@guardian7, that's the type of conversation I've been looking forward to. Most of the time I read on here that so and so is doing X plan and thinking about doing Y plan next, and then, the 2 week alternating blocks seems to be discussed a lot in various threads lately, but I rarely see anyone here talk about any form of planned variation or actually separating Strength/Muscles and Cardiovascular conditioning. I know that basically the whole template of SF is that your work capacity and therefore conditioning improves naturally by doing XYZ in A+A, Q+D, S+S, (insert here). Got it. Done em, love em, will continue to buy more plans.
But what I don't see is longer-term periodization in the form of any type of goal or lifestyle discussed. It's usually just I want to kit Xkg on the snatch and people get a couple of recommended snatch plans in a row, but as someone who has multi-modal fitness tests for work with a significant aerobic capacity aspect, I can tell you that working on Strength, Work Capacity, and Running while inserting other terms you have for fitness is super difficult and should absolutely be periodized IMO. Now, how it should be periodized is obviously up for debate, and even the topic of maintaining any mode of fitness fits into that. For example: as a non-runner who loves lifting, I can't take 2-3 weeks where I don't do any form of LSS cardio or at least a couple hard "cardio" sessions and expect to maintain a 40:00 5Mi. I can take a month or two off of strength focus and come back and not have lost much, but I love strength work and cardio sucks. Other people are the exact opposite of me.
For me, I've found that base-building in low-rep strength or power blocks is totally doable as well as base-building in high-rep muscular endurance blocks. I've also found that Q+D peaking type of plans in Strength and Power blocks works well as well as Q+D in base-building blocks is also totally doable. What I've had trouble with is choosing the correct type or even amount of conditioning during a hypertrophy block. I've also had trouble determining where to throw the glycolytic peaking. Should glycolytic peaking be placed in hypertrophy blocks, or is that probably too much work that would either force the block to be much shorter or limit it's effectiveness. Where would I throw in sprints, runs, or other modes of conditioning that don't involve a kettlebell day during Built Strong ( or any hypertrophy plan) to ensure that I'm still working or even maintaining the aerobic periodization in conjunction with the strength/muscular periodization? Would glycolytic peaking affect my performance too much in the strength or power blocks such that I should just leave it in the hypertrophy block?