Age - Older individuals will need longer recovery periods than their younger counterparts. It is suggested that around 25 years old is when most trainees will need to start to allow for longer recovery periods. Read article on people over 40, click here!

Experience - More experienced trainees will need less recovery time than new trainees will.

Fiber Type Trained - Fast twitch muscle fibers will fatigue faster than slow twitch muscle fibers.

Energy System Used - Training sessions that tax the aerobic pathway of muscular energetics (oxidative pathway) will need longer recovery periods than sessions that tax the anaerobic pathways (ATP/CP and glycolitic pathways).

Psychological Factors - Never underestimate the power of the mind. Work, finances, personal relationships and basic everyday life can all cause stress. If left unchecked stress can have very powerful physical manifestations - headaches, insomnia and an increase in catabolic hormones such as cortisol, just to name a few.

Replenishment of Nutrients - The availability of key micro- and macronutrients in a trainee's diet will have a large impact on recovery.

Efficiency of Waste Removal - The faster your body can rid itself of the metabolic wastes generated by training the faster you will recover.

This is just a partial list, but one that covers the majority of common factors that effect recovery. Looking over the list, we can see that you have the ability to manipulate a few of these factors, some to a greater degree than others will. For example, there isn't much you can do about your age, but you can take steps to ensure adequate nutrition.

Recovery From Exercise

Exercise recovery can be split into two categories:

   1. Recovery between sets
   2. Recovery between training sessions.

Recovery for both depend on the energy system used the intensity of the session and the training goal. Training sessions focusing on hypertrophy, for example, will use shorter rest intervals, both between sets and training days, than a training session that focuses on absolute strength levels.

Recovery between sets is dependent on the replenishment of ATP/CP, commonly referred to as phosphagen. Your body replenishes phosphagen by using the aerobic energy system to metabolize carbohydrates, fats and possibly lactic acid into energy producing ATP/CP. Exercise duration dictates how much phosphagen is depleted - for activities that last 30 seconds, 50% is depleted, 60 seconds depletes 75%, and 90 seconds depletes close to 90%.

Your body replenishes phosphagen rather quickly, however, with 50% to 70% being restored within the first 20-30 seconds after cessation of an activity (like a set) and the remainder within 3 minutes. Adequate rest between sets is a key part of a quality training session. Cut your rest too short and you'll be left without enough ATP/CP to optimally fuel your next set, leading to a decreased training response.

Maximizing recovery between training sessions requires a multi-dimensional approach. While we'll touch on a few of these methods in a minute, now is a good time to point out that glycogen replenishment is an extremely important thing to consider when planning recovery from a training session. Glycogen is used up during exercise and takes much longer to replenish than phosphagen does, ranging from 24 hours for after intermittent activity (like performing sets in the gym) to 48 hours for prolonged activities (like a long, continual run). The first 2 hours after exercise are very critical for glycogen replacement.

During this time your body has the ability to very rapidly restore muscle glycogen, which is why a post-workout shake high in protein and carbs is so strongly advocated in most strength training circles. Miss this window of opportunity and your recover is greatly retarded. Only a diet that is relatively high in carbohydrates can ensure full glycogen replenishment, making a ketogenic diet and other low carb diets a bad choice from a recovery standpoint.

Therapeutic Modalities

Today the fitness professional and enthusiast has access to a dizzying array of methods and options to help speed and maximize recovery between training sessions, but random application of these tools (often referred to as "therapeutic modalities") can cause more harm than good. One modality can not be used exclusively to help with all aspects of recovery, making it necessary to be familiar with a variety of methods and their most effective applications. Here are some of the more common methods and their applications:

Passive Rest - This refers to rest as most of us think about it. Hard training individuals will need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night and most would benefit from an additional short nap (30 minutes) during the day as well. Many things can effect sleeping habits and those who do not get adequate sleep on a very consistent basis will compromise their recovery. Sorry folks, there's just no getting around the need for sleep in order to maximize your fitness potential.

Active "Rest" - Don't let the word rest fool you here, this actually refers to using light activity to hasten recovery, most notably your cool-down period. By taking 10-20 minutes after working out to do some light aerobic activity and stretch you help to boost your recovery immediately. Consider this - 10 minutes of light jogging (no more than 60% of estimated max heart rate) will help remove around 60% of the lactic acid built up in your muscles, another 10 minutes will clear out an additional 25%.

If you don't cool-down, it can take up to 4 hours to completely clear the lactic acid and other metabolic wastes from the muscle tissue. Stretching helps as well to "wring" the metabolic wastes from the muscle tissue in addition to helping to restore the muscles to their normal length.

Besides your warm-up, active rest also refers to light workouts between heavy ones and periods of less structured training in a periodized program. Light activity will speed recovery faster than complete rest alone.

Nutrition - While not usually considered therapeutic, nutrition plays a huge role in the speed and completeness of recovery. Your body needs raw materials to repair and restore bodily systems stressed by training and without adequate nutrition those materials will not be available. Vitamins, minerals, water, protein, carbs and fats must all be present in proper amounts in order for the body to fully recover from training. A deficiency in even one key nutrient could slow this process down greatly, if not grind it to a complete halt. Proper nutrition can not be stressed enough when talking about the overall success of a fitness program and most trainees' frustration about their lack of progress can be traced back to this recovery factor.

While most have heard of overtraining, many of you have probably never heard of overreaching before. Overreaching is a term used in some circles to distinguish between transient overtraining, which can take between 2 days and 2 weeks to recover from, and true over training, which is much more severe and can take several weeks to several months to recover from.

When applied correctly you should recover from the fatigue of a training stimulus in 12-48 hours, depending on the energy system used and intensity of the session. Muscle soreness, insomnia and a lowered immune response usually accompany fatigue. Proper use of the therapeutic modalities covered earlier will help keep fatigue to a minimum and speed your recovery from it. Without taking special steps to keep fatigue under control you will have a hard time achieving full recovery between training sessions.

Overreaching occurs when full recovery is not achieved for an extended time period and fatigue builds up. This usually occurs slowly over the course of a month or two, but it can happen much quicker in the face of a dramatic increase in training volume and/ or intensity. Symptoms associated with overreaching are similar to fatigue, only more severe. Those of you who have overreached may also notice an increased resting heart rate, premature fatigue during training, decrease in work capacity, increased heart rate during submax loads and an increased thirst, especially at night.

If you do overreach and do not allow for a period or two of lower intensity levels the fatigue will continue to accumulate and your body will force you to take a rest by becoming injured or overtrained. True overtraining takes several months to set in but once it does you will have to dramatically decrease your workload anywhere from several weeks to several months in order to fully restore all bodily systems. During this period it is very difficult to even maintain current fitness levels, much less improve them, and a decrease is usually expected. This is why true overtraining is to be avoided at all costs.

Fatigue, which is at the root of the whole recovery paradigm, can be split into four categories:

    * Neuromuscular fatigue
    * Metabolic fatigue
    * Structural fatigue
    * Endocrine fatigue

One should not view fatigue as an ambiguous idea without any real cause or distinctions. An understanding of the different aspects of fatigue will help you to keep it to a minimum and avoid overreaching, overtraining and the set backs they bring.

Neuromuscular Fatigue

Neuromuscular fatigue is associated with central nervous system (CNS) and its ability to communicate with motor units within a muscle. It can be divided into two types: high-frequency and low-frequency fatigue. High-frequency fatigue is usually associated with activities that last around 60-seconds or less.

This type occurs as a result of potassium build-up in key places within the muscle fibers, which interferes with the electrical signals that cause muscular contractions. Force output decreases because of this decreased ability of the muscle cells to conduct the electrical signals across the cell membrane. Cold-muscles are more vulnerable to this type of fatigue than warm ones are, making a proper warm-up a very good idea.

Low-frequency fatigue is associated with cellular damage, particularly the damage caused by eccentric contractions. This cellular damage can leave the portions of the muscle fibers that conduct the electrical signals literally torn and frayed. This too will obviously have an effect on force output.

Failure to allow the muscle fibers to repair themselves and reestablish an optimal connection with the CNS (best accomplished by alternating periods of high and low intensities) will result in those same muscle fibers eventually being placed in a state of inhibition to protect them from further damage. This means that muscle contractions will be noticeably slower and weaker.

Metabolic Fatigue

Metabolic fatigue is a result of the depletion of fuel sources (ATP/CP, glucose and stored glycogen) and the build-up of energy metabolism by-products. These byproducts, particularly lactic acid, interfere with several things, including your body's ability to resynthesize creatine phosphate and decreasing the blood's pH. All this adds up to one thing - a decreased work capacity as a training session progresses and, if full recovery is not achieved, as a program progresses.

In addition, a look at this type of fatigue again points to the need for adequate rest periods both between sets and training sessions to allow complete restoration of vital fuel sources and the removal of all metabolic waste.

The best way to go about speeding this process up is to perform a proper cool-down and to make sure your nutrition program is in order, particularly your post-workout shake. Make sure you get in a high carb, high protein shake within 30-45 minutes after working out. Creatine would also be a great choice to add to your post-workout shake in order to help fully restore all fuel sources before the next training session. Diets that are too low in carbs will slow down the recovery from this type of fatigue.

Structural Fatigue

Muscle structures are put under a lot of stress and strain during the course of an exercise program and damage to a few of these structures is bound to happen. Some of these structures, like tendons, are more apt to be damaged than other ones are, like the muscle belly, by virtue of their elasticity, or lack of it. While both concentric and eccentric contractions have been shown to cause this damage, eccentric contractions have been found to be a major culprit.

Several factors could contribute to this phenomenon, such as the increased intra-muscular heat generated by eccentric contractions, but whatever the reason or cause these disruptions will eventually lead to microtrauma and the well-known Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS. Almost everyone who has ever touched a weight is familiar with the dull and sometime not so dull aches that come with this condition. Severe DOMS, while sought by some as a sign of a good workout, is usually a sign that you did too much and have caused some structural damage that must now be repaired.

DOMS can be minimized or even avoided by taking care of your vulnerable tendons and musculotendinous juncture (where your tendon attaches to your muscle belly). This can be done by observing the following recommendations:

How To Minimize DOMS

    * Do not engage in explosive movements without first establishing a training base and building your tendon strength.

    * Avoid excessive use of eccentrics and/ or exaggerated eccentric rep tempo. This doesn't mean not to use these methods, it simply means to vary your rep tempos, mixing in periods where the eccentric portion is actually de-emphasized. A change from a 3-1-1-0 tempo to a 2-0-x-0 tempo would be an example of this.

    * Use care when stretching so as not to over-stretch and damage the tendons.

    * Use a proper warm-up and cool-down.

    * Allow for periods of lower intensity training. Remember that your muscles will gain strength much faster than your tendons will. Failure to observe this fact will lead to tendons that are weak in comparison to the muscles they are attached to. This will lead to a very real possibility of a major injury to those tendons.

    * Supplement with glucosamine. Supplying your body with this important building block of connective tissue will help ensure that tendons will recover as quickly as possible. Once an injury has occurred to a tendon it will require a long time to fully heal. This is why it is very important to minimize structural fatigue. While both slow- and fast-twitch dominant muscle groups can suffer from tendon damage and DOMS, fast-twitch muscle groups are far more vulnerable, most likely because of their higher force output and the increased tendon strain this causes.

Neuroendocrine Fatigue

Neuroendocrine fatigue is associated with hormones and their reaction to training stress. At the core of this type of fatigue is the testosterone-to-cortisol ratio. Testosterone levels drop and cortisol levels rise as a result of a training session (this rise in cortisol can be minimized by having a post-workout meal 30-45 minutes after training) and they will need time to return to normal.

Testosterone, as most of us already know, is highly anabolic and the key hormone in muscle and strength gains. A lowering of T levels will have an obvious negative impact on recovery. Couple this with a rise in your body's most catabolic hormone, cortisol, and you can see why you want to minimize this type of fatigue.

Failure to allow adequate rest periods between training sessions so that your hormone levels can return to normal will eventually lead to your body being in an almost permanent catabolic state. Proper nutrition also can play a huge role in this as well. As mentioned earlier, a post-workout meal will blunt your body's cortisol response to training and minimize the decrease in testosterone-to-cortisol ratios. In addition, essential fatty acids and certain minerals, particularly zinc and magnesium, have been shown to help regulate testosterone levels and a deficiency in any of these nutrients can cause a drop in T levels and slow recovery.

Monitoring Fatigue To Prevent Overtraining

Most discussions on overtraining have usually focused on what it is and what to do once you have reached that state (rest, rest and more rest). A better way to go about this is to look not only at what it is but also how to use that information to estimate the state of your fatigue and avoid overtraining all together. Remember that no two people will respond the same to similar training loads, making the use of individual recovery estimations a much more effective tool when designing a recovery program than guessing and simply applying standard procedures.

While some top-level coaches and athletes will make use of several sophisticated clinical tools to assess their recovery status, simpler and less expensive means can be used very effectively as well. By keeping a daily log charting a few key indicators of an your recovery status it becomes relatively easy to tell when fatigue is building up and overreaching is imminent, allowing for adjustments to be made well before overtraining can set in.

One of the easiest things to observe and chart is training willingness and muscle soreness. If you find yourself with chronically sore, stiff muscles and a less than positive attitude towards training, odds are you are starting to overreach a bit and it's time for a period of lower intensity training.

In addition to those two observations, several others can be used to assess recovery status. Here is a list of bodily functions that can be observed in order to gain some insight as to the completeness of recovery:

Bodily Functions To Observe To Recover Faster

    * Sleep patterns
      A sudden decrease in the amount and/ or quality of sleep is usually an early indicator of overreaching/ overtraining.

    * Bodyweight fluctuations
      A decrease of more than 2 pounds in one day is usually an indicator the training load is too high and recovery will be delayed.

    * Morning heart rate
      Take your heart rate every morning before getting out of bed. A large (3 beats or more) increase is an indicator of overreaching/ overtraining.

    * Appetite
      A decrease in appetite is another sign of overreaching/ overtraining.

ISSA

One of the biggest debates among coaches and trainers that always arises every few years is the topic of recovery. Some say you need to be beating yourself up week in and week out and always increasing your work capacity by simply doing more, more, and more work over time. Others in the HIT (high intensity) camp emphasize recovery with a mantra that says, "less is always more". So who's right? Are you gonna get better results by constantly training yourself into the ground or will that approach leave you chronically overtrained? Is that overtraining maybe a good thing? Or will you get better results by sitting on your butt 5 days out of every 7 and attacking your workouts with ferocity when you do?? Or will that approach leave you undertrained and so inactive that you pile on enough fat to make Warren Sapp look like a GQ model??
Well first lets define some terminology. What most of us call overtraining is really over-reaching. Overtraining is more like a disease then a temporary state. For 95% of us, "over-reaching" is what we're really referring to when we say overtraining.

Over-reaching-is pushing yourself into a mild state of fatigue with your training. Regression in performance sometimes does occur during an over-reaching period, yet performance rebounds back very quickly, usually above and beyond it's previous level, with a short period of rest or lowered volume (within days). It can be good or bad depending on how you use it.

Overtraining- occurs when you chronically over-reach for months or years on end. This leads to performance regression that can take months to recover from and is associated with multiple and sometimes permanent endocrine disruptions. Although there are some athletes who are chronically overtrained and don't realize it (distance runners, bodybuilders, and some basketball players come to mind), most athletes don't ever reach a true overtrained state.

Another important term is Under reaching.

Under-reaching- occurs when you intentionally "take it easy". This is like taking your foot off the gas in your training intentionally. It also can be good or bad depending on how you do it.

Now let's start with a few key claims I'm going to make. First, let me state that from my observations, the reason many people train hard and consistently and don't make the gains they feel they should, is because they spend too much time over-reaching and not enough time under-reaching. Notice I said "consistent hard trainees" there. That statement doesn't apply unless you train both hard and consistent.

Next, let me state that if you have to choose, you're almost always better off under-reaching then over-reaching unless you really know what you're doing. With those comments you would probably think that over-reaching is a bad, bad, BAD thing. Well, in truth it's quite the opposite. Over-reaching by design can be a very good thing. Notice that I said "unless you know what you're doing". That's what I intend to help you do in this article.

Recovery and Supercompensation

Recovery can be defined as - regaining what was lost - however, for the athlete this is not enough as it returns them only to where they started. Adaptation can be defined as the process of long-term adjustment to a specific stimulus. This process of adaptation can include adjustment in a number of factors such as the athlete's physiology, psychology and mechanics. These alterations can ultimately lead to improved performance - which is a more satisfying goal. We train to get fitness. We want to jump higher, run faster, get stronger, run longer etc. In order to get fit we must stimulate some fatigue so that our body adapts. We must push ourselves beyond our limits some of the time - which is fatigue. Let's call a training cycle a 30-60 day "period" of training. All good periodized training answers this question: What is the optimal amount of fatigue to induce over the course of the next training cycle in order to optimize the fitness that results from it?

Example

In other words, if I want to run faster and jump higher 30 days from now, how tired should I make myself this week and next week so that when I test myself in 30 days, I'll run faster and jump higher? All things being equal, if I do no training (assuming I'm not in an over-reached state) then I likely will not improve at all, and in fact may slip back. On the other hand, if I work out daily and intensely and continue adding volume, I'm also likely to slip back.

So there must be an optimal blend of both fatiguing myself or over reaching (in order to improve) and resting myself or under reaching, so that I can see the gains from the over reaching I've done. Under reach too much and you won't get the results you want because you haven't forced your body to adapt; over reach too much and you won't get results because your body is shot.

The rest of this article is about how to solve this puzzle and determine how to intelligently over reach at the beginning of a training cycle, under reach at the end of a cycle, in order to boost the overall results of each training cycle.

Walk or Run But Don't Do Both

The basic point I want to make in this article is that you should either be training a little harder then what feels comfortable or a little less then you think you should. This is an implementation of the 2-factor theory model of stress and adaptation. Let's talk a little bit about the 2-factor theory.

The 2 factors represent the relationship between fatigue and fitness. One factor is fitness the other factor is fatigue.

2-factor theory-A stress adaptation model that bases a training plan around the long term relationships between stress and fatigue.

When you train you accumulate both fatigue and fitness. That observation itself should be worthy of a nobel prize. However, what many people don't realize is that the fatigue that accumulates over the course of a training cyle itself "masks" the fitness gains that you make. However, fitness persists about 3 x longer then fatigue. This means that when all traces of fatigue are gone from a bout of exercise or a cycle of training, the fitness gained will persist for 3 x as long as the fatigue. That's why most people make gains when they take a few days off from time to time. What I want to do is show you how to make this process predictable.
Before we get into how to implement the 2-factor theory you first need to understand the one factor theory.

The one factor theory- Is the basic stress adaptation model that is usually taught in high school, bodybuilding, and is the grand de jour model used to explain high intensity training. With this theory you look at physical ability as one short term factor. You load, recover, load, recover - always recovering fully before loading again.



The problem with this approach is you are left with the problem of timing workouts to correspond to the supercompensation wave. Anything sooner or later will lead to a bad workout. Another problem is there is only so much systemic stress that can be thrown on the body in one workout. If you prolong the length of the stress (loading and fatigue) period in the above chart by days or weeks, instead of a single workout, you increase the overall stress. Therefore, providing you do allow recovery to take place after prolonged loading, you increase the height of the supercompensation curve as well.
More on the 2-Factor Theory

You will often here training according to the 2 factor theory called many different things. You'll hear it called concentrated loading, load/unload, step-type loading or any number of other things. It's nothing fancy and most of you are probably already using it to an extent.

Comparing the One-Factor Approach to the 2-Factor Approach

Let's start off by comparing a "one-factor" training approach to a "2-factor" approach. We have 2 four week training schemes. One we'll call "A" and will be the one factor approach. The other we'll call "B" and is the 2-factor approach. Here's what they look like.

A: Here we train according to the traditional supercompensation curve. We train then fully recover, train then fully recover etc. Let's say we train once every 4-5 days and recover completely between workouts for 4-weeks.

B: Here we train hard for the first 3 weeks three times per week so that we never ever are completely recovered from any workouts. Then, on the 4th week we train only once or twice the entire week at a low intensity and low volume. During the 4th week we're allowing fatigue to dissipate so that we can display the fitness we've gained from the previous 3 week's of training. During this low intensity/low frequency week, the physiological indicators we've stimulate the previous 3 weeks "rebound" back up and above where they were before.

Ok. Now if you were to compare those 2 schemes we would find that version B will actually bring about greater gains particularly for intermediate and advanced athletes - That is providing the athletes are in a well rested state prior to initiating the 4 week block of training. Homeostasis is disrupted and prolonged during the 3 week loading period. Although we won't see a whole lot of progress during this 3 week phase itself, when we pull back on the volume during the reduced loading period the functional indicators will then rebound back above baseline. The ultimate "rebound", or performance increase, in scheme B will be greater then the summation of smaller rebounds from scheme A.

So what we're doing is building up fatigue and fitness by over-reaching slightly and then pulling back on the fatigue by under-reaching. Nothing really complicated about it.

Most Athletes Are Already Implementing the 2-Factor Theory and Could Benefit by "Under-Reaching" For a While

Ok. Now the important thing to note is that most athletes are already over-reaching slightly even though they don't realize it! They never allow recovery to take place and some haven't been fully recovered in years. Basketball players are among the worst here. They are never recovered daily, they never allow recovery to fully take place, and thus they don't make gains due to chronic over-reaching. Therefore, I almost always start athletes off with more recovery so that they can allow all the fatigue they've been acumulating during their previous months or years of training to dissipate.

It's also important to realize that recovery doesn't have to be "complete" between training sessions in order for one to experience gains. People are rarely ever 100% completely recovered but still make gains. Athletes in most sports are always experiencing some level of constant fatigue. What you want to do is maximize those gains which you can do by intentionally manipulating the relationship between fatigue and fitness.

Intentionally Creating a Regression in Performance

The magnitude of the incomplete recovery you create during a loading period will vary. In fact, the practice of "shock" concentrated loading is practiced by many countries for different sports. In a traditional concentrated loading phase, the goal IS simply to beat the body into an over-reaching state where the actual goal of the training is a DECREASE in performance. Loading of any primary emphasis may be used (strength work, speed works, jumps etc.)

The lower that performance falls during the loading period (within acceptable limits of 10-15% or so), the greater that performance rises during the unloading period. I don't recommend intentionally loading to the point that performance falls off noticeably due to injury risk, but you can still incorporate and benefit a less intense version of the same process.

How You Can Apply and Benefit From Planned Over-Reaching

The basic tenet is that instead of always looking at each workout as a seperate "fatiguing" session, followed by a seperate "recovery" session of a day or two of rest, begin thinking in terms of weeks. In other words, you have one, two or three weeks which are "fatiguing." Think of this time period the same way some people think of one workout. you accumulate fatigue the whole time, you never "completely" recover. You might make gains but you're never really completely recovered. Then you have another one or 2 weeks in which you train with reduced frequency, volume, or intensity and allow recovery to take place. I favor keeping intensity fairly high, cutting volume by at least half, and slightly lowering frequency. in any event the overall training stress is lower.

The main benefit of the higher volume phase isn't the gains you make on it, but the gains you make when you switch to a lower volume phase.

Accumulation and Intensification

You can also alternate between cycles of incomplete vs complete recovery which is often called accumulation/intensification. Version A I described above (training with full recovery), will work wonderfully when transitioning from a period of increased loading. In other words, accumulate fatigue and train frequently for a while and then transition into a period of time where you train with full recovery between sessions for a while. Say you train 3 x per week for 3-4 weeks and then once every 4 days for 4 weeks. Your gains will be out of this world during the 2nd phase because you heighten your ability to adapt in the first phase. That works very well.

Examples

There are numerous ways we can incorporate a loading/unloading scheme. At it's most basic level a loading period of 2 or more consecutive workouts will be followed by an unloading period of one or more days. An example of this is a simple "block loading" scheme often practiced by endurance athletes that can also be used successfully by others. In fact this is a scheme used in many university team sports. Here we might train hard with weights, sprints, plyos, etc. on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and do conditioning on Tuesday and Thursday. We then rest completely on saturday and sunday. By Friday the athlete will be worn down and performance very well may have regressed over the course of the week. Yet by having 2 consecutive days off (Saturday and Sunday), we allow a lot of that fatigue to dissipate. Thus, the body supercompensates and the athlete goes into Monday with enhanced ability - for a few weeks anyway.

Generally speaking, anymore then 3-4 weeks consecutive loading will fail to bring about gains unless a one week unloading period is inserted. The body will tolerate 3 such 3/1 blocks of loading/unloading before a longer recovery period is necessary. This means that we'd do 3 consecutive 3/1 cycles before taking 2-3 weeks of training at a lower intensity.

Should I Seek Out Performance Regression?

The intensity of the loading period will vary as well. During loading periods it's ok for some regression to take place but no more then 10%. That means if your vertical jump is 30 inches you can train yourself to a 3 inch decrease and when you recover fully it'll rebound back up above 30. The same thing goes for your strength etc. Remember, the greater the decrease in function the greater the rebound above baseline during the unloading period. There is one caveat here however. The more regression that takes place the longer your unloading period will need to be. If you train to the point of big time (10%) regression, you will need a 2 week rather then 1 week unloading period.

Specific examples:

Here's an example of an accumulation/intensification cycle for the squat. This is the old 5 x 5 routine first written by Bill Starr and popularized by Glenn Pendlay. Here we train the squat 3 x per week for 4 weeks then twice a week for 4 weeks.

Volume Phase 4 weeks - Deloading Period 1 week - Intensity Phase 4 weeks. Sets and reps for the intensity phase is in parentheses.

M:
Squat 5x5 (3x3)
Bench 1x5 (1x3)
Row 1x5 (1x3)

W:
Squat 5x5 with 15-20% less than Monday (drop this lift)
Deadlift 5x5 (3x3)
Military 5x5 (3x3)
Pullups 5x5 (3x3)

F:
Squat 1x5 (1x3)
Bench 5x5 (3x3)
Row 5x5 (3x3)
Volume Phase - Weeks 1-4:

Use 5 sets of 5 reps with the same working weight for all sets. Increase the weight week to week and try to set records in weeks 3 and 4. For exercises you do twice a week you have a separate day which you perform a single set of 5 reps with the goal of setting records on the 3rd and 4th week for your best set of 5. Don't start the weights too high. Lower the weight if need be but get the sets and reps in - except where you are setting records.

Deloading Week - Week 5:

On week 4 drop the Wednesday squat workout, begin using the Intensity set/rep scheme (in parentheses), and keep the weight the same as your last week in the Volume Phase.

Intensity Phase - Week 6-9:

Everything is the same principal except that you use 3x3 and 1x3 setting records on week 8 and 9. No Wednesday squatting. The important aspect of this phase is the weight increases. If you are so burned out that you need an extra day here and there that's okay. If you can't do all the work that's okay too. Just keep increasing the weight week to week.

Example of Volume Phase Transitioning Into Intensification Phase for a Football Player

Here is a setup I used recently for an athlete preparing for several football tryouts and combines. His lower body strength levels were more then adequately in place but he was coming off a mass gain phase and needed quite a bit of specific on the field speed work, wanted to drop some fat, and needed to increase his upper body strength.

Phase I- high volume/high frequency

This phase consisted of 2 consecutive 3 weeks load/ 1 week unload schemes. The loading portion looked something like this:

Mon- AM: starts, short sprints, agility drills, position specific drills - ~500 yards total. PM: Weights- 3 x 3 at 80% squat, RDL.

Tues- Conditioning- 100 yds x 15 with 30 second rest intervals

Wed- AM:Plyo- speed drills- 4-6 sets depth jumps/ 1 position specific agility drill/ 4 sets straight leg sprints/ 4 sets 60 yard buildups- PM: Maximum Strength Upper Body Training mainly on the bench press

Thurs- Conditioning- 100 yds x 15 with 30 second rests

Friday- AM: start technique, maximum speed sprints and flying 20's, agility drills, position specific drills- 500 yards total. PM: Strength Training - Clean- 3 x 3 85%/Squat 3 x 3 85%/ Glute Ham- 3 x 3

Saturday- AM- Agility technique, buildups, Upper Body strength enduance focusing on the bench press

Sunday- Off

He'd follow that for 3 weeks and then unload for 1 week. The unloading period consisted of 1/2 the volume of on field work on Monday and Friday and elimination of plyo, speed, agility work on Wednesday.

After about 6 weeks of training, it was obvious to me he had got about all he was gonna get from this scheme. He seemed a little burned out and he complained of sore joints. I knew that this just meant he was slightly over-reached and his perfomance would rebound up big time once we tapered into a lower volume phase. He's always been able to transfer functional ability into technical ability. From experience we knew that as his vertical jump goes so does everything else and as his shoulder press and incline press goes so does his bench press. We ended up dramatically lowering the overall lower body volume. On upper body we got him away from the bench press for a while and worked on his weak points. The routine ended up looking like this:

Phase II - Low Volume Intensification

Session 1- LB
Depth Jump, standing triple, one leg hops unto box, - 4-6 sets each x 3-5 reps

Session 1- UB
incline DB Press, Row, Heavy Tricep, Rear delt - 4-6 sets of 5-8 reps each

Session 2 LB
on the track with 60 yd build ups to 90%, 50 yd bounding, lateral hurdle hops, squat runs x 10 seconds. 4-6 sets each

Session 2 UB
Push Press or Push jerk, Pull-up, Bicep, Tricep- 4-6 sets of 3-8 reps each.

Setup

Session 1 LB

off

Session 1 UB

off

Session 2 LB

off

Session 2 UB

Therefore, he was getting 4 days rest between bodypart workouts and 8 days between like sessions. This allows him near full recovery and he was able to set records nearly every workout for a month long period which coincided perfectly with the timing of his workouts and tryouts. EMS was also used on his legs to maintain his strength. It's important to note that the gains from this phase weren't just made from this phase itself, but they were made and set-up in the previous phase as well.

Conclusion

Those are a couple of examples how to set things up. Hopefully you can begin implementing some of these ideas into your training. Stay tuned for a future article on the same topic in which I'll cover how to stimulate that same adaptation by simply engaging in cyclical eating patterns.