After watching the volume discussion starting at 10:17, I guess I’m stuck on something.
Say you’re dealing with only a few week long block of either volume focus or intensity focus (like on the Bridge or Hypertrophy templates). With those, you’re also only doing the comp lift and calculating e1rm once a week.
So how do you distinguish between real improvements and just a random good day? Or vice versa, crappy day vs “my body’s done with this modality for a while”?
If I see 2 weeks in a row either up or down, is that significant enough to draw a conclusion from? Or, is this only something that would show up after multiple runs of similar blocks over time? So, don’t try to draw a conclusion after only one block?
I apologize in advance if it’s bad form to bump this. It’s down on page 4, approved, but no response. So I’m thinking it just got missed, what with your busy week.
Either that, or I’m being punished for asking Jordan his least favorite question.
So, short version is, how much evidence is sufficient to know if a certain training modality is “working”? 2 weeks of higher e1RM? An e1RM outside of a standard deviation?
Proper implementation of a bottom-up framework (e.g., Emerging Strategies) involves the analysis of performance trends over a more long-term basis. A development microcycle would be repeated until it produces a peak in the lifter’s estimated total - relative to their estimated total during previous microcycles within the current development mesocycle - which would then be followed by two microcycles of a steady decline in this performance metric. To determine if the performance of a given competition movement is due to a random good day, you’d compare intra-mesocycle trends on competition, assistance, and supplemental movements to see if the trends differ on any given training day.
I’d only advise drawing a conclusion after two or three implementations of the same development mesocycle with similar results being noted for each mesocycle. However, it is important to remember that we adapt to training over time and our responsiveness to any given development protocol may change over the years.
Thanks, that makes sense. So within the context of the standard BBM templates, one would consider something like Bridge 2.0 or the GPP Hypertrophy to be two 3-4 week microcycles within one mesocycle, correct?
A microcycle is a unit of training time measurement that is signified by the repetition of a specific kind of training session. Since the GPP Hypertrophy program involves the repetition of the same training session on the first day of every week, and it consists of seven weeks, it therefore consists of seven microcycles. Most training programs utilize a microcycle duration of seven days since that fits nicely with our calendar.
A mesocycle is a unit of training time measurement that is a collection of microcycles with the same goal. The GPP Hypertrophy program involves a low-stress microcycle for the fourth week; however, this microcycle is not significantly different than the others and is sandwiched between two groups of GPP Hypertrophy microcycles. Therefore, I would argue that the entire program it can be viewed as one mesocycle - especially when viewing it from the perspective of an annual plan.
