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Barbell Where are we at with barbell endurance?

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I've been experimenting with clusters of singles with short rest between a few sets and long rests between a few clusters. For example 1x @ 85% every 30 seconds for 5 sets, 5min rest, repeat 3-4 times. I don't know exactly where strong endurance is in the development of bringing those concepts beyond the seminar events and/or the A+A protocols for kettlebell swings and snatches. Curious where we are with low rep, long duration, barbell sets?
 
@Bro Mo, did you attend Strong Endurance? These questions would be best asked in that special forum.

-S-
 
I don't know exactly where strong endurance is in the development of bringing those concepts beyond the seminar events and/or the A+A protocols for kettlebell swings and snatches. Curious where we are with low rep, long duration, barbell sets?

I don't recall the barbell mentioned at all at the Strong Endurance seminar.

From my standpoint, having done A+A for part of 2015 and almost all of 2016, a mix of A+A and barbell training in 2017, and virtually ALL barbell in 2018 and so far in 2019, I can say that there are actually a LOT of similarties between my barbell training and A+A. My barbell training sets are usually 3s or 5s, so a set of 5 presses or bench presses takes 15 sec or so, a set of 5 squats 30-45 sec, a set of 5 deadlifts about 30 sec. No doubt it's depleting my PCr in the working muscles, although I wouldn't call it alactic because there's certainly lactate being produced with those sustained muscle contractions. I'm recovering almost fully between efforts, and I think we can assume the recovery is aerobic, as with A+A. I use breathing, active rest, fast & loose as needed, or just rest. I normally do 3 exercises with an average of 3 warm-up sets and 3 work sets, so that's about 30 "efforts" or "repeats" in a session. The whole session takes me a little longer than A+A but the total work time is probably similar. I get stronger and I challenge my body's energy systems. I am doing a lot more work per session (tonnage) than I was a year ago, so I suppose we can say my work capacity has improved. So all in all... I see more similarties than I see differences. BUT the biggest difference is that the efforts are glycolytic and lactate-producing, not quick/fast/powerful, and not strictly limited in duration as with A+A to maximize the anti-glycolytic effect. Anyway those are just my thoughts on how the two compare and contrast. I imagine you could design a protocol with power cleans or snatches that mimics A+A kettlebell training even more closely, and I'm kind of interested in that concept... maybe I will experiment with it someday.
 
I imagine you could design a protocol with power cleans or snatches that mimics A+A kettlebell training even more closely, and I'm kind of interested in that concept... maybe I will experiment with it someday.

I've played around with that. When I throw the Olympic lifts into my normal classes (i.e., not the actual weightlifters), we generally just do power cleans and power snatches without worrying about competition-level technique. We'll keep the rep scheme low - sets of 2's, 3's, 5's - and keep the total reps in the 20-30 range. We do everything with full recovery. So it does really mimic the A+A response. I just finished up a post-TSC-to-the-new-year cycle and I got so many positive comments about it, that I'm contemplating scrapping my Q1 program and go back to that one.

When we are on a barbell-based cycle, even if it's more powerlifting movements, we still do everything with an eye towards short and explosive with lots of rest. It may not technically be A+A but it's so close that it works the same - it's all AGT though for sure!
 
my endurance improved when i was doing the Bear with Deadlift and Bench Press. a lot of sets of 5, sometime 2-3-5 ladder with 1-2 minutes rest
 
I'm recovering almost fully between efforts, and I think we can assume the recovery is aerobic, as with A+A. I use breathing, active rest, fast & loose as needed, or just rest.
Something interesting in the presentation above were the visualizations of power production being decreased pretty rapidily after the second rep and very rapidly after 5. The extended sets of singles however had near max power on each rep.

Cluster_Power.JPG

I'm suspecting heavy barbell work to be better suited for extremely low rep sets (<3) for extended duration to be more equivalent to the 5 rep sets for kettlebell ballistics.
 
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I'm suspecting heavy barbell work to be better suited for extremely low rep sets (<3) for extended duration to be more equivalent to the 5 rep sets for kettlebell ballistics.

Yeah, possibly... I think it would be very hard to get the same rate of PCr depletion... you can time that precisely with a set of heavy swings or snatches with a kettlebell, but with a barbell you have to at least slightly re-set-up for each rep, losing the rhythm/timing aspect.
 
I found this presentation which I'm going to start using to help guide my current experimentation.

NCSA Cluster Set Slides

I watched the first few mintues and it looks pretty interesting! I'll watch the entire presentation as soon as I get a chance. Maybe we need that guy to come do some research on some advanced kettlebell practitioners...

Absolutely. Different objective though?

Overlapping some objectives: power development (for quick lifts, anyway), muscular endurance, recovery ability... all would be in common. Just maybe not the same in the alactic power vs. glycolytic power. I'm probably talking over my own head, now... ;)
 
Of the barbell or the kettlebell?


Barbell. If it is going to be tougher to hit a rhythm based objective feeling of CrP drop, changing the cadence of the bar might allow a similar method.

Might not be able to use the same starting RM loads compared to snatches - it will be easier with a lower %RM load and maybe accentuate the eccentric, explode the concentric. Speculating here...
 
Steve Justa was doing was doing strong endurance before it was cool. I believe his preferred way to develop real-life work capacity was to do lift something heavy (barbell or odd object) for a few reps, recover, and do it again and again for a few hours. It might be worth taking a look at Rock, Iron, Steel to make some comparisons between what he recommends and A+A. I know Pavel references him in quite a few of his books, so I assume he has some useful stuff to say.

As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. Even if Pavel does come out with a Strong Endurance book (hopefully), it will likely only be "new" in the respect that it will be a concise collection of older methods, with any new protocols simply being more efficient versions of old protocols (this is not a criticism). I guess it depends on how you define "novel," but I don't think there's been a novel invention in the field of physical training for at least 100 years. Whatever your goal, the techniques themselves are likely already out there, just waiting to be refined and innovated upon.

I agree, though, I would rather someone smarter than me sift through all the information and just tell me what to do.
 
Curious where we are with low rep, long duration, barbell sets?
For what purpose?

In my experience, protocols like Bryce Lane's 50/20 (a compound lift you can get 30 reps with in 20 minutes, working up to 50 reps in 20 minutes, any set/rep/rest scheme you want) are good for hypertrophy, for strength, for general base-building, but I wouldn't call them endurance protocols.

-S-
 
How would 50/20 be different from A+A? Or could it be modified? Would you want to? Or should that be the domain of KBs and not BBs?
 
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For what purpose?
To operate at 90%+ for extended durations. Wrestling tounament for example: max effort, hour later max effort, hour later max effort, hour later max effort, next day max effort, hour later max effort, etc.
 
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