Welcome to Workout of the Week, number 51. This time we have a four-day-a-week upper-lower strength and power contrast loading workout. I have to read it out because it’s such a long name. Anyway.
So what’s the training goal? We want to develop strength and power through contrast loading.
What is contrast loading? We talked about that previously. If we look at our force-velocity curve, basically you’re contrasting the maximum effort with the plyometric effort. Yeah, so high force, low velocity, with low force, high velocity.
Training variables: 85% to 100% for the maximum effort, and 0 to 10% for the plyometric effort. Rep ranges: 1 to 6. Training exertion: light to medium. We use a maximum effort for the maximum loading and plyometric effort for the plyometric loading.
Let’s talk exercises. For our maximum effort, it’s based on fundamental movements: squat, hinge, push, and pull. And jumps and throws for the plyometric effort. The exercises: we work from most complex to least complex, or most explosive to least explosive.
More training variables: The training frequency—we train four days a week. The training organization: we use a station training approach including some complexes. The training split is an upper-lower split.
So how does that look? Here we are. Let’s jump in.
Here we are inside our program. You can download it. You see an overview of the program and the weekly overview. Yeah, so we have Workout One, Workout Two, followed by a rest day, and then Workout Three, Workout Four. You can also see here: Workout Number One is lower body strength and power, Workout Number Two is upper body strength and power, and then we go again to lower body and upper body.
So let’s have a look. How does it work? How does it look?
Workout Number One: We do the power clean combined with the medicine ball scoop. Yeah, the contrast loading approach. We do the back squat and the countermovement drop jump. We do the Bulgarian split squat and the single-leg countermovement box jump. You see here we do three sets of three at 87.5% for the maximum effort, and then we do three sets of four at 4% for the plyometric effort. You see the same set and rep scheme for the other two complexes: yeah, three sets of three at 87.5%, and then for the jumping, the reps are reduced to three sets of two repetitions.
If we go to Workout Number Two, we have the upper body strength and power. So here we do the bench press and the medicine ball push press, as well as the pull-up and the medicine ball slam.
Workout Number Three: Again, the lower body. We do the hang power clean with a medicine ball scoop, the front squat with the countermovement box jump, and the step-up with the step-up jumps.
Workout Number Four: The upper body. We do the barbell shoulder press with the medicine ball push press, and the bench row with the medicine ball slam.
If you download that PDF, you get a glossary explaining the terms. You can read a bit about myself. You can read what other people have to say about me—like my former athletes, my mentees, and my colleagues or former colleagues. And last but certainly not least, you can join the membership. Inside the membership, you get the four-week periodized training program. This was the first week of that training program.
Considering we are at week number 51 or training program 51, you get 50 other programs of four weeks. Do your math—that means 200 weeks. So you’ll be busy training for four years if you follow all the training programs. Joking aside…
Let’s go back and finish this presentation. What are the next steps?
You download that workout program. Then you join the membership and access the four years of training that I just alluded to. You like and subscribe. You can grab all previous workouts here. You watch the previous workout, and if you haven’t already, you can subscribe again.
I’ll see you next week with the next Workout of the Week.
