PlanStrong/BuiltStrong Introducing Variability in Beginning and Intermediate Trainees

[Steve Freides]

In this article by Pavel from 2017 ...

From Simple to Sinister: Waving Volume on S&S | StrongFirst

The "From Simple to Sinister" program takes the original Simple & Sinister and applies proven Soviet techniques of waving volume. Here's how to do it.

www.strongfirst.com

... he says,

"Once you have put in your time and effort, and reached the 'simple' goals — 16kg for get-ups and 24kg for swings for ladies; and 32kg in both events for gents for the specified sets, reps, and times — you may carry on using the same simple template inspired by old-time strongmen.

"Or, you may start 'waving' your volume in the manner of Soviet weightlifters. Multiple studies have documented the greater effectiveness of “waved” training for experienced athletes."

What follows is my approach to easing into variability for a new, middle-aged student with almost no athletic background who is obese but reasonably functional otherwise, e.g., he can do a goblet squat to parallel and he can do a bodyweight-only getup.

I have recently programmed him for variability much earlier in his development than the article suggests. He's a mature, successful adult who is, I feel, able to stick to a plan that's more complex than 100 swings a day, 5 days a week. The big question is, "Will he benefit from the increased variability?" Related questions: is the advisability of holding off on variability until a student is advanced due to physical concerns or more about trust a student's ability to follow a program?

The Details:

So far, I've programmed 8 weeks for him, and following the guidance of the article, I'm keeping the NL (number of lifts) at 2000 total per 4-week period because this is what the article does: it takes the average of 5 days a week x 100 swings a day x 4 weeks and doesn't change but redistributes it into weeks of 300, 400, 600 and 700 swings. In the article, the daily volume is varied between 60 and 200 swings, and the number of training days varied between 3 and 5.

I recall from PlanStrong that greater variability is, indeed, something to be worked up to, so I've limited the variability quite a bit (and 200 swings in a single day frightened me for a new trainee). My student has done his first two weeks of swings as 24 kg x 2-handed x 100 per day, 5 days per week. What I've done is make his next 4 weeks NL of 520, 480, 500, and 460, using days of 60, 80, 100, 120, and a single day of 140, and sticking to 5 days a week, thus NL = 1960. And for his second 4-week block, I've included a single 160 swing session, 3 x 140 swing sessions, NL of 540, 400, 560, and 500. The 400 swing week will feature only 4 lifting days instead of 5.

I'm curious if those of you familiar with PlanStrong have any experience in doing this "ease in" kind of programming for your students and any other observations you may have about how closely I've hewn to the spirt of PlanStrong or not. Here is it in a chart-like format:

Preparatory Week #1: 100 swings a day, 5 days a week
Preparatory Week #2: same

Week 1 (Apr 3) : 120, 80, 120, 80, 120 = 520
Week 2 (Apr 10): 80, 120, 80, 120, 80 = 480
Week 3 (Apr 17): 140, 80, 120, 60, 100 = 500
Week 4 (Apr 24): 60, 80, 100, 120, 100 = 460

Week 5 (May 1): 80, 140, 80, 140, 100 = 540
Week 6 (May 8): 120, 80, 120, 80 (no 5th day) = 400
Week 7 May 15): 100, 160, 80, 120, 100 = 560
Week 8 (May 22): 60, 80, 100, 120, 140 = 500

The idea is that in weeks 9 - 12, I'll include variability of weekly NL between 400 and 600 and include at least a single 180 swing session, and continue to work my way out to NL of 300 - 700 with at least one 200 swing sessions as we continue to move forward, so probably 16 weeks to reach the kind of variability the article talks about.

I realize that for those who've only read the article and not attended PlanStrong might find this a pretty deep dive into the weeds. (And those of you who haven't read the article and haven't attended PlanStrong may have little-to-no idea what I might be going on about.)

Looking forward to your comments.

-S-

 

[WxHerk]

Having no experience with PlanStrong, what does jump out at me is:

“ a mature, successful adult who is, I feel, able to stick to a plan”

I believe he will do well. Sticking to the plan is key. As long as he does that without constantly try to “add this” or “subtract that” then he will succeed. The failures are almost always those who can’t stick with the program.

 

[LukeV]

In this article by Pavel from 2017 ...

From Simple to Sinister: Waving Volume on S&S | StrongFirst

The "From Simple to Sinister" program takes the original Simple & Sinister and applies proven Soviet techniques of waving volume. Here's how to do it.

www.strongfirst.com

... he says,

"Once you have put in your time and effort, and reached the 'simple' goals — 16kg for get-ups and 24kg for swings for ladies; and 32kg in both events for gents for the specified sets, reps, and times — you may carry on using the same simple template inspired by old-time strongmen.

"Or, you may start 'waving' your volume in the manner of Soviet weightlifters. Multiple studies have documented the greater effectiveness of “waved” training for experienced athletes."

What follows is my approach to easing into variability for a new, middle-aged student with almost no athletic background who is obese but reasonably functional otherwise, e.g., he can do a goblet squat to parallel and he can do a bodyweight-only getup.

I have recently programmed him for variability much earlier in his development than the article suggests. He's a mature, successful adult who is, I feel, able to stick to a plan that's more complex than 100 swings a day, 5 days a week. The big question is, "Will he benefit from the increased variability?" Related questions: is the advisability of holding off on variability until a student is advanced due to physical concerns or more about trust a student's ability to follow a program?

The Details:

So far, I've programmed 8 weeks for him, and following the guidance of the article, I'm keeping the NL (number of lifts) at 2000 total per 4-week period because this is what the article does: it takes the average of 5 days a week x 100 swings a day x 4 weeks and doesn't change but redistributes it into weeks of 300, 400, 600 and 700 swings. In the article, the daily volume is varied between 60 and 200 swings, and the number of training days varied between 3 and 5.

I recall from PlanStrong that greater variability is, indeed, something to be worked up to, so I've limited the variability quite a bit (and 200 swings in a single day frightened me for a new trainee). My student has done his first two weeks of swings as 24 kg x 2-handed x 100 per day, 5 days per week. What I've done is make his next 4 weeks NL of 520, 480, 500, and 460, using days of 60, 80, 100, 120, and a single day of 140, and sticking to 5 days a week, thus NL = 1960. And for his second 4-week block, I've included a single 160 swing session, 3 x 140 swing sessions, NL of 540, 400, 560, and 500. The 400 swing week will feature only 4 lifting days instead of 5.

I'm curious if those of you familiar with PlanStrong have any experience in doing this "ease in" kind of programming for your students and any other observations you may have about how closely I've hewn to the spirt of PlanStrong or not. Here is it in a chart-like format:

Preparatory Week #1: 100 swings a day, 5 days a week
Preparatory Week #2: same

Week 1 (Apr 3) : 120, 80, 120, 80, 120 = 520
Week 2 (Apr 10): 80, 120, 80, 120, 80 = 480
Week 3 (Apr 17): 140, 80, 120, 60, 100 = 500
Week 4 (Apr 24): 60, 80, 100, 120, 100 = 460

Week 5 (May 1): 80, 140, 80, 140, 100 = 540
Week 6 (May 8): 120, 80, 120, 80 (no 5th day) = 400
Week 7 May 15): 100, 160, 80, 120, 100 = 560
Week 8 (May 22): 60, 80, 100, 120, 140 = 500

The idea is that in weeks 9 - 12, I'll include variability of weekly NL between 400 and 600 and include at least a single 180 swing session, and continue to work my way out to NL of 300 - 700 with at least one 200 swing sessions as we continue to move forward, so probably 16 weeks to reach the kind of variability the article talks about.

I realize that for those who've only read the article and not attended PlanStrong might find this a pretty deep dive into the weeds. (And those of you who haven't read the article and haven't attended PlanStrong may have little-to-no idea what I might be going on about.)

Looking forward to your comments.

-S-

From memory, somewhere in Plan Strong it suggests the variability be in the order of 20%, so your daily variability meets that, in fact exceeds it regularly, but your weekly variability doesn’t. Is that what you’re intending to work up to?

 

[Steve Freides]

From memory, somewhere in Plan Strong it suggests the variability be in the order of 20%, so your daily variability meets that, in fact exceeds it regularly, but your weekly variability doesn’t. Is that what you’re intending to work up to?

Good point.

Because the swings are being done in sets of 10 and because one-handed swings are an option, I choose to use changes of daily volume only in increments of 20, as Pavel did in his article. The article’s daily volume goes between 60 and 200 so I took it on faith that this was a good goal and just scaled it back. Perhaps the greater variability in daily volume “compensates” for the lack of variability in both weight and set length. I honestly don’t know but that sounds like a reasonable explanation to me at the moment. I was mostly backing into what Pavel created in the article than thinking about PlanStrong principles from scratch.

-S-

 

[Steve Freides]

@LukeV, one other point to make about why I changed some things but not others in the program in the article.

I took a detour from my music career to work in computers in the early days of the personal computer. It was great fun back then, and one of the things many of us did to learn programming was take programs from a magazine, type them in for ourselves, then start modifying them. Sometimes you'd break the program you'd started with, but often making little tweaks without breaking the program was an excellent learning tool - almost self-teaching, really. "Let's see if I can make it do _this_." You'd start with a classic, e.g., a program that displayed, "Hello, world." on the screen, begin by doing innocent things like just changing the text it displayed, but then start going further afield.

That's what I was doing here. I took Pavel's program and tried to change something without changing the essence of what it was, my mission being to accommodate a different kind of user than the one for which is was designed but nonetheless still a user who wants to make progress with his kettlebell swings. Sitting here, doing the math, looking at what I came up with - this was that same kind of learning process for me.

-S-

 

[Bauer]

In this article by Pavel from 2017 ...

From Simple to Sinister: Waving Volume on S&S | StrongFirst

The "From Simple to Sinister" program takes the original Simple & Sinister and applies proven Soviet techniques of waving volume. Here's how to do it.

www.strongfirst.com

... he says,

"Once you have put in your time and effort, and reached the 'simple' goals — 16kg for get-ups and 24kg for swings for ladies; and 32kg in both events for gents for the specified sets, reps, and times — you may carry on using the same simple template inspired by old-time strongmen.

"Or, you may start 'waving' your volume in the manner of Soviet weightlifters. Multiple studies have documented the greater effectiveness of “waved” training for experienced athletes."

What follows is my approach to easing into variability for a new, middle-aged student with almost no athletic background who is obese but reasonably functional otherwise, e.g., he can do a goblet squat to parallel and he can do a bodyweight-only getup.

I have recently programmed him for variability much earlier in his development than the article suggests. He's a mature, successful adult who is, I feel, able to stick to a plan that's more complex than 100 swings a day, 5 days a week. The big question is, "Will he benefit from the increased variability?" Related questions: is the advisability of holding off on variability until a student is advanced due to physical concerns or more about trust a student's ability to follow a program?

The Details:

So far, I've programmed 8 weeks for him, and following the guidance of the article, I'm keeping the NL (number of lifts) at 2000 total per 4-week period because this is what the article does: it takes the average of 5 days a week x 100 swings a day x 4 weeks and doesn't change but redistributes it into weeks of 300, 400, 600 and 700 swings. In the article, the daily volume is varied between 60 and 200 swings, and the number of training days varied between 3 and 5.

I recall from PlanStrong that greater variability is, indeed, something to be worked up to, so I've limited the variability quite a bit (and 200 swings in a single day frightened me for a new trainee). My student has done his first two weeks of swings as 24 kg x 2-handed x 100 per day, 5 days per week. What I've done is make his next 4 weeks NL of 520, 480, 500, and 460, using days of 60, 80, 100, 120, and a single day of 140, and sticking to 5 days a week, thus NL = 1960. And for his second 4-week block, I've included a single 160 swing session, 3 x 140 swing sessions, NL of 540, 400, 560, and 500. The 400 swing week will feature only 4 lifting days instead of 5.

I'm curious if those of you familiar with PlanStrong have any experience in doing this "ease in" kind of programming for your students and any other observations you may have about how closely I've hewn to the spirt of PlanStrong or not. Here is it in a chart-like format:

Preparatory Week #1: 100 swings a day, 5 days a week
Preparatory Week #2: same

Week 1 (Apr 3) : 120, 80, 120, 80, 120 = 520
Week 2 (Apr 10): 80, 120, 80, 120, 80 = 480
Week 3 (Apr 17): 140, 80, 120, 60, 100 = 500
Week 4 (Apr 24): 60, 80, 100, 120, 100 = 460

Week 5 (May 1): 80, 140, 80, 140, 100 = 540
Week 6 (May 8): 120, 80, 120, 80 (no 5th day) = 400
Week 7 May 15): 100, 160, 80, 120, 100 = 560
Week 8 (May 22): 60, 80, 100, 120, 140 = 500

The idea is that in weeks 9 - 12, I'll include variability of weekly NL between 400 and 600 and include at least a single 180 swing session, and continue to work my way out to NL of 300 - 700 with at least one 200 swing sessions as we continue to move forward, so probably 16 weeks to reach the kind of variability the article talks about.

I realize that for those who've only read the article and not attended PlanStrong might find this a pretty deep dive into the weeds. (And those of you who haven't read the article and haven't attended PlanStrong may have little-to-no idea what I might be going on about.)

Looking forward to your comments.

-S-

I have used this approach to reach Timeless Simple, although only with 1100 to 1400 reps per month.

I only followed delta20 during the weeks, similar to your approach. I have added two types of additional variability:

• Different set and rep schemes (for example 10x8 or 20x7)
• Replacing between 10 and 20% per month with the next heavier bell, and waving this load independently from the general volume (I calculated the monthly tonnage and increased it by the same amount each month by either going heavier or by increasing volume)

I did this for both swings and TGUs independently.

It worked really well and kept me motivated. Each sessions included some form of change.

 

[Xcal]

“ a mature, successful adult who is, I feel, able to stick to a plan”

This is exactly where I found this forum +-a year ago, and I generally stuck to my plans/goals within the boundaries of life, the universe and everything, simply because I cannot do everything everywhere at once! sorry, I had to do this

Play the person not the ball:
It sounds like your guy is well motivated and a self-starter so I would find out his appetite for variation. some people prefer a strict routine, and others like variety and randomness (me).

Play the ball: Q1: I firmly believe that variety is key to a sharp mind and body. Q2: obviously, the skill of the trick (swing, TGU, play a B# scale on your instrument etc) must be settled before adding variety (play B# on a different instrument for few days). One could get hurt by playing a B# scale if one is not comfortable with it or the instrument!

another random example: I play wordle daily and use a different starting word everyday, I score poorly compared to my friends in the wordle-whatsapp group who have a set plan. I may be *slightly* better protected than them from mental degeneration later in life.