If you make it, you gotta clear it…. Or else you will hit the wall. This is the name of the game when it comes to going farther longer in sport. Unless you are a Olympic Weightlifter or Thrower in Track and Field, you need to perfom work for more than :20. And while doing Tabata programming s one way we can have some fun with “threshold training’ or ‘Lactic Acid Buffering’, there is a lot more to it. If you follow my programming, we are in a Muscular Endurace Cycle at the moment. This cycle is formulated to develop your bodies ability to produce more work for longer… Follow along to understand a bit more behind the thinking and where we are going.
What is Lactic Acid?
Lactic Acid is a metabolite produced when the muscle burns ATP. Just as your car produces exhaust when it burns fuel, so goes the muscle when it burns glycogen. And just as exhaust build up in the engine can be detrimental if not released, Lactic Acid and associated Metabolites can decrease your performance as well as cause organ damage in extreme cases. Muscle Buffering is the bodies ability to neutralize and remove the waste product from the body.
Why do You want to Be GOOD at Buffering?
Going farther in workouts and in sport is crucial to your overall worth to a team and of course allows you to accomplish more goals. We have all seen the men and women who train specifically for muscle gain; they look amazing with rippling biceps and abs of steel…. but ask them to run 400m or a 10 minute Workout at moderate intensity and they fall on their faces.
Being a good athlete who is truly ready for any challenge at any time, requires a good amount of ability to buffer against lactic acid. By extension, your bodies ability to remove waste through the blood, kidneys and liver are also an important to living a longer and healthier life.
How do I help you build Muscle Endurance?
Ok.
So I dont want to go too deep in the jargon that I lose you to my tangents on Metabolic System development so Ill briefly give you what you need here.
Its really quite simple really. Lets go back a few months. Through the Winter months I am solely focused on building your Muscle Fiber Recruitment. This means small sets and high load. I work through our Primal Movement Patterns to develop (what I think) is a comprehensive program to get you STRONG AF!
Moving into Spring and Summer when you have now developed the neurological recruitment pathways to the larger muscle fiber, then I can start asking that muscle to perform specific work. (I will admit that my programming here @ thriiv is based on general fitness prep and it would look much different if you were a track or field sport athlete )
Unlike Training an athlete to boost their VO2 max, muscular endurance training and “Buffering” utilizes load or a variety of stimulus that creates an environment inside the muscle tissue for my desired adaptation. So instead of running 1 mile repeats, we are using the arsenal of weights, exercises and lifts which help drive my stimulus. This takes time, just as training strength or neurological development so the cycles range from 8-10 weeks.
What will you see during the Cycle?
Repeats… Repeats.. and Rest Cycles. The name of the game is to push your body to its limits throughout the week as well as challenge its ability to recover from the bouts of exercise. If you have watched my timing structures, I have been giving you longer rest periods with moderate to heavy weights. I know you will start slow, I want you to use the strength we have developed. I also know that your bodies ability to recover and push out all the lactic acid will not be as good Week 2 as it will be Week 9.
Moderate Loading. CrossFit coined the use of the moderate load and high intensity. This is not to say Greg was the first to use this but certainly his entire methodology was adopted to use moderate loads and for rep ranges that test your muscles threshold. I also use moderate loads, especially now that we are in week 5 of the cycle. The goal is to lighten the loads for the reminder of the cycle and decrease your rest periods.
Time Under Tension. This is really where I believe my programming stands apart. Instead of JUST using bi-lateral exercises and increasing rep ranges and ONLY working in the saggital plane…. I am going to stress you body and keep it under tension for longer and in more unique ways. A good example is ;
:30 Front Squat
:30 Front Squat Hold
:30 Back Rack Lunges
:30 Low Bar back Squats
**All back to back with no breaks..
This is 2:00 of time under load which taxes the entire system. With a light load this is still very challenging and that drives adaptation.
Muscular Endurance adaptation helps the body better “Buffer” Lactic Acid and clear metabolites from the body. All you have to do is follow the program structure deliberately. But there is more to developing capacity than just putting you under load for longer.. Its about mental fortitude.
Just as you know from Maximal Overlaod training, being crushed under a BIG ASS LOAD for 2-3 reps can really be scary and can make your mind hard. When we train for Muscular Endurance there is also a mental strength component that goes along with it. I challenge you you adapt faster by accepting that the moderate load workouts are going to hurt and “Burn”. Love it. You will get mentally much stronger because of it. Ill be here to support you the entire way.
Love
Eric
Programming Notes 4/20-4/24 ** This is Week 5 of the Endurance /Power Cycle. This week the goal is to expose the body to more work with less rest. In essence, I am building the “Buffering Mechanism” that takes place in Endurance training. Buffering refers the other bodies ability to process lactic acid more efficiently, to ‘buffer’ its effect on your muscles ability to perform work. The longer we can stretch out work load, the more ability you will have. Since muscle fiber recruitment is high, more metabolites get produced. Which is why this Buffering needs to be built progressively.
4/20
Baseline:
Agility Warm Up @ 10m Each
Elbow To instep Lunge
Heel Walk
Toe Walk
High Knee Pull
Quad Pull + Up Onto toes
Squat 180 **stepping the leg high over hip, swing opposite leg to 180, squat
High Knees
Butt kickers
Marching High Kicks
Groiners
Straight leg shuffles
A Skip
B Skip
Fig 4 Drill
Lateral Shuffle
Carioca
Lateral Bounding
Sprint W/ Change of Direction
Squat Flow: Squat Flow: Kang Squat, Internal Rotation, Ankle Roll Out, Bootstraps, PNF Stretch, Squat W/ T Spine Stretch
Conditioning:
AMRAP 5
Run 800 Meters - Max Front Squat 135/95
-Rest 3 Mins-
AMRAP 4
Run 800 Meters - Max Overhead Squat 115/75
-Rest 2 Mins-
AMRAP 3
Run 400 Meters - Max Front Squat 135/95
-Rest 1 Min-
AMRAP 2
Run 400m - Max Overhead Squat 115/75
4/21
Baseline:
500m Row
10 Wall Squats
10 Hollow Rocks
10 Elbow TO instep Lunges
500m Row
10 Squat Jumps
10 V Ups
10 2ct. Mountain Climbers
250 m Row (All Out)
Midline Strength:
4X5
Sandbag Clean
-Superset with :30 Side Plank
3X 100’ Sandbag Carry
-Superset with :30 L Hang
Conditioning:
AMRAP 20
50 Wall Ball Shots
40 Cal Row
30 Knees To Elbow
20 Pull Ups
4/22
Baseline:
Bike for 5 Minutes,
Then
3X
5 Barbell Press
5 Barbell Bent Row
5 Barbell Roll Outs
Shoulder Mobility:
:30 Lat Band Mobility (Each Side)
:30 Bully Stretch (Each Side)
:30 Scapula Distraction Stretch (Each Side)
Upper Body Resistance training (Light)
3 X 20 Reps @ Each
-Banded Pull Aparts
-Banded Front Raises
-Banded Bent Row
-Banded Press
Conditioning Intervals:
2 Rounds ,
7 Min AMRAP
50 Double Unders
10 Dumbbell LATERAL Box Step Overs 50/35
-Rest 2 Mins-
20 Dumbbell Man Makers
(*1 Man Maker = Push Up, Row, Squat Clean, Thruster)
4/23
Baseline:
500m Row
3X
5 Scapula Push Ups
10 Push Ups
5 Kip Swings
10 Jumping Pull Ups
Shoulder Mobility:
1:00 Lat Band Mobility
1:00 Bully Stretch
1:00 Scapula Distraction Stretch
Gymnastic Strength:
5 Sets,
TEMPO Ring Dips @ (3,3,1)
-For Max Reps.
SuperSet With ,
Max Set of Ring Rows
*In most challenging positiong possible.
Conditioning:
4 Sets,
Against a 3 Minute Clock.
25 Cal Row - Max Burpee Over Rower.
*Rest as Needed Between Sets.
4/24
Baseline;
5:00 Easy Biking
2X
8 Elbow To Instep / Reach
8 Bootstraps
8 Barbell Good Mornings
Clean and Jerk Warm Up:
7@ Each
-Barbell Deadlift
-Shrug+ High Pull
-Muscle Clean
-Front Squat
-High Hang Clean + Strict Press
-Mid Hang Clean + Push Press
-Clean and Jerk
Clean Complex:
EMOM 15
-2 Power Clean
-1 Push Jerk
WOD:
50-40-30-20
Kettlebell Swing 53/35
Cal Bike
