Training only twice a week for attorney who also is a game warden and does krav maga

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello,

thank you for your great work!

I turn 50 this year. I am an attorney at law (downtown Vienna, Austria) and a (spare time) game warden / K9 LEO (where I live, in the Viennese Forest).
I hike a lot with my hunting dog on Saturday and Sunday with 200-300m of altitude each hike, sometimes four times per weekend.
On Wednesday I do krav maga.

So I need a way to effectively train only two days a week (Monday and Thursday).

I did some training, tore my left achilles tendon sprinting cold (idiot) and got back again well after surgery.

Now I am hitting walls with a 5x117kg (258#) squat, a 5x120kg (265#) deadlift, a 3x60kg (132#) press, a 5x88kg (194#) bench. Chins are 5x7-5
Every rep with these weights is a grind now.

I only care for squat, deadlift, press and chins (bench yes, but not so much, my son trains with me and it is a must for him).
I don’t care for fancy stuff or looks. I am 179cm (5’10") tall and weigh 83kg (183#) with a medium/light frame.

I started barbell training because I wanted to be fitter for hunting (that also means handling killed deer and wild boar etc) and for martial arts (krav maga).

I like getting (“even”) stronger, but at my age and with my schedule, slow progress, maintaining some strength and health are the actual priorities.
Less grind, less fatigue in the office and less “my head is about to explode” would be nice.
And honestly, I would like to deadlift or even suqat three plates (140kg/308#) and press my bodyweight, if that were possible over the years.

Rack and barbells are in my home, I also have a C2-rower and a stationary bike.

Thank you for your time and thought. And have a nice weekend.

2

GW,

Thanks for the post. I can appreciate that your time is limited, though I am fairly confident you can improve your strength, conditioning, and overall fitness in spite of this. I do not think that doing only squat, press, deadlift, and chins would be my recommendation for long-term strength improvement, as specialization seems to limit development in many different ways.

It looks like you may have been doing linear progression before given all the sets of 5. From here and considering your goals, I’d recommend our Beginner Prescription and Template and run the 3-days of lifting per week over 2 weeks:

  1. Week 1: Days 1 and 2
  2. Week 2: Day 3 of week 1 and Day 1, week 2
  3. and so on Rather than focusing on the typical linear progression model for adding weight, I would recommend adding weight as you get stronger and not *adding weight to get stronger.*This may seem pedantic, but in practice, it changes the load being selected quite a bite. We wrote a piece about it here.

I think your hiking, hunting, and krav likely helps you meet the current guidelines for conditioning. I would consider adding in a HIIT session 1/wk on the rower to be complementary to your other efforts.

-Jordan

3

Hadn’t read that article before but it’s an important one, thanks for posting!

4

Thank you very much!
Doesn’t seem pedantic, but competent.

I have your templates HLM, Strength I, Powerbuilding I, and Hypertrophy I.
I will run these one after another as prescribed.

Let me know, when you hold a seminar in Europe.

All the best,
R.