Snowman
Level 6 Valued Member
I just wanted to add a little experiment of mine to the collective knowledge. I’m transitioning my A+A snatches from the 32 kilo up to the 36 kilo, and I thought it might be beneficial to increase my volume with the 32 before stepping up. Bonus points if I could add a little muscle. My adjustments were pretty simple; I went from 16-24 repeats of 7 with the 32 (which was the most I could do before a small drop in power) to a mix between sets of 5 and sets of 10. It’s worth noting that sets of 10 snatches are no longer A+A, but still fit within the broader label of HIRT training.
I did 14 sets every time I trained. I used the sets of 5 to accumulate some easy volume, and the sets of 10 were the meat of the program.
I started out with 10 sets of 5, and 4 sets of 10. Over 4 weeks, I worked up to my highest volume day, which was 6 sets of 5 and 8 sets of 10. The majority of my volume was right in between, with 8 sets of 5 and 6 sets of 10.
I had the program written out for up to 8 weeks, with the plan of evaluating things at weeks 4 and 6. I went ahead and ended it after my week 4 de-load (which was more like 3.5 weeks). Reasons:
1) I didn’t like sets of 10, and
2) the 36 kilo was going up pretty darn easy when I was working it into some of my sets of 5, which was the main reason for doing the sets of 10 anyways.
I gained 5 pounds (from 157 to 162; I’m 5’10”) in a little under four weeks. Muscle definition still seems good, so I don’t imagine too much of that was fat. I was tempted to run it out for the whole 8 weeks and see if I could hit a ten pound gain, but that just didn't seem like it would have been worth it.
My main dietary modification was going from 2-3 big-ish meals per day to 4 moderate sized meals per day, intentionally eating past satiety but not to the point of nausea. To be fair, this was probably at least half, if not more, of the stimulus for gaining muscle. Lots of meat and eggs.
My typical weekly training was:
Snatches 3 days/week
BJJ 2 days/week
Aerobic active recovery (mostly sub-MAF rowing) 1-2 days/week
Basically, I increased food intake, kept volume about the same (dropped it a bit, actually), and tweaked the reps/set to give me a little systemic dose of acid for some of the sets. This gave me a little extra oomph with the 36 kilo 'bell, and it let me pretty easily gain a little over a pound a week of lean muscle without the typical suffering associated with a kettlebell hypertrophy program. It probably also helps that I was using a 'bell that was close to 1/2 bodyweight. You know, that whole "get strong first" thing.
My hope was to see if I could run a hypertrophy program in the "background" of A+A training. While I'm sure the training effect of the A+A training was diminished due to the reduced volume and number of repeats, it still seemed to work pretty darn well.
If you want to see more detail, you can look at my training log, from Dec 27-Jan 18.
I did 14 sets every time I trained. I used the sets of 5 to accumulate some easy volume, and the sets of 10 were the meat of the program.
I started out with 10 sets of 5, and 4 sets of 10. Over 4 weeks, I worked up to my highest volume day, which was 6 sets of 5 and 8 sets of 10. The majority of my volume was right in between, with 8 sets of 5 and 6 sets of 10.
I had the program written out for up to 8 weeks, with the plan of evaluating things at weeks 4 and 6. I went ahead and ended it after my week 4 de-load (which was more like 3.5 weeks). Reasons:
1) I didn’t like sets of 10, and
2) the 36 kilo was going up pretty darn easy when I was working it into some of my sets of 5, which was the main reason for doing the sets of 10 anyways.
I gained 5 pounds (from 157 to 162; I’m 5’10”) in a little under four weeks. Muscle definition still seems good, so I don’t imagine too much of that was fat. I was tempted to run it out for the whole 8 weeks and see if I could hit a ten pound gain, but that just didn't seem like it would have been worth it.
My main dietary modification was going from 2-3 big-ish meals per day to 4 moderate sized meals per day, intentionally eating past satiety but not to the point of nausea. To be fair, this was probably at least half, if not more, of the stimulus for gaining muscle. Lots of meat and eggs.
My typical weekly training was:
Snatches 3 days/week
BJJ 2 days/week
Aerobic active recovery (mostly sub-MAF rowing) 1-2 days/week
Basically, I increased food intake, kept volume about the same (dropped it a bit, actually), and tweaked the reps/set to give me a little systemic dose of acid for some of the sets. This gave me a little extra oomph with the 36 kilo 'bell, and it let me pretty easily gain a little over a pound a week of lean muscle without the typical suffering associated with a kettlebell hypertrophy program. It probably also helps that I was using a 'bell that was close to 1/2 bodyweight. You know, that whole "get strong first" thing.
My hope was to see if I could run a hypertrophy program in the "background" of A+A training. While I'm sure the training effect of the A+A training was diminished due to the reduced volume and number of repeats, it still seemed to work pretty darn well.
If you want to see more detail, you can look at my training log, from Dec 27-Jan 18.