Conditioning Tips
Tips and Tricks on how to get better at your lifts. With advice taken from Reddit/r/Weightroom. I can re-word this any day of the week, but the masters of iron say it best.
“For heavy lifts, resting less and repping more weight and maxing out power and endurance reps around the goal weight. EG; If training to lift 100kg, I would do high rep AMRAP with 70/80/90kg and then the next session I would do partial reps with 110/120kg - at all ranges of the movement; first 50% ROM, then middle 50% ROM and then top pull 50% ROM.
That way I felt I was over-strengthening and preparing my muscles to work at beyond-goal weight levels at various ranges - and when you add it all together it goes you a stronger pull throughout full ROM.
Eg: I would do 5 reps at lowest 50% of ROM, then rest 30 secs and then do the same for mid-50% and top50%.
Also - get really good at doing as many reps as possible at 80/90% of your max lift. If you can get 3-4 consecutive good reps with 80-90% of max rep, it will really condition you to be at that high level.
Lifting at single max rep too often did not work for me - I prefer to get many high reps just below target weight and many strong partial reps above target weight - for some reason it made achieving the target weight much easier.
Re conditioning - I believe cardio is crucial - if you want to get great many reps out at high weight, great cardio really helps. Say you want to achieve 20 bench press reps with your body weight equivalent on the bar - it may take you a minute to do so - then doing cardio aimed at 90 secs full intensity really prepares your lungs/cardio blood flow for the 60 secs of intensity. It can even be sprinting or burpees or whatever intense cardio - but at full level for 90 secs - or 50% more time than the target lifting feat will take.”
EMOMs and Short Rest Periods are King for Conditioning.
“List based on what equipment you want to use
Farmers
Weakness; Grip.
60-70% of your 1rm for 50ft. Pick up farmer and do your 50ft and then hold for half of the remaining time. 10 rounds
Death march: 50% of your 1rm. 100ft. Figure out where 10 feet is. Do the same with every 10ft interval. You can measure it like I did, or just go heel to toe and count to ten and then mark it. Pick up your farmers and sprint to 10ft. Put it down. Pick it up. Go another 10ft. Repeat for 100ft. 2-5 rounds.
Weakness; Endurance
50-60% of your 1rm. 50ft. Emom hit 50ft and then 5 burpees. Add an additional 1 burpee every round. To make this harder, jump rope the reminder of your minute. 10 rounds.
50% of your 1rm. Deadlift the handles, put it down. Pick it up again and carry the handles 50ft. At 50ft, put them down. Turn around. And carry them another 50ft. Now do 2 deadlifts, then 3, then 4, then as many rounds as you can go without a break. The deadlift does not include your farmer pick. So if its round 3 then you do 3 deadlifts, put it down and then pick it up and carry it. Get ad many as you can in 10 minutes.
Yoke
Weakness; Technique, speed, and the turn around
Suicides: 60% max 50ft. Mark off 15/30/45/60. Go to 15, drop the yoke down, turn around, bring it back to the start. Now go to 30, drop the yoke down and turn around, bring it back to the start. Now do this for the 45ft and 60ft mark. 3-5 rounds. Rest for 2 minutes.
30% of your max 50ft. Sprint to 30ft. Put it down. Reset and pick it back up and sprint it 20ft. Rest for 30 seconds. 12 rounds.
Weakness; Endurance
60-70% of max 50ft.Mark off 10/30/50ft. Sprint to 10, drop the yoke and give me 5 burpees, sprint to 30ft and give me 15 burpees, sprint to 50ft and give me 25 burpees. Rest 60 seconds. 3 rounds.
Barbell, kettle bell and slam balls
These will not have specific weaknesses as the above two did. You can use any of the previous conditioning drills and not worry about the weakness you're working. I simply laid it out this way so that if you did have a specific weakness or implement to use, you can pin point a conditioning drill for it.
Barbell complex: 80% of your 1rm on good mornings or about your 8rm. 2 deadlifts, 2 barbell rows, 2 cleans, 2 clean and presses, 2 back squats and 2 good mornings. You can either: Add 1 or 2 reps emom for 10 minutes, or add 1 or 2 reps every round and rest 30 seconds between rounds.
clean and press into mad ball slam ladder. 60% of your 1rm on a barbell clean and press. Start with 2 reps on each and add 1 every round. 10 minutes. Emom. Most likely you'll get to round 7 or 8 and you cant fit all your reps in
50% of your deadlift max. Easy 8-10rm kb. 1 kettle bell swing, 1 deadlift, 1 burpee or box jump. Add 2 every round. Emom for 10 minutes OR 12 rounds with 30 seconds rest.
50-60% barbell squat max. 5 squats then immediately into 30 second sprint on treadmill. Rest 30 seconds and repeat. 5-10 rounds.
21s. Little history here. I first read about this in the ORIGINAL bodybuilding bible way back when I first started out. I always loved the idea, I always loved how brutal these truly could be. So take a single movement and divide it into 3. Squat will top to 1/2 way down, bottom to 1/2 way up then the full squat. Or for deadlifts, you could do floor to knee, knee to lock out, floor to lock out. That's step 1, figuring out where to cut the lift up. Step 2 is to do 7 reps in each 3rd of the movement. So let's do log like I did. Deadlift the log x 7, clean the log x 7 and then clean and press the log for 7. Obviously this is going to suck, so start pretty light. I have a max log of 330x2 and I puked on 200lbs doing this. You can even do this for muscle building specifically. Bicep curls, leg presses, tricep extentions are all great here. For conditioning: Do 3 sets with 50% of the time it took to do them as your rest. Took 3 minutes? You get a minute and a half rest. So on and so on
Kb complex: Muscle snatch, clean and press, front squat, Romanian deadlift. All 5 reps. Either do 1 side at a time or do 1 kettlebell in each hand. 5 rounds.
Kb complex 2: Double kettle bell squat, snatch, reverse lunge, man makers. Do 20 reps of each, lunges are 20 reps per leg. Next set do this all again but do 15 reps, then 10, then 5. No rest between exercises but 2 minutes between sets.
Med ball slam x 3, into chest toss slam x 3, into side twist toss x 3 on each side, into box jumps x 3. Rest 30 seconds and repeat.
Bodyweight
Animal planet (These have made men cry) Bear crawl x 50 feat then 50ft backwards. Alligator/crocodile walk x 50ft then 50ft backwards. Crab walk x 50ft then crab walk back to start x 50. Bunny hop x 50ft then hop back 50ft to start. Then duck walk 50ft, turn around and duck walk about 50ft. Repeat as many times as possible in 10 minutes.
Bear crawl holds into burpees. 1 minute hold into 1 minute burpee. Repeat for 10 minutes
box jump x 5, push up x 5, burpee x 5, pull up x 5. As many rounds in 10 minutes.
Walking lunges x 50ft into inch worms foe 50ft into 5 squat jumps. 30 seconds rest and 5-10 rounds
PARAMETERS OF CONDITIONING AND HOW TO MANIPULATE THEM OR CREATE YOUR OWN IDEAS
Emoms: Why? They keep you accountable for time. You took to long? Aw poor baby, no rest. Go again.
As many rounds in x time. Maybe this conditioning was easy as pie. You can get a round down in like 10 seconds, 50 seconds rest is helping no one. So maybe go again in another 20 seconds and see how many rounds you can do.
Set time or time reduction: X time for rest is for when you want them to do a specific workload in a specific time. Time reduction can be used over the course of a few weeks. Drop 15 seconds of rest over the course of 2 weeks on all lifts.
X amount of rounds: More = Harder, Less = easier.
Ladder reps: Add work as fatigue goes up. This is my favorite and it sucks and everyone hates it. It starts off so easy and then it ends so cruel. Often you'll be unable to do 8+ reps emom style forcing you to do round after round back to back. Keep in mind that you cant just add 10 reps per round and expect it to be do able in under x amount of time.
Why are you conditioning 10 minutes long? Because everyone has 10 extra minutes somewhere”
