Jordan, Austin et al;
First, continued thanks for what y’all are doing here. Been a long time since I have posted anything, mostly because I’ve been reading/watching your content for many many years and that seems to get me 99% of the way.
On to my questions:
I started the 3 Day a week Low Fatigue Medium ISF and just finished week 8. At the same time, I started taking creatine after not taking it for years (no particular reason for not taking it, other than it was annoying). I have had to make a few minor adjustments in approach, mostly instead of sets across at the same weight, implementing an 8% drop in weight as needed with the volume sets (after the first initial set @ 7). Seems to have been working well.
So it may look like:
335 * 5 @ 7
335 * 5 @ 7
335 * 4 @ 7.5
310 * 5 @ 6.5
310 * 4 @ 7
That being said:
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Within the first week of the programming, I started experiencing extremely painful abdominal muscle cramps and/or back cramps and weirdly enough tricep cramps. The abdominal cramps are by far the worst and when they come on, they are debilitating and drop me to the floor for a couple of minutes. The worst of them, pain lingers on into the next day. I assumed this was from the added volume from the development block (compared to my previous programming) and sort of hoped I would adapt. After 8 weeks, they have reduced in frequency and severity, but are still ever looming and occur every 2-3 days. Any suggestions?
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During week 8, my strength levels seemed to drop precipitously. I am nursing some ongoing issues that impact my squat numbers (left quad pain that I am not convinced isn’t a minor tear, but could be some other type of injury), so that lift is lower than should be, that being said, planned 1 @ RPE 7 was 395, but working up it didn’t feel like that was appropriate and ended up hitting 385@ 8.5 (overshooting the RPE and dropping e1rm by about 40 pounds), same week deadlift planned single was at a conservative RPE 7 was 605. 555 flew up, but 605 was a RPE 10 (dropping my e1RM by ~90 pounds). Bench has taken a smaller hit this week. Not really sweating that at this point, but wonder if this is just due to the shift from the development block to more specific and “heavy” work.
Sleep is good-ish. I wake up without the alarm and usually get 6-7 hours uninterrupted. Stress levels are low.
5’11 220 pounds, 48 years old, been training consistently for 13 years. Weighed 213 when I started taking the creatine (no loading just 3-5 grams a day) within 3-5 days I had gained 5 pounds. An additional week brought on another 1 pound of weight gain, and then in the next 6 weeks I gained an additional pound. Waist moved up to 37.5, so I am in the process of tying to slowly get the body weight back down to 210-213.
TLDR:
Should I make any adjustments to the programming to:
- Address the cramping which I assume is connected to fatigue?
- Address what appears to be a big drop in strength this week?
Thank you again,
Mark
Mark,
Thanks for the kind words and the post. To your questions:
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This doesn’t sound like training-related fatigue be honest. I would have to know more about you and your experience to weigh-in on this, but yea, this is strange. Creatine tends to reduce exercise-associated muscle cramps, but if your creatine is causing GI side effects that are producing abdominal cramps, that could be another thing. Again, I don’t have nearly enough information, but this doesn’t sound like training-related fatigue causing cramps during exercise. Your weight gain from the creatine is a bit above average. I think if the creatine is CGMP accredited and 3rd party tested, we can feel pretty good that it’s not contributory.
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I don’t really look for a bump in e1RM when going from rep-work to singles unless someone is really good at singles. If you have recent single-rep performances to compare to, that can be useful to gauge your current performance level.
Overall, I’m not sure why you’re feeling the way you are. I think pending how things go and how worried you are about it, it may benefit from a consultation to work out some of the details. In the interim, you can take another low stress week and actually make it low stress to see how things go with respect to your symptoms. If you’re still getting cramps and feeling significantly weaker (>20% down) then I would go investigating things more closely.
-Jordan
Jordan, thank you for the response and guidance. Allow me to clarify.
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The “abdominal cramps” are muscle cramps like a “charlie horse” but in my subcutaneous ab muscles or core (nothing internal) and typically occur in the mid to upper 4 pack range, though on occasion they happen in the lower two of the “6 pack.” They may not happen during training, can be brought on by laughing too hard or even a more aggressive sneeze when I am seated, or when I move or bend a certain way. I have not experienced any GI issues, stomach aches/stomach cramps (digestive), nausea (except from the pain of severe muscle cramps) and there have been no changes to my bowel movements in any way. I have experienced these in the past, and sort of correlated them to creatine use (even though the science is clear they are not), but the other commonality is when training volume is higher on squats and deadlifts. Not entirely sure, but deadlifting with a higher frequency (more than once a week) may be a contributing factor (which is really just too much stress in some form or fashion I supposse).
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Programming prior to starting the Medium ISF was my own that I was experimenting with. Essentially, I’d hit a single @ RPE 6 every week with back of volume work, rotating in sets of 5 and 3s. Every 3rd week I’d just run singles up to RPE 7 and then some back off singles. So, singles practice up until 8 weeks ago when I started the Medium ISF. After these 8 weeks numbers are a tad lower on squat, similar on Deads, and better on bench (Yay!). Truth be told, I’ve never seen a direct correlation to 1RM based on a set of 5, as heavy singles for me, are just a whole other animal.
Bottom line, I am not “medically” concerned about the cramps – they just suck. I am not hugely concerned about my lifts – they just suck :-). I have been training in the darkness for several years post injuries and covid and just can’t seem to find the right mix to get my numbers back to where they used to be. Deads are close, but I got a lot of work to do on squats.
I do have a theory. Previously (years ago), we had determined that I don’t do well with a longer development or hypertrophy block, I’ve seen that demonstrated in other programming I have run. I am guessing I do better with a 3-4 week run on the development side, then a pivot week. But it’s been a few years since I had that conclusion and things change…usually, so I stuck with the 6 weeks on the development block, which may have been too much.
I’ll finish out this week pivoted to a low stress type approach, and then start again with Week 8 and see how things go.
Thank you again.
Mark
Yea, I don’t have a clear answer for you here. The “cramps” are interesting to me, but I’m not confident they’re related to training.
With the programming, I don’t really have enough information to guide you here. A few general thoughts:
- I don’t think single-rep efforts are particularly useful when there’s a concern over too much fatigue
- I think the progression used deserves some investigation to see if it’s contributing. A few red flags would include repeating the same weight multiple weeks in a row or being able to add weight to the bar every week. Performance is just going to be more dynamic than that.
- If a non-peaking block can only be run for 3-4 weeks at a time before it goes stale, it’s probably not a great training setup for the individual.
- Everything always changes. I think you might be well-suited to get rid of the singles for this block and perform the programming as listed rather than taking the weight drop approach you have been doing. If you’re having to do the weight drop approach, that suggests to me the RPE is too high and that the weight reduction may not be that helpful. For example, if 5 @ 7 is ~ 78% 1RM and we think that most reps > 70% 1RM are useful for 1RM development, dropping > 8% would put us under that threshold. For week 8, I would think about doing this:
3 reps @ RPE 5
3 reps @ RPE 6 (count as working reps)
3 reps @ RPE 7 (count as working reps)
Repeat 3 @ 7 x 4 more total reps. Break up sets as needed
I would break up sets rather than lower weight.
Hey Jordan,
Thank you again. You don’t need to post this response, but I want to offer some nuance:
-I’ve been training with weights consistently for 13 years. Consistently being defined as running specific programming and not missing sessions. I trained through radiation treatment for testicular cancer (11 years ago), trained 2 weeks after a surgery. Train when I travel…Pretty much only take time off if I am severely ill. It’s a bit of a joke with my wife, she knows anywhere we go, I bring my lifting belt and I find a gym. I guess my point in bringing this up is to offer that I am not a guy that’s been doing this for 12 months with 8-12 weeks runs interspersed with some fuckarounditis. I have learned over time that I live in my own world and my approach towards training is a little more disciplined than most–I just didn’t realize that for several years.
-During that time, I got my squat up to the low - mid 500’s and my pulls up to the low to mid 600’s without coaching (took about 7-8 years).
-I have trained myself into the ground in the past. Made mistakes pushing too hard. Not changed programming when I knew I should have, etc. Given this pattern, I attempt to approach RPE conservatively and error on rounding up. Usually, what I call an RPE 7, looks like a 6 to most people.
-I have never done well with sets across for squats and deads. The weight used for set of reps @ 7 is never sustainable for multiple sets on these lifts. Since we are more concerned about physiological affect of the stimulus, I was approaching the programming with the philosophy that total volume and RPE were the priorities, not weight on the bar. What I am reading in your response is that we are most definitely concerned with weight on the bar for the additional volume and less concerned with rep ranges. The problem I have is getting into territory where I am just performing 10 singles to get the volume in at the same weight.
-This not doing well with sets across dovetails with previous sports performance observations. I raced BMX for several years, I either beat someone out of the gate or at the finish line, but never both. Same when playing football, running and fighting. I could keep pace, but for the nail coffin, I only had one chance. And that was always my strength and had to use it strategically. I have lots and lots of training history. I spent years insisting to myself that since everyone did sets across they needed to work for me and there was something wrong with me. I’ve learned that’s just not how I am wired.
I will follow your advice on the week 8 programming and beyond and implement that approach. I guess the question than becomes at one point do I reintroduce singles because at the end of the day, I do care about that arbitrary measurement of a single rep as a display of strength – even if I am not competing…
Thank you again and I apologize for the novel. I will keep pressing on.
Mark
Hey Mark,
I totally get it. You’ve been doing this for awhile and have been successful with it. Similar to you, I prefer top sets with back offs rather than repeats, rounding up, etc.
The idea here with the programming is that all sets are to RPE 7 with the same weight, but adjusting the # of reps as needed. The average intensity is kept in the appropriate range as well as the proximity to failure in this manner. It also is helpful for building work capacity, which I think may be beneficial given some of the additional history here. I do think there’s something to the idea that doing what you’re bad at is likely to make you better than continuing to do what you’re good at. I think continuing to use a top set with back offs strategy is likely to lead to more overshooting. It would be very unusual for you not to adapt to this on some level.
For reference, I used this approach during my last meet prep developmental block and it was REALLY effective prior to doing my traditional “top set + back offs” approach for the last ~6 weeks of prep. I think reintroducing singles when you switch blocks to something specific for a meet or test would be a good idea.
-Jordan
Jordan,
Thank you for the detailed response and guidance. It is genuinely appreciated. I made last week a low fatigue week – muscle cramps seem to have completely dissipated. Repeating week 8 this week, without the top end single while doing sets across with the same weight as the triple at 7. Will keep that up and see how things progress.
I guess one last question: If I decide I don’t want to enter a peak phase, should I just keep running week 12 indefinitely as long as I keep progressing?
Thank you again.
I think that’s a reasonable strategy, for sure!