Escalating Density Training DVD
Muscle Logic
The Unnatural Athlete
Physically Incorrect Contrast Microcycles
On the "sets and reps" level, when you're actually in there doing the work, you might notice that there's a lot of contrast between work and rest intervals. You perform a set (hard work) and then rest (complete rest). See? Lots of contrast. Because as I've said ad nauseum, contrast promotes recovery. Large contrast promotes large recovery, medium contrast promotes medium recovery, and small contrast promotes small recovery.
That being the case, why aren't we applying the same principle to our training on the microcyclic level? In other words, why aren't more of us implementing contrast microcycles? In my mind, it's a superior way to pack in maximum work and maximum recovery in the smallest possible space. This might be a worthy goal, don't you think?
In practice, contrast microcycles work like this:
Week one might be very light in terms of overall training load. Now there are different philosophies about manipulating volume VS intensity and vice versa, but for the sake of simplicity, let's focus on total load, because if intensity drops much below 85% of current 1RM's you'll suffer a detraining effect.
So week one might add up to 25,000 pounds of total load (Again, don't get tripped up about how to measure this...whatever way you do it is fine, as long as you measure it the same way each week).
On week two, it's time to load up. Plan for something in the neighborhood of 50,000 pounds- double the load used in the previous week. We'll assume that this is heavy for you, but not the most you can possibly do— we need to maintain a margin for additional progression in the comng weeks.
Week three is a deloading week, but it'll still be a bit more taxing than week one. So maybe 30,000 pounds, or 10% more than week one. Week four, 60,000 pounds— again, a 10% increase
That's one mesoocycle with two loading cycles and two contrastive unloading cycles. For the purposes of longer-term planning, repeat the same pattern for future mesocycles, but continuously seek ever higher "peaks" on your heaviest weeks whenever possible.
PS: The fractal image above wasn't by accident...
Combato on May 21, 2007 6:29:12 AM:
I can't wait to see what you post in this blog. I own your DVD and Muscle Logic and have used EDT off and on now for nearly a year.