The Recovery Day Workout

If you’ve been a long time reader of my blog and the blogs of other “in the know” trainers in the fitness industry (see my “FORCE Approved Links” on the right side bar), you’ve undoubtedly noticed more content focusing on injury prevention, movement quality, mobility and activation work, corrective exercise, and recovery modalities (stretching, foam rolling, lacrosse ball work, etc.). There’s a reason for this: focusing on these areas allow you to train harder, train safer and continue making sustained progress in the gym.

While you have probably started to embrace these ideas and incorporate them into your workouts, chances are, you probably are not doing nearly enough of this stuff. While spending 5 minutes doing a dynamic warm-up and foam rolling before your regular workouts is a good start, I think spending an entire workout specifically dedicated to recovery and injury prevention is a great idea. 

With the above in mind, I have started performing 45 minute “Recovery Day” workouts on either Saturday’s or Sunday’s, and I can already see the results in terms of improved performance during my regular workouts throughout the week: better movement quality, fewer aches & pains, increased strength and improved work capacity. In addition to enhancing recovery and helping to prevent injury, I also look as these workouts as an opportunity to get in some low level conditioning/energy system development and burn up some extra calories.

Give the following workout a try one day per week, ideally on Saturday or Sunday, AFTER you’ve gotten in all of your main strength and conditioning workouts for the week. Focus on keeping a brisk pace between sets and exercises, but be sure not to neglect the quality of each repetition:

Foam Roller Series (5 Minutes)

*spend about 60 seconds on each roll

1. Thoracic Roll

2. IT Band Roll (perform on both sides)

3. Glute Roll (perform on both sides)

3. Lat Roll (perform on both sides)

4. Incline Bench Medicine Ball Pec Roll (perform on both sides)

See the foam roller video playlist below:

Dynamic Flexibility, Activation, and Mobilization Tri-Sets (30-40 minutes)

*Perform the “A”, “B” and “C” exercises as tri-sets: perform a set of the “A” exercise, then a set of the “B” exercise, and finally a set of the “C” exercise before beginning again with the 2^nd set of the “A” exercise. Take MINIMAL rest between each set, exercise and tri-set.

Tri-Set #1

1A. Inch Worm 2 sets of 6-8 reps

1B. Leg Cradles 2 sets of 6-8 reps each leg

1C. Lunge to Instep + Thoracic Rotation 2 sets of 6-8 reps each side

Tri-Set #2

2A. Tri-Planar Ankle Mobilization 2 sets of 6 reps each to the little toe, the big toe and straight down the middle

2B. Side Lying Clam Shell 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side

2C. Quadruped Thoracic Spine Extension/Rotation 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side

Tri-Set #3

3A. Prone Incline Bench LYT’s 2 sets of 8 reps each letter

3B. Lying Shoulder Extension/Rotation 2 sets of 10-12 reps each arm

3C. Dynamic Sleeper Stretch 2 sets of 8 reps each arm

Tri-Set #4

4A. Tri-Planar Half Kneeling Hip Flexor Mobilization 2 sets of 8 reps each plane

4B. Adductor Mobilization 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side

4C. Prone Spiderman’s 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side

See the tri-set video playlist below:

Patrick Striet owns Force Fitness & Performance LLC, a private training

facility in Cincinnati. His clients range from weekend warriors to NFL and

MLB players. He’s also a fitness correspondent for

700 WLW Radio. Check him out at his blog http://www.personaltrainerscincinnati.com and follow him on twitter http://www.twitter.com/pjstriet.

http://www.personaltrainerscincinnati.com

A Simple 5 Week Progression for the "Big Lifts"

One of the most popular posts I've ever written on this blog had to do with progressive set/rep schemes. In that post, I discussed the "Husker Power" protocol, which looks like the following:

Set 1: 5 reps @ 65% of 1RM
Set 2: 5 reps @ 70% of 1RM
Set 3: 5 reps @ 75% of 1RM
Set 4: 5 reps @ 80% of 1 RM
*2:00 rest between sets

A nice variation of this protocol, and one which can be used by a more advanced lifter, is to drop the reps by 1 in a descending manner from one week to the next, while simultaneously increasing the percentages by 2.5% each week on every set. It would look like this:

Week 1 as listed above

Week 2
Set 1: 4 reps @ 67.5% of 1RM
Set 2: 4 reps @ 72.5% of 1RM
Set 3: 4 reps @ 77.5% of 1RM
Set 4: 4 reps @ 82.5% of 1RM

Week 3
Set 1: 3 reps @ 70% of 1RM
Set 2: 3 reps @ 75% of 1RM
Set 3: 3 reps @ 80% of 1RM
Set 4: 3 reps @ 85% of 1RM

Week 4
Set 1: 2 reps @ 72.5% of 1RM
Set 2: 2 reps @ 77.5% of 1RM
Set 3: 2 reps @ 82.5% of 1RM
Set 4: 2 reps @ 87.5% of 1RM

Week 5
Set 1: 1 rep @ 75% of 1RM
Set 2: 1 rep @ 80% of 1RM
Set 3: 1 rep @ 85% of 1RM
Set 5-9: 1 rep @ 90%+ of 1RM


This 5 week progressive protocol works very well for most any compound/multiple joint barbell movements. A few things to note:

• On weeks 2-4, you can also work your way back down after the last set in order to get in more volume and/or technique work. I enjoy doing this. So, on week two for example, after your last set of 4 at 82.5%, you'd rest 2 minutes and drop back down to 77.5%, hit a set of 4, then down to 72.5%, etc. Alternatively, after your last set, you can drop back down to 60-65% and "rep out".
• After the 5th week, you can either deload or start again at week 1. When starting again at week 1, you can estimate your 1 RM 1-3% higher (this will be an individual call) and adjust all the percentages accordingly.
• These set and rep schemes are time intensive (especially week 5), and, given this fact, they should only be used for ONE major movement at the beginning of each workout.

If you are in a rut, give this 5 week a progression a shot, and let me know about your progress in the comments section. Happy New Year!

The Upper/Lower/Core Format

I know...it's been awhile :) Going through a divorce will take you away from blogging (and a lot of other things). At any rate, I'm back and ready to provide top notch fitness, fat loss, and performance enhancement information on a weekly basis going forward.

I received an email from a reader asking me about the way I generally structure workouts for my adult general fitness and fat loss clients at my training facility, FORCE Fitness & Performance, in Cincinnati, OH. I could write 10 posts on this very topic, as my training templates are broken up into 8 or 9 different phases and exercise selection is different for each client based on the results of their initial assessment, but, the first four 4 week phases in my program follow an upper/lower/core tri-set  format. The rep range and exercise selection change each phase, but the format stays the same. Here is what it looks like (purely an example):

1A. Upper Body Horizontal Pull (ex: half kneeling cable row)
1B. Lower Body Single Leg Hip Dominant (ex: single leg low pulley RDL)
1C. Core Anti-Lateral Flexion (ex: off bench side plank)

2A. Upper Body Horizontal Push (ex: feet elevated push-up)
2B. Lower Body Single Leg Knee Dominant (ex: rear foot elevated split squat)
2C. Core Anti-Rotation (ex: tall kneeling cable core/pallof press)

3A. Upper Body Vertical Pull (ex: band assisted chin-up)
3B. Lower Body Bilateral Hip Dominant (ex: barbell glute bridge)
3C. Core Anti-Extension (ex: TRX tall kneeling fall outs)

4A. Upper Body Vertical Push (ex: standing single arm DB overhead press)
4B. Lower body Bilateral Knee Dominant (ex: DB goblet squat)
4C. Core Hip Flexion w/ Neutral Spine (ex: stability ball knee tuck/jack knife)

2 sets are performed on each exercise, and the rest periods between sets and exercises is minimal (:30-:45) for a total of 24 sets. Yeah, I know, 12 exercises is a lot, and far more than what many fit pros program, but that's how I do it. I prescribe a 3 repetition bracket (in these phases it's usually 9-12 or 12-15). We are progressive: once a client reaches the top end of the rep bracket on any exercise, we increase load and drop back down to low end of the bracket before building back up to the top end.

Remember, this type of format is for adult general fitness fat loss clients who are seeking to improve-not optimize-many different qualities. The goal is to provide a nice overall metabolic stimulus which will maintain and/or build muscle (these are typically people who have not trained in years if ever at all), increase metabolism, increase conditioning, and improve movement in a balanced fashion.We finish these workouts with 6-10 minutes of conditioning: airdyne or concept 2 work, kettlebell swing circuits, countdowns, etc.

In the later phases of my program, after a client has had 3-4 good months of this type of GPP work, we focus more or pure strength work early in the workout using traditional strength building parameters: 3-6 sets of 3-6 reps using heavy loads and longer rest periods (with "fillers" in between sets). I like to build up a long base with adult clients before moving them into heavily loaded barbell movements. You could argue it shouldn't take 3 or 4 months (3 or 4 4 week phases) to work up to traditional lower rep strength work, but I disagree: remember, these are general fitness adult clients who are typically completely detrained.

Give the upper/lower/core tri-set format a shot. I find my clients really, really enjoy it and like the wide variety of exercises. Again, this is just the way I "skin a cat" when it comes to dealing with adult clients in the early stages of programming.

http://www.personaltrainerscincinnati.com