Work Capacity
By adminAugust 9, 2016
- Rough definition:The volume of work that you can recover from
- Training More Is Usually Better, If You Can Handle It
- Plateau, do more, plateau, do more, etc. (simple decision tree to increase/decrease volume)
- What happens when you can no longer recover well enough to keep doing more, or when you simply get so worn out during your workouts that you can’t do more?
- WORK CAPACITY
- General Adaptation Syndrome shock, resistance, fatigue
- Impulse Response Model; Where GAS Comes From
- Positive Training Effects and Negative Training Effects
- Work capacity helps minimize negative training effects, and increase rate of diminishment for negative training effects
- Less metabolic fatigue
- Less muscle damage
- Less central fatigue (central fatigue largely tied to metabolic fatigue and muscle damage)
- Part 1: How much work you can do
- Training is metabolically costly; the stronger you get, the more metabolically costly it becomes
- If you can’t produce enough energy, you can’t produce powerful enough contractions
- Shift from aerobic/anaerobic mix to mostly aerobic after a few repeated efforts
- Strength drop off
- Form goes to crap
- Low intensity training; raise amount of energy you can produce aerobically, and decrease recovery times between sets (resynthesizing ATP and metabolizing lactate are both aerobic processes)
- High rep training/HIIT (highly specific is probably best; good time for BFR squats; value of bodybuilding style pump work – make low rep sets super easy on your muscles)
- Part 2: Recovery From Amount Of Work
- Outside the gym
- SLEEP Bad stuff for not enough sleep, good stuff for extra sleep
- Stress StultsKohleneman studies
- Body composition; get lean first (roughly 1/3 fat 2/3 lean for lean people, and vice versa for overweight people); fat increases inflammation.
- Enough protein, enough calories, enough CARBS (serotonin and fatigue)
- Again, aerobic training; fatigue from rapid energy depletion; the more of your energy you can get from fat and from aerobic metabolism, the better.
- Repeated bouts effect; reduce muscle damage, reduce inflammation
- How To Increase Work Capacity
- Work on adding volume more so than adding weight for a while
- Decrease weights from 7590% to 6575% for most of your training; still touch heavier loads from time to time to stay comfortable with them, if you want (singles at 8590%)
- DON’T just triple the volume overnight. Gradual progression
- Progression that works pretty well for most people: 65% 3x8 →5x12 on main lifts (9 week progression) for main
lifts, then 7075%% 68 →1012x35 with 7590 seconds for 3 weeks, 7075%% 68 →1012x35 with 6075 seconds for 3 weeks, then repeat with same thing with 4560 seconds rest for 3 weeks
- For accessories, work on keeping rest periods short; circuits/supersets recommended
- Add in aerobic training. Stay around 125140BPM; incline treadmill walking, cycling, or rowing are recommended (mitigate interference effect)
- Really focus on maximizing those factors outside the gym
- Monitoring
- Coming Out Of Work Capacity Phase
- Don’t jump straight to super heavy work
- Gradually add weight and decrease intensity as you come back out of it
- Transition: increase intensity 35%/week and drop reps asneeded (keep sets up) for 34 weeks