Throw An Extra Couple Of Light Days In Your Week

It's hard not to be inspired by Jamie Lewis of chaosandpain.blogspot.com. As well as being extremely knowledgeble, he is hilarious. His training philosophy and motivational qualities are right up there with Jim Steel and Pavel for mine. I've just been  going through his old posts as well as reading more Pavel and it seems doing the big lifts, 4 or 5 times a week, has been a pretty common occurence for lifters throughout history. By the same token, some of the greats have only squatted 1x a week too so it goes both ways.

But I can't help but feel lifting 5 x a week is a good idea. Pavel talks about the greats conceiving weights as practice. Obviously you can't approach every session with the same intensity but if you cycle your loads I think there is good reason to believe that extra sessions are at least going to help neurological efficiency as well as promote recovery.

Jim Steel has also talked about "squattin everyday" and how it kept him feeling fresh. I always felt best squatting 3 x a week and it was when I went to 1 x a week squatting that I started feeling sore and tight all the time.

No doubt you could make strength gains by training only 30mins 3 x or even 2 x a week. But is this the most optimal way to train? Especially considering all the other hours of the week are spent sitting around doing nothing? I know this wroks for plent of people but surely that extra frequency and volume has benifits.

There's a lot more to strength training than just stressing the muscle so it can grow stronger. Train more often, improve technique, become more efficient and recover better. Some weeks, 3 days in the gym might feel like plenty, but other weeks, I just wanna get in there and do a little something everyday I can.

BW chins, pulls and dips

Light incline DB: 20kg x 4 x 5

Power Cleans: 60kg x 10 reps total

Squat Rehab: Bar x 3 x 10, 60kg x 1 x 10

Cuff work

Calf work

Hectic Ab routine