to the meet date, etc.)

Thank you!

If you ask me I'd say you almost never want an extreme program relative to your current self. Just slightly out of reach is better I think. Someone else could be doing something extreme as compared to me but its probably a bad idea if I just jump on it. And I could be doing something extreme as compared to when I first stared, but it took a while to get here.

Did I understand your question correctly?

[Liftisgood]

I've been putting the different comp period examples here into an Excel spreadsheet as you suggested since the usual comp period in the 3 day program didn't peak me properly.
(I'll try to share them once they're fully completed)

My way of doing it was to copy the most similar weeks into each variant, and then adjust the volume up or down based on the NL outlined here (adding in extra warmup or working sets, or decreasing them).

Something I've run into, when should the testing day occur? I notice in 32 it's on Week 1 Wednesday, in 32v2 it's split across Week 1 Wed, & Fri, would it work to have the testing day during week 2 when the overall volume that week is lower like in variant 1? (I have this feeling doing the testing day, then a bunch of volume afterwards is not going to be a good idea)

Last time I ran the comp from variant 2, testing day went exceptionally well, but by the time mock meet day came around I felt pretty over-reached and I couldn't hit my testing day singles.

[dimitris]

I see a lot people having trouble with the comp cycles. They feel that the deload is too long. This could be true for 2 reasons:
1) if before sheiko you're used to higher intensity programs,
2) the lower volume the new programs have.

One solution for this could be something Sheiko has wrote in his book and in the first program published in the site. A 4 week comp cycle with variant 1-2 or 2-1. Week 1 high intensity, 85% for squat and deadlift, 90% for bench press and low volume. Week 2 maxing week but stay at 100%. After that slowly reduce volume and intensity until the meet

[Liftisgood]

I see a lot people having trouble with the comp cycles. They feel that the deload is too long. This could be true for 2 reasons:
1) if before sheiko you're used to higher intensity programs,
2) the lower volume the new programs have.

One solution for this could be something Sheiko has wrote in his book and in the first program published in the site. A 4 week comp cycle with variant 1-2 or 2-1. Week 1 high intensity, 85% for squat and deadlift, 90% for bench press and low volume. Week 2 maxing week but stay at 100%. After that slowly reduce volume and intensity until the meet

Thanks,

Reason 1 sounds applicable to me, I was working in the 80% range before I started Sheiko.

I haven't written those variants because they weren't in the post on here, but I guess I could give it a go by duplicating one week and adding the testing to it.

I don't really understand the part about low volume during week 1 or 2 though, in the other post it says that the numbers 1-2 indicate those weeks would be higher volume than the rest of the training block, I know you say intensity would be higher, so does that mean the same thing for the numbers?

[dimitris]

Variant 1-2. NL per week: 123 - 127 - 85 - 46

Variant 2-1. NL per week: 159 - 140 - 85 - 46

Does this answer your question?

[Liftisgood]

Variant 1-2. NL per week: 123 - 127 - 85 - 46

Variant 2-1. NL per week: 159 - 140 - 85 - 46

Does this answer your question?

Yes, thanks very much for the help, I will make these and try one of them soon!

[Dahmkooler]

How does Sheiko's methodology compare to standard western linear periodization? Mike Israetel writes about this (http://jtsstrength.com/articles/2013/12/03/nonsense-periodization-powerlifting/), and argues that different goals such as hypertrophy, strength, and peaking cannot be fully acheived simultaneously, so they should be pursued in independent blocks. Jack of all trades, master of none, so to speak. So a 5-month program using this appraoch might contain 2 months of 'hypertrophy' training in the 5-10 rep range, 2 months in the 3-6 rep range, and 1 month of peaking.

Is it fair to say that Sheiko attempts to program for these different goals concurrently? Why is this approach better than the linear method, which is fairly common in american powerlifting?

[Robert Frederick]

I've done blocks of hypertrophy and blocks of strength. I got bigger then smaller as I moved from hypertrophy to strength. Meanwhile, the first couple months of strength training were me just trying to get back to where I was before. All in all it was a waste of time for me to do long periods like that. But I can do one week of hypertrophy focus followed by a week of strength without losing strength. That seems to work for me.

[JJ]

I've been putting the different comp period examples here into an Excel spreadsheet as you suggested since the usual comp period in the 3 day program didn't peak me properly.
(I'll try to share them once they're fully completed)

My way of doing it was to copy the most similar weeks into each variant, and then adjust the volume up or down based on the NL outlined here (adding in extra warmup or working sets, or decreasing them).

Something I've run into, when should the testing day occur? I notice in 32 it's on Week 1 Wednesday, in 32v2 it's split across Week 1 Wed, & Fri, would it work to have the testing day during week 2 when the overall volume that week is lower like in variant 1? (I have this feeling doing the testing day, then a bunch of volume afterwards is not going to be a good idea)

Last time I ran the comp from variant 2, testing day went exceptionally well, but by the time mock meet day came around I felt pretty over-reached and I couldn't hit my testing day singles.

I had this experience too, test day went very well then by meet day I felt weaker and was weaker as I never hit what I did on all 3 lifts as I did on test day.

Robert-  would it be a good idea to instead work up to a heavy double/ new max double? instead of a new max , plus adding in a few heavier sets on week 3 before tapering on week 4?

[JJ]

I see a lot people having trouble with the comp cycles. They feel that the deload is too long. This could be true for 2 reasons:
1) if before sheiko you're used to higher intensity programs,
2) the lower volume the new programs have.

One solution for this could be something Sheiko has wrote in his book and in the first program published in the site. A 4 week comp cycle with variant 1-2 or 2-1. Week 1 high intensity, 85% for squat and deadlift, 90% for bench press and low volume. Week 2 maxing week but stay at 100%. After that slowly reduce volume and intensity until the meet

this is what I was after, this sounds like it would work better for me , thanks