Weights and Plates Podcast - #11 - Training Around Sports and Recreation

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

We get it -- training is not always fun, and a big reason you might be training is to get better at your chosen sport or activity. Whether it's BJJ, running, mountain biking, or a team sport like football or baseball, getting stronger is essential to improving at your sport. But you have to practice skills and condition too. Many people make the mistake of trying to get better at everything at once, which never works, but with some basic principles and smart planning you can arrange your training blocks to increase your fitness AND your skills on the field.

Welcome back to the Weights and Plates podcast. I'm Robert Santana. I'm your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Howdy, howdy. Today we're going to talk about the question I get all the time about, well, when am I strong enough to, you know, do the fun stuff or like, you know, do something that's not lifting? I mean, what's a good word for it, Trent? When do I get to do wads? I just want to do wads, man. I want to do BJJ. I want to run a 10K, you know, I want to run a 10K. How do I do that? Yeah. So we, we get some version of this question often as coaches and, uh, and you know, we're, we're kind of making fun of it, but it's a legitimate question, right? Like we have lives

to live and we have different interests and it's important to not lose sight of like having some fun with your training. Um, we've mentioned before, like training is not particularly fun in and of itself. Sometimes you have some fun, but that's really not the goal. The goal is to produce an adaptation, to get a result. But that said, there is a way to train, to continue to train, and then also fit in other stuff, other activities, other physical activities that you may have more fun with. physical activities that you may have more fun with. So we thought we'd talk about today, how exactly do you do that? I'm going to start here. I think that ideally, let's see if you agree with me. I think ideally, if you want to do some other hard physical activity, and you know, this could be like a sport or like, you know, some sort of like high impact training,

like CrossFit wads or, you know, running long distances. If you want to do that, I think ideally you complete a novice linear progression first before you do any of that stuff. But Trent, uh, I don't want to train for powerlifting. I'm not a powerlifter. I'm not a powerlifter. Yeah, we know. We get it. We get it. And guess what?

After three months of, you know, the amount of time it's going to take for you to finish a novice linear progression, you're not going to be a powerlifter either. It takes a lot longer than that. So, yeah, what we're talking about is really just like a small, like a short, you know, three-month phase, four-month phase. There are some people, especially younger people, who can run out linear progression for several months, six, seven, eight months. But frankly, in my experience, that's less common. Yes, there are people who can do that, but most people are going to get through novice linear progression in like

three months, four months, you know, that's, that's a pretty good run at it. Yeah. And, uh, I think, you know, just kind of starting back from the beginning here, we know what, what are you in the gym for? So you're in the gym to get stronger, okay. Or to build muscle. Um, and that's going to require specific training. You know, we believe that the training with barbells and starting out with a novice linear progression and driving weight on the bar up is the most efficient way to do it. Ultimately, to build muscle or gain strength, you have to progressively overload your muscles. So that could come in the form of more sets, more reps, more weight. We use more weight.

It's the most logical. It tends to be pretty reliable in novice lifters. Yeah. I think those other methods work just fine, but I'm of the position that why pile on a bunch of stuff when a few things will do the job? And that's especially the case with a novice. Novice will respond to anything. And that's especially the case with a novice. Novice will respond to anything.

So let's just, you know, teach him how to move well so that, you know, he's in good shape for the rest of his life and isn't having back pain and middle-aged. But then also let's put muscle on him, get him looking better and get him strong. So unfortunately for most people, what that looks like is, oh, it's powerlifting. Well, first of all, what is powerlifting? Powerlifting is a sport where you squat, bench press, and deadlift. And the goal is to lift the most weight. And how you achieve that goal may not necessarily be in the back and they go down two inches you know that will score points in a power lifting meet but she's only strong for those two inches you know right about the rest of that range of motion right or uh you know these power lifting federations that are pretty lax on depth on the squat they go down two inches and they it counts as a. So powerlifting is a sport where weight has to

move. Um, and you know, the range of motion of that weight or how you perform it doesn't really matter as long as you meet the criteria set by the rules committee. So that's not what we're trying to get people to do. I was going to add the other thing is like, it's only one rep. You know, when you, when you compete in powerlifting, like the goal is to do one rep. Now you do three attempts for each left lift. So potentially you could be doing nine reps in total at a powerlifting meet. But like the point is it's, it's not, it's, it, this is all just max force production. That's not realistic either. You know, we're not dead lifting our cars off of human bodies all day outside, you know,

that's not, that's not a practical expression of strength for most people. So, uh, yeah. So yeah, that's, that's powerlifting, but you know, what we're talking about training in the novice phase is 15 reps per lift, right? It's three sets of five, um, which is a much more realistic expression of strength. And it's also a good way to learn a new movement with the bar on your back or a bar in your hands, you know, depending on which lift we're talking about. You do 15 reps on a complicated movement that you're not very good at. That's more opportunities to fuck it up. So that's why we do fives, you know, maybe it's not, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Some people, I get complaints, five's not enough. Well, first of all, yes, it is if it gets not, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Some people, I get complaints, five's not enough. Well, first of all, yes, it is if it gets heavier, first of all. Second of all, there's no

point in doing tens in a barbell lift. Most of the scientific literature out there on strength training and quote unquote hypertrophy is based on machine-based protocols. And it makes perfect sense to do a machine for 10 reps because you're in a fixed range of motion and you're not moving a lot of joints at the same time right so typically you know you do a machine bicep curl you're not gonna you're not gonna move it an inch if you put enough weight on there for heavy triple because there's just single joint exercises are harder to load heavy and keep them single joint you know it's just the nature of them. So the reason we pick these exercises, they simulate human movement. They use lots of muscles at the same time

and they build strength and muscle mass quickly for a novice. So when you advance along that curve, so, you know, a novice, we define as somebody who could recover within a couple of days. You squat five reps today, you're going to squat five reps at five more pounds or 10 more pounds on Friday, two days from now. And you can

continue that for a while. Eventually, you're going to need a lighter day in between. And then eventually it's going to be every week. And then every two weeks and every three weeks and every four weeks, you're adding weight. So there was a good article on this. So the term periodization always comes up in strength training research. and now in the fitness publications has become more and more of a popular term. Yeah. And that just means how you plan your workouts to achieve certain goals at certain times of the year. And this is relevant for the main topic of this podcast. A good article I read years ago by Dr. Mike Israetel summarized it in a way that I really liked.

He said there's only one type of periodization. And that's correct. So linear periodization purely means, okay, you're just doing the same exercise every workout, and the only thing that's changing is load. So in starting strength, when you're doing squats three times a week, that is linear periodization, right? So it's a linear progression. Now, when you're benching and alternating that with the press, there's a couple of things happening. You're switching the exercise. So you're alternating two exercises. So you're doing a different variation that hits similar muscles, right? That could fall into the category of, you know, conjugate periodization, you know, Westside guys do, right? Because you're alternating

the exercise. You're also alternating the load, which is undulated, right? Daily undulated periodization. Right. Yeah. You're going to be benching heavier than you're pressing. Yeah, exactly. So you got all three of the elements of the conjugate method, linear periodization, you're adding weight every time, and then undulated, daily undulated periodization because the load is changing from workout to workout. It's heavier one day than other days. Now, when you move into intermediate training, this becomes more clear, right? So you have a heavy day, a light day, a medium day. That's DUP, daily undeleted periodization. You might squat one day, front squat one day, box squat one day.

That's conjugate method, right? And then you're still trying to add weight every week, so it's still linear, right? So, you know, that's the easiest, that's the best way that I've seen that explained, and I still, you know, repeat that to this day. You know, there's only one type of periodization. Elements of all of them are always involved. So how do we contextualize this to, you know, your quote-unquote sport, whether it's a competitive sport, you're a youth athlete, or whether you're a recreational runner or a recreational BJJ guy that wants to fight, or you're in a softball league or whatever, whatever the sport is, you have your main sport and you're just like, well, I think I look like shit and I want to look better, so I want to lift, or my knees hurt when I play, or for whatever

reason you think that you need to barbell train. It's usually a combination of those things, bad joints, you know, poor aesthetics, you know, etc. Well, you're going to have to take time away from your sport. So this goes back to basic strength and conditioning 101. You know, there's a lot of things that I disagree with in terms of the establishment literature on strength training, but some of the older stuff that Mike Stone every week, you know, you're not going to spend a lot of time in the weight room because your priority is to play the game, play the sport, right? So you're going to spend tons of time in sport training, very little time in the weight room. So then when the off-season comes, the less time dedicated to competition, the more time you want to spend doing those other things

like strength training, right? So typically athletes will spend more time you want to spend doing those other things like strength training, right? So typically athletes will spend more time in the weight room in the off season and more time on their sport during season. And the reason for that is, is because since the pressure to play is eliminated, you can build up those areas and you can get stronger. Then when you go and practice for that sport during season, now you're going to have a lot more force you can produce that you've acquired during the off season. So that's for an athlete, the most extreme scenario. So the same principle applies here to the person who just runs 10Ks or does a few fights a year, right? You have to budget time for your strength training where you're going to spend less time on the mat or in the pool or on

the track, you know, or on the field, right? That means less time running, more time lifting. Is that a permanent thing? Not necessarily. And it might take several cycles of this because, you know, strength is slow to acquire, but also slow to lose. That's the good news. So, right? So if you do, you know, a three to-month strength phase or whatever you want to call it, and then you go and you prepare for your race, you run it, and then you come back and do a year later from the first time you started, you're going to have a higher baseline than you did the first time you strength trained, most likely, because you're still probably going to go in the gym and squat and deadlift once a week and lighter weights while you're doing all the mileage, right? Yep. And then once your race is done, you kind of recover for a week and then you go in the weight room and you, you know, start again and then your squat goes up and then each year you should theoretically be stronger. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty good way to kind of lay out the big picture there. I want to go back to another thing that we talked about in previous episodes,

and that is the stress recovery adaptation cycle. So it's the way that we describe how you adapt to the work that you're doing in your training program. So if we lift, that is our stressor, and it's going to produce the adaptation of strength. We can just produce more force. strength. We can just produce more force. But the middle part of that equation, recovery, the R part, that is of critical importance when you're talking about balancing a sport or a recreational activity that is intense with the training you do in the weight room, because we only have so much recovery available. And I find this is something that a lot of people struggle with, especially people that have not trained to an advanced level, is they don't quite understand that if you add more activity outside of your training program, you're draining

your recovery resources that should be used for the training. And you only get so much. that should be used for the training. And you only get so much. And especially when you are a novice trainee, your tank is pretty small. Now, over time, as you develop as a trainee, your recovery tank can get bigger. And you can add to the amount of total work you can accumulate week over week, month over month, and still be able to recover from. That does happen, right? So it's not like it stays small forever. But especially if you're a novice strength trainee, you have to recognize that your recovery tank is pretty small. So you simply, if you actually want to get results from your training, you don't have much ability to add anything else besides the strength training because you're going to be draining your recovery resources that should be allocated towards

building more strength. And this comes up frequently when people try to add running or an intense activity like sparring on the mat if it's jujitsu. There's a lot of people who really like to do jujitsu in the strength community. So it's a common example, but both of those things are fairly high intensity or high volume activities. If you go out and try to run a bunch of mileage while you're also trying to drive your squat and deadlift up in the weight room, it's just, it's a big drain on your recovery. You're going to run into a wall pretty quickly, and you're going to end up not being good at either because you're draining yourself in the weight room

with the squatting and the deadlifting, so you're not going to run that well. And then your running is draining you from the squat and deadlifts. You're not going to get your strength up. So I want to make that clear that think about this in terms of stress recovery adaptation. And you've got to balance your stressors and your recovery ability. So the best way to do that is, like you said, if you can give

yourself an off-season to where you only focus on strength training, then you can devote 100% of your recovery resources to strength. Great. It becomes a lot more difficult when you're trying to train while also doing some sport activity. That's the principle of finite resources. Your resources are finite. You can't get stronger, run a marathon, fight and be JJ, raise five kids,

work a 12-hour job, and take care of your own house you know it's just you know you're you're you're limited there are finite resources there i think of the example of the demand for ice cream goes up you're going to produce less cheese you know it's an old economics example that i thought of just now and the price of cheese goes up because you have less cheese and you have more ice cream, right? So it's the same kind of deal, right? So if you're a runner, you consider yourself a runner, but you think strength is useful for you for whatever reason, you're going to have to train purely for strength for a period of time and run a little bit, you know? And then when it's time to run a race, you're going to have to run for most of the time and train a little bit. And that's just how

you have to look at it. I have a client right now that does that. She's very much into wads and long distance runs. And right now she's training for, I think, a five or 10K. And, you know, she knows that afterwards, she just asked me, she's like, after this race, I want to, you know, just train me however you want to dial it down, you know, because we've been through it a few times. But I thought about this phenomenon years ago. I had a guy, because I get a lot of people that like CrossFit. And I think they like it because they enjoy it. They enjoy being around the people.

The workouts make them feel a certain way. But, you know, they care about how they look and they want to, quote unquote, look better, which whether they know it or not means more muscle. You know, they need more muscle. And I had to explain it several times. If you want to build muscle, you have to train to build muscle. A CrossFit WOD isn't going to do that. There's this misconception that just going into a gym or some sort of fitness or sport recreation facility, that that's all you need to do to change your body, you know, regardless of how you do it. It's, no, this is a targeted process here. And part of that's just, it's because of novice effect. You know, you start doing CrossFit and, you know, you get a little bit more shoulder definition, a little bit more thigh definition, depending on the box, of course, you know, but,

you know, you're doing stuff you haven't done before and you see some development in the beginning. And therefore, well, CrossFit made me look more jacked. So, you know, now I just need a special diet for it. And it's like, no, that was novice effect. You started moving barbells, even though, you know, even though you're doing a shitload of reps or whatever you were doing, you were moving barbells and those muscles that move the barbells developed just from you going in there and doing something. But now it has to become more specific to that goal. That's why I said earlier, we think the most efficient way for a novice to train is doing a handful of exercises because it'll continue beyond that novice phase, you know, the first two months, first three, actually more like first three to six months, right?

You keep training with barbells, you keep adding, you keep overloading, your body continues to change. So anyways, I had a guy once and he did that and I, you know, got to that point and this is probably a whole nother episode we got to do. I got to that point where he's like, this is hard. I hate going to the gym. It freaks me out. It gives me anxiety, all this stuff, right? Because the bar on the back feels heavy. It's stressful. You lose sleep over it. I've had people shit their pants over it. Yeah. Done all those things. Yeah. Yeah. It could be a problem. Yeah. One guy guy once told me it's not heavy if you even shit your pants right you know we have a fellow strength coach calls that uh filling the trough

well um my point with that is that you know like i had to explain this dude i'm like bro you're 190 pounds and you're freaking out about a 250 pound squat you know in a 300 pound deadlift i'm like it's not that heavy, you know. Are you done building muscle? No, I want more. And I'm like, if you want more, you got to do more. Eventually, he gave up and, you know, I heard the, oh, I feel heavy on my feet, you know. I feel heavy on my feet.

I'm so slow now. I'm so slow now. And I'm like, I'll go do your CrossFit, you know. So anyways, obviously, if you train for strength and you've been, you know, doing a lot of conditioning stuff, you're going to lose some of that because you're doing less conditioning. But that doesn't mean you're going to, you know, get cardiovascular disease or anything like that. You're just not going to be as conditioned as you were when you were just running and doing wads every day. But you want to build muscle or not. You know, these adaptations are very specific, right?

And they're kind of, they have kind of this weird inverse relationship. You know, if you build a ton of muscle and get very strong, you get, you know, you get less conditioned. And if you get highly conditioned and get very efficient from a cardiorespiratory standpoint, you get weaker, you know? So it's finding that balance, right? And in the beginning, it's taking context, right? If I have a 190 pound guy, I want him squatting close to 400 you know he thinks that that's this guy's probably gonna think it's power lifting standards no it's not because 190 pound guys in power lifting are squatting six or seven or eight hundred sometimes not so much eight but i've seen what was that guy's name norris squatted 725 or something at 198 well i was about to say

i think didn't ed ed cone compete in like the 198 class for a while yeah and he squatted six or seven oh more than that he's 800 you know before he moved up to 220 i think at some point yeah i thought i thought 220 is where he did eight plus but you could be wrong i don't remember i mean he probably did squat 800 at 198 i believe it oh yeah yeah absolutely i mean it's insane i don't remember his i don't yeah but yeah i yeah, he is the greatest powerlifter of all time, arguably. But but yeah, the point stands like an elite elite level powerlift, like a competitive powerlifter is doing a order of magnitude more than that on the bar. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, 400 squat is not that heavy for a healthy 190-pound guy. Neither is a 500 deadlift. That typically takes more work, I've noticed, but it can be done. So does your 1RM matter? No, it's a proxy, though. If you're squatting 400, you're probably squatting the low 3s for sets of 10. So you want me to not talk about the 1RM and talk about what your 10RM probably is?

Okay. Well, okay, you don't have to do a 1RM and talk about what your 10RM probably is? Okay. Well, okay, you don't have to do a 1RM. You don't want a power lift. Fine. But you still need to squat 300 for reps, you know, if you want to, you know, have some semblance that you do something, you know, same thing with pressing, you know, body weight press is nice, but okay, if you're 200 and you're pressing 200, but you don't care about 1RM, all right, well, I want to see 165 for a set of five, you know, 175 for a set of five would be nice, you know, or, you know, 150 for a set of 10, you know, like

we can translate those numbers if you want, but 1RM is pretty easy to communicate with, which is why I use that number, you know. So, you know, I always get that, you know, like, oh, I don't want to power lift. And it's like, well, if you want to build muscle, you need to look like you build muscle. And obviously, you know, the delta on that isn't very high. If you're, you know, a natural lifter, you know, you might add what, five to 10% for being generous over a training career. Sure. What is that? Yeah. Probably five to 10% for most people outliers more, you know, like, you know, you, if you gain 15, 20 pounds of muscle over a 10 year training career, you did pretty good. know, like, you know, if you gain 15, 20 pounds of muscle over a 10-year

training career, you did pretty good. If you're an average person, you know, above average person might put on more. There's articles on that out there, you know, and that's why a lot of guys get on drugs because they want more muscle than that, you know, it's not rocket science. So to stay on point here, you're going to have to dial down your sport or your recreational sport to focus on strength if strength is important to you. But that doesn't mean that we're training for powerlifting. No, I'm not training you to do one arm on the platform and get the most weight up. I'm training you to build muscle, get stronger, move better. And then you dial it down, then you run. And it doesn't matter really what you're putting on the bar at that point because you're running all the time or you're fighting all the time or you're

doing wads now. And then, uh, if you want to build a little bit more muscle, then you hop back on the strength wagon. It's it's yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's really pretty simple. You know, um, I think kind of big picture, most people are going to do a novice linear progression, run that out as best they can. And, uh, you know, if you have a sports season, if you're, if you're an athlete that has a specific season, then you have a calendar right there. It's built in, you know, you have X number of months that you have available to strength train, and you're going to need to give yourself a little small period of time to ramp your conditioning up right before the season starts, depending on your sport, you know, and,

and every sport's going to have its own level of conditioning that's required. So there you go. There's your time. You just do the best you can. You run your linear progression as long as you can in that time period. And then you, you, you basically try to maintain, I'm going to use that dirty word, maintain as best you can during the season. And you start over and you try to get a little bit higher the next time you do it in your next off season. Now, if you're in a sport or activity that doesn't have a season, a set season, which a lot of people like that would be like BJJ or running, you can do those year round, then you're going to have to create an off season for yourself. And then you're going to have to basically start waving where, you know,

you're doing exactly what you just described, where you're pushing your training up for a little while and then letting your training kind of die down as you drive up your practice. I want to point out something though, that you mentioned earlier. I feel heavy on my feet. I feel like I'm so slow. I can't move like I used to. Well, there's one important thing here, and this goes back to the stress recovery adaptation cycle that I talked about earlier. And that's that when you are strength training in particular, especially towards the end of the novice phase, you're building up a lot of fatigue. We call it systemic fatigue. It's just sort of this accumulated tiredness that you build up because what's happening is you get towards the end of your novice phase of training is that you walk in on Monday to do your workouts, you get to

Wednesday and you can add more weight on the bar, but you were not 100% anymore. When you first started the process, you walked in the gym after training on Monday, you walked in the gym on Wednesday and you were pretty much fresh. And then Friday, the same thing. Well, you get to the end of your novice phase and you are not fresh anymore on Wednesday. You're like, all of a sudden you go, you're 98%. And then all of a sudden you're 95% and then 90% and then 80%. And the systemic fatigue gets pretty freaking high at the end of the novice phase. So yeah, when you try to get out there on your bike, or you get out there for a run, you're going to feel like shit because you've built up this enormous amount of fatigue in your training. And that has to dissipate before you're going to feel fresh again. And you're going to be

able to fully express all that strength you've built in your sport. And the other element of that is skill, right? Obviously, if you've spent a lot of time training, you haven't spent that time skill training, you haven't been building your skills up, so you're going to be a little rusty. But once you knock the rust off, and once you allow that fatigue that you've built up in your training program to dissipate, then you're going to feel a lot fresher. You're going, you're once you're, you knock the rust off your skills, you're going to be back to kind of your normal sort of skill level. And all of a sudden, now you're going to be practicing your sport with the same skill level you had before, but a much bigger base of fitness to go with it. And that might mean if you're doing BJJ and your

deadlift doubled, all of a sudden you're a lot more stable when you're grappling. It's harder for people to bend you over. If you're running, you're going to be more injury resistant. You're going to be able to push up hills that used to be a problem that you had to plan for. And it's going to be no big deal. Your interval runs are going to be faster. That's how this stuff works in practice. But I think a lot of people that aren't used to strength training, they start to freak out in that moment when they get a few months in because all of a sudden they're like, oh, I'm losing everything that I had in my sport. And it's like, no, no, you have to understand recovery. You've been taxing the heck out of yourself. You can't expect to go out there and perform just like you did before you

walked in the gym. No, and that's a whole nother episode there. I always get the, why was I strong last week and I'm weak this week? And I'm like, we need to talk about that at some point. But yeah, no, it's just like fat loss too. You know, like, okay, I want to lose fat. All right. Well, you'll be able to do both at first because, you know, there's neuromuscular adaptations that are going on in the beginning and it's just not that heavy yet. Then it gets heavy and you have competing goals, right? So now you have to either dial down your training to lose the body fat or stop losing the body fat and dial up your training. So it's the same kind of thing. You're managing finite resources. Your resources can only go so far. When things are easy, you can do everything at the same time, especially when you're new at something, right? But then as things get more difficult and demands of one activity exceed the demands of the other or even equate to the other, you know, as the demands of the activities go up, things have to start going. Like anybody who's went from point A to point B at any part of their life

has learned this. You know, like, let's say you become a father, right? You never had a child. You know, that's going to take resources away from other things. You hear this all the time. Right. Or if, you know, if you're getting a terminal degree, you know, I'm pursuing a PhD myself, that diverts resources away from other things. You know, people go insane trying to get a PhD or even going to medical school. So, this is not just restricted to strength training. This is anything you are limited by the finite resources that you possess, and you have to allocate them in a way that makes economical sense for you, right? So if training, if getting as strong as possible

is your priority, which it is mine, you know, I don't think about it like I used to, but, you know, I've come to accept there's, you know, maintenance is bullshit. I go in there and try to add, you know, I'm an enthusiast. I love lifting. I don't enjoy conditioning. But, you know, that's where I divert my resources. I don't spend a bunch of time running, you know. And I'd say for you, yeah, I mean, you are, that's a practical move. You have a limited amount of time to train. So you're like, well, where can I mean, you are, that's a practical move. You have a limited

amount of time to train. So you're like, well, where can I get the most bang for my buck? And I'm going to get that with strength training. But then also like, it's something you enjoy too. So it's also kind of a hobby in a sense. But yeah, I would say like, you know, the other thing, since you brought up CrossFit earlier, that's the classic thing. Like if you look at what actual like CrossFitters that compete at the games, if you look at their training programs, this is what they do. They don't do CrossFit all the time. They don't crush wads six days a week. What they do is they spend when they're far away from their next competition, they're working on their strength. They're doing heavy compound lifts. As they get closer, they start to taper that off a little bit while they ramp up their conditioning. And then they start ramping up their skill work.

And the closer they get to the games, the more conditioned they get and the further away from strength training they get and the more skill work they include. And that makes sense. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to gain a little bit of strength during that strength building phase that they're going to hang on to as they taper that off and get closer to the game so that they can walk in and be able to deadlift 500, but also do Fran super fast and be able to do kipping pull-ups and all that stuff right they have a big a wide base of skills they need to be able to execute on the day of the games but that's what it is it's a plan right they have a plan and they and they they um they have essentially blocks of training that they move through in order to produce the highest result in all of these different skills and abilities that they have to have to have for their sport. And you can apply that to anything. I think not every sport's going to have the demands

of CrossFit, but the same principles apply. I'll say this. If you're going to do a high intensity sport or activity, I'm thinking about BJJ here. if you are training and you're in an active strength training phase but you still want to do a little bit because i get it you know it's fun i would say try to do more skill work and less high intensity work in your sport exactly this is not possible for everyone but if but you know, if you do BJJ, that would mean go and do some drilling during the week once, maybe twice, but stay away from sparring. It's just, you know, it's going to take way too many resources that you need to be using towards your training. You can save the sparring for later when you taper down your strength

training. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think of some other examples and other sports, same thing with running, you know, you can run a little bit, like maybe once a week you can do a run while you're training. If you just want to keep a little bit of, you know, a little bit of that in your schedule, but that's it, you know, no more than that. But that's, that's a good principle. High. So avoid high intensity, you know, skill work doesn't take a whole lot of as much resources as um you know it's just intense you made me think about how i approach fat loss and this kind of applies the same thing to what you just said um so i agree with you um about intensity i think that if you're going to push anything high intensity then you have to provide the resources to do that so yeah if

you're strength training at a high intensity you can't do bjj do that. So if you're strength training at a high intensity, you can't do BJJ at a high intensity. If you're dieting, you can't lift heavy. You can't lift at a high intensity. So that's where those priorities kick in, right? So if you're in a strength phase and you're training to get stronger and taking a break from whatever your sport is,

then you have to feed the strength training and you have to recover for the strength training. That's where you're going to train at the highest intensity. Therefore, you can't do BJJ at a high intensity while you're doing strength training at a high intensity. Your back will let you know, trust me. Right. Yes, exactly. So that's kind of how you want to think about it is you're always constantly diverting resources. If you're trying to cut weight, then you can't lift heavy. You're going to dial down strength training intensity. If you're trying to get stronger, then you're not going to run all the time or do BJJ all the time at a high intensity.

You're going to do light runs and you're going to do drill work like you just said. If it's fighting season, you're not going to lift heavy. You're going to do volume at a moderate to low weight. So that's pretty much how you're not going to lift heavy. You're going to do volume at a moderate to low weight, you know? So that's pretty much how you want to approach it. You're constantly diverting resources to the thing that is the priority at a given time. So that's how you kind of want to plan these things longterm.

Right. So if fighting, I don't know when people tend to fight, it's probably a year round thing, I'm guessing. Right. Yeah. I think it's,

it's kind of a kind of like powerlifting meets, you know, it's something you might do a competition a few times a year. Yeah. At least. If you tend to fight in the fall, then you probably want to start training in the late spring, early summer, right? Which means in the winter is when you're going to be strength training, right? And you're not going to be fighting at a high intensity at that point.

Same thing with running. If you're doing a 5K or 10K or a marathon, you know, I don't know why somebody would do that, but people do. If you're going to do that in January, then you're going to need several months to prepare for that, which means you're probably going to be strength training February to, you know, June or July or however much time you need. You know, I don't know. I'm not a marathon runner. That's something for a runner to figure out. I'm just throwing some random numbers out there. Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, you want to plan. You want to plan and then you want to allocate the resources for the activity that is the priority. That's right. Yeah, basic concepts here. Stick with the principles. Yeah, you know, clearly there are some sports where it's easier to do this than others.

You know, with something like BJJ, it's easier to do this than others. With something like BJJ, it's possible to do skill work. If you're a baseball player, you can always go out and do some batting practice. You can always throw. That's not super high intensity. But if you play football, you can't go play football at low intensity. It's a high intensity, high fatigue. It's a tremendous impact on your body and you know if you play friday night in high school then you're wrecked on saturday you're like you you play football you know this so yeah you there's it's not possible really to do football at low intensity unless you're just talking about like throwing catch you know a

little bit um so you're to have to figure that out for your specific sport, but the principle doesn't change. Principle doesn't change. Principles are always the same. You're constantly, you know, you're diverting the resources and you're planning your schedule. You just have to structure that. So yeah, I think that's one of the mistakes I made when I started working with, you know, people that didn't necessarily enjoy this. They liked it enough to do it for a period of time. I would just keep running them and I don't anymore because I've learned over the years, you grow as a coach. And that's one of the things you don't want to fall into. Yeah. Okay. So you're going to run an LP and you have it in your head

that 400 is a good squat, but you've got a race coming and you ended your LP either prematurely or, you know, you actually ended it at a 250-pound squat. Well, I guess you're not getting 400 this time. You're going to try and get closer next summer, you know. So, you know, sometimes people get wrapped up in the numbers, and then they make themselves miserable because they stop doing the thing they like because they're in the weight room and they're stuck on a number and, you know, you don't want to fall into that either, you know.

Just, you know, stick to your plan and divide it up. Or if you end up liking the lifting more, you're welcome to do what we do. You know, we, of course, love that. We have a bias here that we don't try to hide, but ultimately, yeah, you know, if you, if you know, you like conditioning stuff and wads and running, you know, I wouldn't strength train for six to nine months, you know, I'd probably do it six months at a time, you know, so you can balance that out. Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's, there's nothing wrong with that. Except for a lot of people, you may never get out of the novice phase of training. Yeah. You do novice LP, you go, you know, during your off season, you go do your sport for a while, you come back, you do novice LP again, you try to get a little

higher next time you go do your sport, you come back, you do novice LP again, and that's okay there's nothing wrong with that it's i mean that's great it's super simple right and that's um but yeah for some people that that might be the reality and that's that's cool that's cool yeah all right well i i think uh i don't know i don't have anything else to add do you no me either you know i was uh thinking about doing a shorter one but i think it worked out with this topic you know yeah i think that i wish i knew this in high school i i fucked around way too much trying to get trying to do everything at once yeah like i want to be super conditioned and run bleachers and then get really strong and get really jacked and gain a bunch of weight but also be lean yeah and uh you know it's uh you know it's uh there's a lot of people that suffer from that

um yeah in various areas and you know just remember the rule of finite resources always applies yep yep so i like it so yeah so thank you for tuning in to the weights and plates podcast you can find me at the underscore Robert underscore Santana on Instagram, weightsandplates.com and weights double underscore and double underscore plates on Instagram. I should try to see if I can get the single underscore. I haven't tried it a few years, so we'll see. Yeah. Well, you can find me at marmalade underscore cream on Instagram. I usually respond pretty quickly if you want to drop me a question there. Or you can email me Trent at marmalade cream.com.

And yeah, send us your questions. You know, if you have a sport that you're trying to train around, and you're not quite sure how to do it, let us know. Tell us what you do. Tell us what your schedule looks like. And we'll try to help. We'll try to help you figure out how you can fit some, some training in there and get stronger. you