Workout of the Week #54

Welcome to Workout of the Week, number 54. It’s such a long title I have to read it out: a six-day upper-lower push-pull contrast loading workout.

So what is that? Number one, let’s start with the training goal. It’s to maximize strength and become more explosive. We’re talking about maximum strength training and power development.

What are the training variables? It’s a contrast loading, so we work on heavy load contrasted with a light load. Therefore, the heavy load is between 85% to 100% of the one-rep max, and the light load is between 0 to 5%.

How does it look with the repetitions? For the heavy loading: 1 to 3 reps. For the light loading: 3 to 6 reps. The exertion: for the heavy loading, hard to near maximum; for the light loading, light. The effort: for the heavy load, it’s a maximum effort; for the light load, it’s a dynamic effort—mainly a plyometric effort.

If we look at the exercises, for the heavy loading we work with Olympic lifts, squat variations, deadlifts, pushing, and pulling. For the light loads, we use jumps and throws. Our exercise order goes from most complex to least complex.

If we look at the training variables, it’s six days a week and it’s a station training, including some complexes.

So let’s dissect the title: upper-lower push-pull. Upper-lower, basically upper body, lower body. And then we have a push-pull. Therefore, we have an upper body push and a lower body push. Yeah, here we have upper body push, lower body push. We have an upper body pull and a lower body pull. And then we also combine the push-pull in one session. So we have an upper body push-pull and a lower body push-pull.

Now you can see, if you look at what’s in the black font, these are our six sessions: yeah, upper body push, lower body pull, upper body pull, lower body push, upper body push-pull, lower body push-pull.

How does it look? Here’s our program, and we’ll jump right into it.

Here we are inside the program. You get an overview of the program. You can see the table of contents for what’s in this PDF. And then you can see here what I just alluded to: the workouts. Yeah, Workout One through Six. And then we have an upper body push, we have a lower body pull, we have an upper body pull, we have a lower body push, and then we have an upper body push-pull and a lower body push-pull on day six.

How does it look? Yeah, so Workout Number One: the upper body push. You can see on the left side 1A-1B, 2A-2B. Yeah, that is our contrast loading. 1A is the heavy loading exercise, 1B is the plyometric light loading exercise, 2A heavy loading, 2B light loading. Yeah, so we do a bench press and the contrast loading. The principle is we do a biomechanically similar exercise, so the bench press combined with a medicine ball power drop. And I said bench press, and that’s already the second one. So number one is the push press with the medicine ball push press.

Yeah, so here we have it. We do four sets of one at 92.5%, and then we do four sets of three with 2%. Yeah, and again, I’ve outlined that before—it’s a practical concept. Yeah, so we take 2% of the one-rep max of the parent exercise. Yeah, so the parent exercise is your push press. And then if you can—again, I’ll make it easy for myself—if you can push press 100 kilos over your head, you take a 2-kilo medicine ball. Yeah. And the same is true for the bench press: four sets of one at 92.5%, and then four sets of three with 2% of the one-rep max.

Workout Number Two: the lower body pull. Yeah, so we do a trap bar deadlift with the medicine ball scoop, and an RDL with kettlebell swings band-resisted. And then here, also we use our four sets of one at 92.5% for the heavy loading, four sets of three for the light loading. And then we have our four sets of one for the heavy loading and four sets of four for the lighter loading. You see now it’s 10%—again, it’s a kettlebell.

Then we go to our upper body pull. There we do the bench row with the medicine ball slam and the barbell pullovers. If you can’t do it with a barbell, you do dumbbell pullovers with the medicine ball overhead throw. Yeah. And our familiar set-rep scheme: four sets of one at 92.5%, and then four sets of three at 2% for the lighter loading.

So let’s go to Workout Number Four: the lower body push. Yeah, so here we do a front squat combined with countermovement box jumps, and then we do Bulgarian split squats combined with the single-leg countermovement box jumps. Same set, rep, intensity structure: heavy loading, four sets of one at 92.5% of the one-rep max; light loading, we have our four sets of three. Yeah. And for our single-leg countermovement jumps, we do four sets of two.

Then our fifth workout: upper body push and pull. So here you can see on the left side, now we changed the setup a little bit. It’s 1A-1B-1C-1D. So that means exercise 1A, followed by exercise 1B, followed by exercise 1C, followed by exercise 1D, and then we repeat it. So we could debate whether that is a complex or whether that is already kind of a circuit training approach. Anyway, semantics.

We just go into the exercises. So bench press, medicine ball power drop—so horizontal pushing. And then we do the bench row with the medicine ball slam—so it’s a horizontal pull with a vertical pull. Yeah. And then again, our similar set, rep, and intensity structure. So let’s see if I can do it right this time: four sets of one at 92.5%, four sets of three at 2% for the lighter loading. Good, I did it.

Anyway, Workout Number Six: lower body push-pull. So we start with the lower body push: the box squat combined with the seated box jump. And then we go to the lower body pull: the RDL with the medicine ball scoop. Yeah. And again, our set-rep scheme, intensity scheme as before.

Download the workout PDF. You can read about myself if you haven’t downloaded previous workouts and read it. You can see what my former athletes have to say about me. You can also see what my mentees have to say about me, my former colleagues. And last but certainly not least, you can join the membership. Inside the membership, you get the four-week training program. What’s the difference? This is the first week. The four-week program is periodized. Yeah, so there will be progressions from week one to week two to week three to week four.

Let’s go back and finish this presentation. So what are the next steps?

You download the workout PDF. You join the membership. Inside the membership, you get—now we are at week 54, so the 54th program—so you get another 53 four-week programs. So you can train for 200 weeks-plus if you start from Workout Number One. Anyway, joking aside.

You like and subscribe. You can grab all the workouts here. You can see the previous workout, and if you haven’t already, you can subscribe.

I’ll see you next week with Workout of the Week, number 55. I’ll see you then