When people consider how they are going to set up their loading, they usually maintain the same amount of training days per week but simply manipulate the amount of exercises, sets, reps, or total workload that they perform on each day. During higher volume phases, more of any of the aforementioned variables is included. On lower volume phases, there will simply be less of each.
However, something that isn’t regularly seen is different training schedules for different periods in training. The idea here is to consider manipulating the amount of sessions per week as a matter of controlling loading. The example here will be a powerlifting program utilizing a block sequence. This will be very vanilla and no exact exercises, sets, or reps will be designated. However, the ideas behind the programming will be viewed to give insight to what is being done.
Principles Behind the System
Since we are using a block system in this outline, we need to revisit the very basic principles behind this. These can be as follows:
Accumulation/A Block
- Lower intensity, higher volume.
- Goals include increasing work capacity, inducing hypertrophy, focusing on weaknesses in movements and muscles, and performing prehabilitation/rehabilitation where applicable.
- Larger complex of exercises—higher volumes of general and specialized variants may be used with lower relative volumes of competitive exercises.
Transmutation/B Block
- Intensity rises, volume drops relatively but is still kept moderate.
- Goals include focusing on concentrated loading of strength building and stressing training movements as opposed to muscles.
- Transition to higher volume of competitive exercise and lower volume of general exercise; specialized exercise volume can vary.
- Induced fatigue will be noticeable.
Realization/C Block
- High intensities, low volumes.
- Exercise selection starts to include competitive exercises with low volumes of general exercises or specialized exercises; intensity of competitive exercise is high but volume of all exercise is low.
- Recovery between sessions should be near complete; as contest nears, intensity should also be scaled back to allow recovery.
That being said, what we see is that there needs to be a trimming of exercises as we progress. There also needs to be a rise in intensity, drop in volume, and eventual tapering to lead to recovery. Traditionally, this is done by manipulation of the actual volume and workload per session.
However, consider the following: With the volume needing to be high during accumulation blocks, more frequent training sessions may be able to occur. This is possible because the intensity is relatively lower. In the case of a higher frequency approach, it may be possible to accomplish more total work in a week while doing less in each session. However, the cumulative volume is higher by comparison than in traditional lower frequency approaches.
In a transmutation block, the volume will drop, intensity will rise, and exercise selection will become more directed. Traditionally, less work may be performed in each session but the same amount of sessions may be performed. However, say that the session frequency in a week became less. This would also accomplish the same goal.
Finally, in the realization block, the intensity will be high, volume will be low, and specificity will be high. Recovery between sessions should be complete or as close to complete as possible. Again, the frequency could drop here from the previous block to accomplish this goal.
Theoretical Example
Without getting too specific, we could look at a program for a lifter that has worked up to higher frequency programming. This lifter trains more movements than muscles, but may still focus on some general bodybuilding style exercises in accumulation blocks at times. His training may have a general outline that looks as follows:
Accumulation/A Block
- Trains six days a week. Performs a bench or work directed to it six days a week, squat or work directed to it four days a week, and a deadlift or work directed to it two days a week.
- Exercise selection features practice of the competitive exercise at lower volumes with a relatively higher volume of specialized or general exercises.
- Intensity is kept 70 percent or under for the majority of work.
Transmutation/B Block
- Trains four days a week. Performs a bench or work directed to it four days a week, squat or work directed to it two to three days a week, and a deadlift or work directed to it one to two days a week.
- Exercise selection features practice of the competitive exercise at higher volumes, a higher volume of specialized exercises, and a lower volume of general exercises if used at all.
- Intensity is kept 71% to 90%. Majority of the work is in the range of 75 – 85% with occasional sets nearing 90%.
Realization/C Block
- Trains three days a week. Performs each lift one day a week.
- Exercise selection features practice of the competitive exercise high intensities, lower volumes. Specialized exercises are phased out, and general exercises may only be included as active rest.
- Intensity is 90% or higher, but may taper back on the final week to allow recover (to 70 – 80% possibly).
- We could also use this with a lifter that uses a low frequency.
Accumulation/A Block
- Trains four days a week. Performs a bench or work directed to it two days a week, squat or work directed to it two days a week, and a deadlift or work directed to it one to two days a week.
- Exercise selection features practice of the competitive exercise at lower volumes with a relatively higher volume of specialized or general exercises.
- Intensity is kept 70% or under for the majority of work.
Transmutation/B Block
- Trains three days a week. Performs a bench or work directed to it one day a week, squat or work directed to it one day a week, and a deadlift or work directed to it one to one day a week.
- Exercise selection features practice of the competitive exercise at higher volumes, a higher volume of specialized exercises, and a lower volume of general exercises, if used at all.
- Intensity is kept 71% to 90%. Majority of the work is in the range of 75 – 85% with occasional sets nearing 90%.
Realization/C Block
- Trains two days a week. Performs squat and deadlift in the same session, benches in a separate session.
- Exercise selection features practice of the competitive exercise at high intensities and lower volumes. Specialized exercises are phased out, and general exercises may only be included as active rest.
- Intensity is 90% or higher, but may taper back on the final week to allow recovery (to 70 – 80% possibly).
This could be altered to fit anywhere between or above/below these examples. The main idea here is that gradually volume drops, exercise selection becomes more directed, and supercompensation is reached to allow for a higher level of performance on the day of the meet.
In reality, whether the workload per session or the amount of sessions in a designated period is altered makes no difference. All that matters is the principles of the system are upheld, and performance is realized at the correct time. Hopefully this stimulated some thought and provided some considerations for manipulating loading.