Operation Unicorn

[Antti]

I've found it works well as a dynamic warm-up. The built-in warm-up is one of the features of ladders I appreciate the most. I think the additional volume/practice of the movement probably helps too but I'm not sure. Perhaps only doing the two heavier ladders would be ideal if doing conditioning or other training in concurrence to save recovery capacity. Maybe two ladders followed by some A+A or Q&D conditioning sets. The low reps at the start of the second ladder would probably be an ok warm-up or maybe S&S as a replacement to the first ladder for a warm-up.

Yes, it's a question of returns. The light ladder does count into hypertrophy. The movement practice is good for strength endurance but it's questionable how much it helps a proficient trainee move heavier weights.

I wonder how much difference there would be between 2-3-5 at 75/80/85 compared to 2-3-5 at 80/85 + 10 at 75. I would lean towards such at the moment.

 

[Deleted member 5559]

I wonder how much difference there would be between 2-3-5 at 75/80/85 compared to 2-3-5 at 80/85 + 10 at 75. I would lean towards such at the moment.

Having never given it much thought until now, I would lean the same way as you too. Maybe the two are appropriate during different phases. Perhaps the latter during a hypertrophy oriented phase and the former during a power oriented phase.

 

[Deleted member 5559]

Decent week of training. Got all 4 days in that I had planned. I have been combining some strength with higher intensity conditioning on the same day to consolidate the time available for training. Have been doing a lot of ladders to get in the volume I want for some hypertrophy. I tried a percentage of max reps based ladder which I liked. 10-20-30% repeated three times. Considering how much I like replacing sets lately, I think I could replace those ladders with 20-30-40% and then 30-40-50%. Logistically, the percentage of max reps is quite convenient because it doesn't matter what weight I have access to and is adaptable to the barbell, kettlebell, and bodyweight.

Went for a ruck this morning for the first time in about 15 years. I have been out backpacking plenty but I have not actually been out rucking for a pace since the military. I don't know how much weight I had, I just strapped a log to my frame. I imagine it was about 40-50 pounds. Pace at zone 2 was ~15min/mi. It was also a maiden voyage with some new Xero sandals.

I haven't done any A+A or Q&D in a few months since I had surgery. I have been focusing on VO2 max intervals and lactate threshold running in preparation for test I have coming up. I was listening to a podcast this week with some ultra endurance coaches and they were pretty unanimous about adding long low intensity work as a supplement to get in more volume. I was expecting them to say the opposite and that if I only had 2-3 hours per week to dedicate to conditioning to use that time for LISS and then any additional time to supplement with higher intensity. They were more in agreement that limited training time is better spent in the threshold zone 4 and VO2 max zone 5 and using zone 2 LISS to add volume if needed.

Another coach I was listening to was commenting how to really improve aerobic threshold took 6-12 hours per week!! Who has that kind of time, especially when strength and conditioning are equally important to a person. I suppose a person could strength train twice per week and then do 4x 90+ min sessions the other days but even that is a lot of time dedication. I'm fine with improvement taking a long time to accumulate but not really even seeing improvement until spending 6 hours per week in zone 2 almost seems like a fools errand to some extent unless truly dedicating a year to that adaptation.