Autoregulated Chaos

Training has been amazing.  My training partner and I have 8 months of morning training sessions interrupted only by a couple of flus, business travel, and a few late nights.  I've found the balance of living fully, dieting well, lifting like a madman, and making cardio fun usually with friends.

The training plan has been 4 days a week.  We tried to run Mon - Thu, but my lower back isn't able to handle the loads we've been lifting for 4 days straight.  the new schedule is Mon,Tue, Thu, Fri. We are rotating between a push day and a pull day, each getting trained twice, but with slightly different emphasis (e.g. vertical plane vs. horizontal plane).

All sessions are pretty comprehensive:

  1. Explosive training
  2. Strength circuit
  3. Hypertrophy circuit
  4. MetCon
On Push days, we do something along these lines:
  1. Explosive: medicine ball throws & box jumps 4 x 5 each
  2. Strength circuit usually 4 x 6 or 4 x 10, depending on the day of the week
    • bench press
    • back squat
    • push press
  3. Hypertrophy circuit usually 4 x 12
    • Incline dumbbell press
    • Thruster
  4. MetCon: 2 - 3 rounds of
    • pushups x 30 sec
    • Lateral jump lunges (speed skater lunge) x 30 sec
    • battle ropes x 30 sec
    • squat jumps x 30 sec


On Pull days, we do something along these lines:
  1. Explosive: snatch grip high pulls (depending on day/week 4x5,4x4, 4x3, 4x2, 5x1)
  2. Strength circuit usually 4 x 6 or 4 x 10, depending on the day of the week
    • Chinup
    • Deadlift
    • 1-arm dumbbell row
  3. Hypertrophy circuit usually 4 x 12
    • Flat back gooodmorning
    • HammerStrength Row
  4. MetCon: 2 - 3 rounds of
    • Kettlebell swing x 40
    • TRX Row x 30
    • Burpee x 20
The details change depending on how we feel, but we keep track of everything, so we are always making progress, even when we are exhausted and sore.  I have dropped a ton of fat in just 2 weeks and can see my abs better than ever before.  The one downside is the loss oof direct arm training.  We just started training arms in a separate evening session, but no results to report there yet.

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