I wanted to share what I’ve been doing mostly because I’m kind of proud of it and I would like to open it to suggestions and criticisms.
I did an SSLP last winter and then was pretty start and stop with training doing nothing in particular. This year I was gearing up to do a run of the Bridge to get ready to start playing rugby again and start chasing that <40" waist, currently 45" down from 46.5" 4-5 weeks ago.
I was reading Strength is Specific by Chris Beardsley at the same time, which got me kind of down on the 303 squats and pause squats, since those variations are farther away from specific for rugby performance.
So, I read a bunch of Beardsley’s articles and tweaked the Bridge template. I tried not to stray to far and just change the movement variations from slower to faster in most cases. I repeat the rep schemes from weeks 2, 3 and 4 for weeks 5, 6 and 7 because I figured less reps was less useful for rugby.
I kept; deadlift and squats and pressing slots the same.
I swapped;
303 squat for squats with elastic bands queuing myself to find the bottom and accelerate back up quickly. The bands I read move the… force curve? To joint angles more commonly seen in rugby and the move quickly to train faster… signal coding is I believe how I read it.
Pause squat to barbell jump squat with bands. I load it heav ugh as I can to be able to just get my toes off the ground. I go to roughly parallel or just above with these, again, joint angle specificity.
Rack pulls to “dynamic effort” rack pulls, faster signal coding.
Barbell rows to hip thrusters for a horizontal force vector more specific to sprinting. I use a weight I can’t quite accelerate fast enough to toss off my hips but que myself to try too, again, signal coding. I also do eccentric only chins with these because I didn’t want to replace a pull with just thrusters and I’m 260lb so eccentric only China is pretty effective at this point. Doing China or BB rows on GPP days(when I do them, been slacking, do rugby practice instead slot of weeks)
Power cleans in place of paused deadlift
Continuing jump squat and squat with bands over pin squats.
Beltless squats to split squats
Pressing stays the same, I’ve been alternating bench and press.
Need to add drop jumps and or nordic hamstring curls, I read that deceleration is a big factor in change of direction and sprinting performance.
I just finished about 3 weeks of repeating “low stress week” volume to get used to the variations and because I’m not very trained. Started “moderate stress week” volume this week.
Really liking the banded variations, I think I’ll add it for pressing movements.
I think I’m definitely sacrificing max strength improvements but that’s kind of the idea. If you read all of that, thanks!
I’d love to hear what ppl think!