Cycling Your
Training
by: Eric Stone
In my previous article, Turtle or Hare,
I spoke on planning your training for the best results in the
long-term. To be able to maintain your gains in the long term,
you need to plan smaller gains in the short-term, so that you can have
big gains in the long-term, being like the "Turtle." But, how
exactly should we go about training, once we have a goal? The
answer is to set up training cycles that use your goal. If you
are training for a specific meet, you should set up the training cycle
to "peak" for that meet.
Strength levels simply cannot stay at their highest all the time.
Your strength will have "peaks" depending your training, and also will
have "valleys." Imagine if you tried to go in and max out every
workout? You might be able to increase your max for a short time,
but after a while you would undoubtedly get burned out, and would
probably not even be able work up to your previous max. As
powerlifters, we need to have our strength "peaked" for just the right
time, at the meet! All lifters want their strength levels at
their highest at their meet, it's just that simple.
With that knowledge of peaking your strength in mind, training cycles
should follow that pattern. A cycle should start out relatively
light, well below your max. The beginning of the cycle needs to
be light so can recover from the meet or the end of a previous training
cycle, allowing your strength level to be build back up a peak for the
end of the cycle for your meet. How light you start off really
depends on your experience level, your personal preference, previous
cycles, etc. Either way, the cycle should be planned so you hit
your peak at the end.
As I spoke on the Turtle article, percentages are not the best way to
determine how much of a jump you want for you goal. Similarly, in
a training cycle, percentages are not best way to plan your weekly
jumps. Rather, start with your goal, and take a certain amount of
weight off each week depending your strength level. Usually 10-15
lbs is a good amount for a weekly jump. For instance, if you goal
was 500 lbs at the end of the cycle on week 12, in week 11 you would do
485, in week 10 470, week 9 455, etc.
I have a few training cycles that I have used linked below. They
are all customizable to your goal and weekly jumps. All of them
are set-up for doing each lift once a week, and usually an additional
bench day with some assistant lifts. For instance, a training
schedule could look like the following: Monday--Bench,
Tuesday--Squats, Thursday--Auxilary Bench, Friday--Deadlift.
Each cycle has the heaviest workout on the last week. Now, you
shouldn't have those heavy workouts right before the meet. If you
didn't you would not have enough time to recover and have your strength
peaked at the meet. Therefore, your last heavy workouts should
start the week before the meet. The week of the meet, you should
either be doing very light training, or none at all.
As far as the sets and reps of a training cycle, you'll notice that my
cycles vary quite a bit. Two of them start out with higher reps
and work downward towards a single at the end of the cycle. The
other two have singles as their main component throughout the whole
cycle. Which type of scheme you use is mostly personal
preference. I believe they both work, and
likely any set/rep scheme
will work so long as the weights are cycled so that strength is peaked
for the meet.
Despite all of the routines and training systems out there today, hard
work is the most basic key component for any type of training to
succeed. I believe, however, the best training is to focus on the
powerlifts themselves (squat, bench press, deadlift), and cycle your
weights to peak for a contest.
5x5
Cycle - A basic cycle based off of Rickey Dale Crain's
training. It is very high volume, and it is a longer cycle of 15
weeks. It starts with 5 weeks of 5x5, 4 weeks of 4x4, and so on
down to a top single at the end.
Quick Peaking Cycle -
A shorter 8 week cycle that I designed early in my powerlifting
career. It has been tweaked since then, but the basics of it
remain.
12 Week Singles Cycle
- This cycle uses 3 sets of singles, like attempts in a
meet. It is very sport-specific in that manner. It also
includes some drop sets for reps, and other exercise to work on
different parts of the lifts.
8 Week Singles Cycle -
This is the same basic cycle as above, only shortened to 8 weeks.