Workout of the Week #68

Welcome to Workout of the Week, number 68. This time we have a three-day-a-week maximum strength workout.

What’s the training goal? Well, to develop and maximize strength.

The training variables: 85% to 92.5% of the one-rep max for 2 to 5 repetitions. The exertion is near maximum, and the effort is mainly a maximum effort. We could discuss whether five repetitions at 85% is probably more a repeated effort or not. Anyway, it’s a progressive program over the weeks, so later in the cycle it’s going to be certainly a maximum effort.

So exercises: fundamental movements—squat, hinge, push, pull, and lunge. The exercises are ordered from most complex to least complex.

More training variables: It’s a three-day-a-week program, but only two different workouts. We’ll have a look once we are inside the program at how that is structured and why it is structured like that. So it’s a station training. The training split is a full body split. And yeah, the question stands: how does it look? Here it is, and we’ll jump right into it.

So now we are inside our Workout of the Week 68. You download that PDF. You get an overview of the program and the workout, the table of contents. And then you can see here the weekly overview. So two different workouts. And in week number one and number three, you will have two heavy sessions, and on the last day—so the Friday in this structure—it’s going to be a light session.

So what that means is Workout One is going to be the first workout of the week in week one and week three. And then if we look at week two and week four, it’s reversed. Yeah, so you have Workout Two being the first workout of the week.

Why is that? Number one: it is very applicable for some sports and athletes that you have two loading sessions followed by one deloading workout in a week, because some athletes are really strong, and then because of the neurological fatigue and the loading, it does make sense to not only follow a loading-deloading structure in a mesocycle over two, three, four weeks, but also within a microcycle—in this case being a week. So long story made short, that is number one.

Number two: because you want to have the same amount of quote-unquote energy for each workout. So the week starts in week one with Workout One, in week two with Workout Two, in week three with Workout One, and week four with Workout Two again. I hope that makes sense.

So let’s go further. How are the workouts structured? Yeah, pretty simple. As I mentioned: fundamental movements—squat, hinge, push, pull, lunge. So we start with a squatting movement, followed by a hinging movement—the RDL—then an upper body push, an upper body pull, and a lunging quote-unquote split-squatting variation. Yeah.

The structure is three sets of five at 85% of the one-rep max, which equates to an RPE of 9. Four minutes of rest—inter-set rest—and the set and rep scheme remains the same for all exercises. Yeah.

If we go to Workout Number Two, you see a similar structure: starting with a squatting movement, followed by a hinging movement, then an upper body push. This time it’s a vertical push, not a horizontal push. An upper body pull again—this time a vertical pull, not a horizontal pull. And then a forward lunge and return. So a real lunging movement, not like the split-squatting. Same structure here: three sets of five at 85%, which equates to an RPE of 9. Four minutes of inter-set rest again.

So where is now the deloading session? Well, that is what you get inside the membership, where you get the four-week periodized program. So you can sign up for that. If you go further in that PDF here, you can get the glossary of the terms if you don’t know them already. You can read a bit about myself. You can read about what others have to say about me—my former athletes, my former colleagues and mentees. And last but certainly not least, you get a chance to subscribe to the membership.

So let’s go back and finish this presentation. What are the next steps?

Number one: you download the PDF.

Number two: you join the membership. You get the four-week periodized program. Again, in this one, you have loading, loading, deloading within a weekly structure.

You like and subscribe. And you can grab all previous workouts here. So considering we are in week 68, you can grab another 67 workouts. You can watch the previous workout, and if you haven’t already, you subscribe.