Building Work Capacity: American Volume Training
“Everything works at first but nothing works forever”.
This is a quote I often repeat to new clients. You can get away with atrocious training methods as a novice. It can follow no progressions, the exercise selection can be completely random, the intensity could be too low, and the time under tension can be criminally under dosed.
That being said, just because you can get away with poor training, doesn’t mean you should.
When you first start training your body is a dry sponge being thrown into a pool. It soaks up every bit of stimulus rapidly. We adapt to training faster than we like to believe, especially as a novice.
Eventually, manipulating variables like time under tension, reps, tempos, intensities, exercise selection, and progressions is going to be important for sustained results and preventing injury.
If you want more detail about how to plan training Click here.
Training Progressions
Before I outline the progressions, I wanted to briefly explain the difference between linear and undulating periodization. If you’re just a dude that lifts and thinks this is going to get too technical, just bare with me.
Linear periodization essentially means progressing every week over the course of a training plan. This is great for beginners with untapped potential but won’t work over extended time periods for more advanced trainees. Since beginners aren’t acclimated to a training stimulus, they don’t need a complicated undulating block periodization plan. Save that for later.
Linear periodization is the way to go for beginners and it works, but as I mentioned before, nothing works forever. If you put 5 lbs on your squat in a week you’d think “no big deal, that isn’t much weight” but if you did that over the course of 4 years every single week you would be squatting over 1000 lbs.
My Training progression for novices typically begins with a strutural balance for 3-4 weeks, we then move intro developing general physical capacity/preparation (GPP).
One of my favorite ways of developing GPP is doing what I call American Volume Training (AVT) . The point of AVT is to build a solid base of volume. Repetitions are high, rest is short, and intensity is relatively low at first.
I prefer low intensity for novices for a couple of reasons:
Practice.
Highly undervalued. Performing more reps allows you to build better technique especially if they’re done at the prescribed tempos in this plan.
Neurological Inefficiency
Novices don’t have finely tuned nervous systems. Having a novice squat 5 sets of 5 doesn’t provide enough stimulus since their technique and nervous system is too under developed to use heavy enough load.
Conditioning.
You adapt to doing a lot of reps and condition the body to tolerate load. This is important for building a base for future training that will be at lower volumes but at higher intensites. You will also improve your ability to recover between sets.
Training principle: Volume before intensity
“A pyramid is only as tall as its’ base” - Louie Simmons
Don’t worry, if you’re more advanced i’ll still have a GPP protocol for you.
Training Splits
Below are my preferred splits for developing work capacity
2x a week = Full Body
3x a Week = Full Body
A/B split. Just rotate between workout A and workout B
Other Options for 3x / Week
Full Body, Full Body, Chest & Arms
Full Body, Full Body, Cardio & Abs
Full Body, Full Body, Metabolic Circuits / Modified Strongman
4x a week = Upper Lower
Training Template
2x / Week
4x / Week
The 4x a week protocol is a bit more advanced. I recommend introducing density training in the C series. Simply pick 1-2 exercises and perform as many reps as possible in 10 to 12 minutes. Aim to beat your total reps each week within the same time frame.
Simple examples:
Upper Body Density
10 Min AMRAP
10 Pushups & 3 Chin-ups
Lower Body Density
10 Min AMRAP
10 Hindu Squats
10 KB Swings
I wrote “MAIN” for the A series since what you do there should be determined by your goals. Since the goal of this cycle however is to build GPP, I recommend moderate reps for the accessories (10-12) followed by a higher Rep back off set of 15.
Conditioning
Conditioning: Go HARD on the work intervals. Hard but sustainable, don’t have a huge dropoff because you blew your load on set 1 and you’re too out of shape to recover.
Beginner
Week 1: 5 x 15 sec with 60 sec rest
Week 2: 6 x 15 sec with 60 sec rest
Week 3: 7 x 15 sec with 60 sec rest
Blood Burning
4 x 30 sec, 30 sec Rest
VO2 Max
4 x 3:00, 3:00 Rest
Reverse Tabata
8 x 10 sec, 20 sec rest
Pick 4 exercises. Do all 4 with 10 sec hard, 20 sec rest, then repeat to get a total of 8 rounds. I’d recommend sled work, sprints on the bike, rower, ski, med ball slams, burpees, or battle Ropes.
I highly recommend using the sled, it’s the perfect hammer for the 3:1 - 4:1 work to rest ratio used for the conditioning.
Train hard this week dudes.