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Barbell One Day of Lifting/Week

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LoneRider

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I found this article today at lunch time from Jim Wendler's website titled Limited Training Time/Maximum Results (link) and it got me thinking about if I encounter a situation where I can only have access to a barbell one day/week. I then consulted works such as Deadlift Dynamite, Power to the People, and The Top Set Method to sketch out a routine for that 'single day/week'. As far as the remaining five days of a week I'd likely do swings/snatches and road work with some select bodyweight work.

As far as the structure of the one barbell day is concerned the day's structure is laid out in the same lifting order as a powerlifting meet:
  • Squat 5x5 (Only top set of 5 is anything approaching heavy)
  • Bench 5x5 (Only top set of 5 is anything approaching heavy)
  • Deadlift 5,3,2 or 2x5 (Cycle would start at 8-10RM and add five pounds/week)
Anyway, I'm curious how others on this forum might handle having only a single day/week to lift a barbell here.
 
I figured this would be a great 'maintenance' cycle if my work schedule was too insane to get 2-4x barbell sessions/week as a thought. My current planned barbell cycle is from Geoff Neuport's Top Set Cycle 3x/week in an A/B split where A is Bench and B is Squat and Deadlift, with some smartly selected SV work. This 1 day per week cycle is if I happen to be dealing with a crazy a#@ work schedule.
 
Steve A said:
Marty Gallagher has written a lot about this, e.g., In the coaching trenches: ordinary folks obtaining extraordinary gains | Marty Gallagher. If you do a search on "minimalism" there you will find more. His trainees seem successful.
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Training age and specificity matter.

You can probably get gains with newbies with as little as once a week for the first 6-12 months.

Or get 'good enough' gains with athletes for whom S&C work is secondary (i.e. lots of rowers on my team lift once a week).

But if you're a strength athlete with >2 years of lifting under your belt, once a week isn't going to give much progress relative to the alternatives.

And the weightlifters he cites in that link using the Bulgarian method may have only been doing 3 lifts (snatch, C&J, squat), but the Bulgarian weightlifting team often trained 2x a day, multiple days a week.
 
Dan John recently had a episode on his podcast addressing it. The sum of it was basically "Marty's program works well for this, don't mess with what works".

If it is just barbells once a week and bodyweight kettlebell stuff the rest of the week it opens up a lot of options. I know when I was training with Zar Horton he was basically doing deadlifts and presses once a week on top of the kb and bodyweight stuff he did the rest of the week. No idea what his specific programming was but I'm assuming it was his normal back to back to back workouts he has talked about in the past. (if you get a chance and are in ABQ, check out one of his kb classes in the park. It will give you a new idea of what your max HR feels like)
 
If it is just barbells once a week and bodyweight kettlebell stuff the rest of the week it opens up a lot of options.
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Thanks, @silveraw, that Jim Wendler article got me thinking on how I might tackle a situation where I can turn the disadvantage of only one day out of every seven where I have access to a barbell into a better played hand using kettlebells and bodyweight work.

I'd probably use something like Alactic and Aerobic with kettlebells/dumbbells and GTG/similar pattern calisthenics for the bodyweight work and possibly smartly applied (MOSTLY aerobic) roadwork for the remainder.

A legacy of my Army training is making contingency plans for different situations, so reading up on Alactic and Aerobic opened up some ideas for me.
 
LoneRider said:
I figured this would be a great 'maintenance' cycle if my work schedule was too insane to get 2-4x barbell sessions/week as a thought. My current planned barbell cycle is from Geoff Neuport's Top Set Cycle 3x/week in an A/B split where A is Bench and B is Squat and Deadlift, with some smartly selected SV work. This 1 day per week cycle is if I happen to be dealing with a crazy a#@ work schedule.
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The flip the question around:

How important is it to you, really?

If you're not planning to compete, is it a big deal if your lifts backslide for the intermediate term?
 
silveraw said:
I know when I was training with Zar Horton he was basically doing deadlifts and presses once a week on top of the kb and bodyweight stuff he did the rest of the week.
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In the winter, I'll usually reduce my barbell lifts (snatch, clean, squat, jerk/press) to once a week while doing double KBs the rest of the week because I want to minimize time in the cold unheated garage.

I can usually get some benefits from unilateral training (balancing things out) and some hypertrophy, but my barbell lifts stay nearly flat until I resume training them 3-4 times a week in February in prep for meets in May.
 
watchnerd said:
The flip the question around:

How important is it to you, really?

If you're not planning to compete, is it a big deal if your lifts backslide for the intermediate term?
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I've already had experience with a 'no barbell' environment before thanks to COVID lockdowns in Hawaii and nearly two and a half months of all kettlebell programming.

Mostly I just wanted to take advantage of a mobilization with the Army Reserve where I will have access to a barbell at a minimum of once a week, work schedule dependent. I planned out an 'ideal' version (a 3x/week split) and this 1x/week model is a 'not quite ideal' version.
 
LoneRider said:
I've already had experience with a 'no barbell' environment before thanks to COVID lockdowns in Hawaii and nearly two and a half months of all kettlebell programming.

Mostly I just wanted to take advantage of a mobilization with the Army Reserve where I will have access to a barbell at a minimum of once a week, work schedule dependent. I planned out an 'ideal' version (a 3x/week split) and this 1x/week model is a 'not quite ideal' version.
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Honestly if at all possible go all in on barbell. I spent a year and a half only doing kettlebell and bodyweight. Once I started focusing on barbell lifts again it felt like all that "potential strength" seemed to actualize pretty quickly along with some very nice muscle gains.
 
silveraw said:
Honestly if at all possible go all in on barbell. I spent a year and a half only doing kettlebell and bodyweight. Once I started focusing on barbell lifts again it felt like all that "potential strength" seemed to actualize pretty quickly along with some very nice muscle gains.
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Believe me, I plan to go all in on ye olde Barbell for this mobilization, or at least a good sized chunk of said mobilization. This once/week plan is to account for work circumstances getting in the way.

Another thing I saw in Enter the Kettlebell had 12 week alternating cycles of Barbell and Kettlebell cycles in the FAQ section, so that also gave me some ideas. Mostly I'm gonna go barbell for the vast majority of the mobilization and go back towards Kettlebells near the end of mobilization, when I get closer to going back home and my home KB set of 16KG, 24KG and 32KG bells.
 
watchnerd said:
Training age and specificity matter.

But if you're a strength athlete with >2 years of lifting under your belt, once a week isn't going to give much progress relative to the alternatives.
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Absolutely. Now reading Gallagher's stuff, a lot of his guys have well more than 2 years experience, and all his guys regularly compete. He gives the history of the practice in other columns. But he also repeatedly says he is not claiming it is the best way. I can't imagine it working for your sport.

When I was younger, twice a week gave results, but moving to 3x/2 weeks did not work for long. Admittedly that may have been because it was always near the end of a cycle. But over the past several years, the rate at which I detrain has noticeably increased, so I'm a bit leery of doing once a week.
 
watchnerd said:
Yeah...

I swear this gets worse every year. ;)
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I regret to inform you that this is not your imagination. But while a pure once a week is not ideal for us, doing that for the heavy barbell lifts and doing like you have in the winters will at least prevent backsliding. For me a second lighter barbell session is enough, haven't yet tried using KB or BW sessions to supplement a single hard barbell session.

For LoneRider, who we can infer is a bit younger than us, once a week barbell and then not being a slug the rest of the week will probably allow progress. I would suggest that LR reads some more of Gallagher's stuff using the search function there, as he writes about his work with military personnel on very limited time lifting, and gives more details on how he runs the powerlifting group. That includes giving layouts for one to three days. Since they all use the same progression scheme, it would probably be easy enough to change days if the Army reschedules life by consolidating the sessions (and dropping the extras on the extra days) or vice versa. As always, if there is a proven solution available, using it has a higher probability of success than an imagined or created one.
 
Well, I am nearing my fourth decade on this planet and I have physically challenging hobbies I do (Muay Thai and Jiujitsu) when Army stuff isn't taking time if that helps any.
 
LoneRider said:
Well, I am nearing my fourth decade on this planet and I have physically challenging hobbies I do (Muay Thai and Jiujitsu) when Army stuff isn't taking time if that helps any.
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Yeah, you ain't that much younger than me. ;)

I'm 52.

The upside of lifting once a week in middle age is your progression is no longer limited by your ability to recover from training. ;)
 
watchnerd said:
Yeah, you ain't that much younger than me. ;)

I'm 52.

The upside of lifting once a week in middle age is your progression is no longer limited by your ability to recover from training. ;)
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Agreed. When I last ran heavy barbell work with Wendler 5/3/1 I was lifting twice a week. Now with Deadlift Dynamite/Top Set method cycling I’m ideally wanting to go into barbells thrice a week during the mobilization, to see just what shakes loose when I return to civvy street.
 
I’ve definitely made progress on once weekly training when the goal was hypertrophy but I was nearly killing myself in that one session. But with six days to recover what’s the reason for not nearly killing yourself? So I wouldn’t do anything like the wimpy 5x5 suggested above but I would do five hard sets close to failure of exercises covering every muscle group. On the days off sleep well and eat more protein. You will get big but not as quickly as you would using higher frequency programs
 
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