This is something I have been thinking about for some time. Taking two methods I know work and combining them together to create something that is hopefully better than both by themselves. Its experimental but if you want to do the experiment, if you are one of those people who just have to have the hood up, the truck on stands and the toolbox out on Sundays-this is for you.

I'm going to just suggest a framework but you can make what you wish out of the idea for your own purposes. I like training for strength/endurance or work capacity. Right up the middle between strength, mass and endurance-the best of all three in a tight and quick routine. You can easily modify this however for anything you like after giving it a little thought.

The idea here is that most hormonal changes for strength or strength endurance are produced not by just "working a muscle" but by loading up your spine and hips and doing something with that load. Hardly a new idea, lots of the old guys understood this and there is allot more you can do with it if you understand the idea. If you can create the right hormonal environment, much else tends to ride along really well if you know how they can compliment each other:

Here is a sample cycle:

For two weeks:

Mon. & Thurs: Rack squat, as many reps as you can get in 20m. Start with a weight you can get perhaps ten straight reps with, when you get up to 50 in 20m, then increase the weight

Everyday: Pick two upper body exercises and stick with them. Something like overhead presses and chin ups. Don't "stress out". Do several sets of three reps each during the day, or if you don't have that kind of time, do a few sets every evening with a weight you can do the lift smoothly with. You work to make the lifts fast, powerful and crisp. If you stall at the sticking point in the press or have to struggle to get the chin up; Its too heavy. Lighten up the bar or take weight off the belt . When all three reps go up crisply in one second for each rep, then increase the weight a little. This is a way to get a lift progressing fast by working on "power" or force times speed. Some people call this "neuro-muscular facilitation or "greasing the groove" but its not quite the same. You are working on speed. If you can make the bar or yourself move fast enough, then its time for more resistance. You are simply using speed as your "marker" rather than reps. This also keeps the fatigue level down so you can go all-out on the 20minute lift while still keeping all your lifts moving along together.

For the next two weeks:

Mon. & Thurs : Conventional Deadlift, as many reps as you can get in 20m. Start with a weight you can get perhaps ten straight reps with, when you get up to 50 then increase the weight. Same as the squat before. You can also substitute RDL's, SLDLs or heavy high pulls but keep it heavy. Dinky Power Cleans or darling flip snatches just won't do.

Everyday: The same. Same lifts just keep working as explained before.

For another two weeks:

Mon. & Thurs: Sumo Deadlift, as many reps as you can get in 20m. Start with a weight you can get perhaps ten straight reps with, when you get up to 50 then increase the weight. Same as before just enough of a different lift to keep things moving.

Everyday: The same. Same lifts just keep working as explained above.

Then repeat this cycle for another six weeks after a 1 week rest.

What is happening here is that the big exercise creates an anabolic environment which along with working your lower body (and much more) the spinal loading and volume creates an environment hormonally conducive to getting better at that kind of work....for a while and that's the issue. To keep this going you have to rotate the "big" exercise before you adapt and get stale to keep this going. And every now and then you have to rest to reset a bit.

The anabolic environment you create with your big exercise by keeping it just "fresh enough" to stay in "gaining mode". This in-turn provides a hormonal environment favorable to gaining on your upper body work consistently without "going over the top". Using that environment to magnify the results of another complimentary training mode. Instead of one or the other, you use each to magnify the other beyond what either could do itself.You are keeping the stress where it belongs in creating the right hormonal balance for improvement and skillfully "surfing" on that wave without creating so much fatigue that you wipe-out. You should keep some good progress going with fewer plateaus.

This is based on some of the newer thinking about how we actually do gain strength, endurance or speed along with what I've observed with myself and other people in those rare times when we seem to be able to "do no wrong" in the gym.

Bryce Lane, Visalia Ca. 6-29-05