This will be the third and final installment in our three-part series on planning out your training. Two months ago, we examined the challenges of selecting goals and picking out competitions for a given year of training. Last month, we looked at the week-by-week loading progression for a training cycle that would lead up to one of those competitions. This month, we will narrow the subject down just a little more and take a look at how to set up a basic week of training. Seven days, seven days... The possibilities are endless.

Before we get into the meat of the subject, let’s face reality. This is part three of a series of articles. And I think we all know the possible disasters that can occur when you get to a "part three" scenario. The Godfather Part III was a lousy movie. Return of the Jedi was the third part of the Star Wars trilogy and look at it, for crying out loud. You had a bunch of muppets running around killing stormtroopers with homemade spears. Awful stuff, truly. Therefore, the goal here is to build up to a flaming climax. We want to make sure that this grand finale doesn’t follow the sad tradition of third-part flops. Everybody should walk away from this month’s article feeling like they could sit down at their computer and design a training program that will lead to continual progress, consistent strength development, injury-free training and new personal records.

Setting up a weekly training program presents you with some interesting demands because, as with all other elements of training, it will depend on the particular situation of the individual you’re working with. What we will attempt to do here is put forward a weekly training plan and also address some ways that it could possibly be adapted or retooled to meet the needs of different athletes. Before we actually take a look at this weekly plan, it benefits us to throw out a few general training ideas that need to be taken into consideration.

Exercise Sequencing

Exercise sequencing, how’s that for fancy terminology? It’s almost like we have Mike Tyson here with us, creating his own vocabulary as he describes how ludicrous it is for his opponents to think they can depenetrate his impregnable defense. Praise be to Allah.

Exercise sequencing simply describes the order of your exercises in a given workout. If one workout is going to contain four exercises, which ones should be performed first and which ones should go last? For example, let’s say an athlete wants to do snatches, back squats, some abdominal/core exercises, and clean pulls in one workout. What order should they follow?

Rule #1

Generally, the exercises that are most dependent on speed should be performed first. The athlete will be freshest and "snappiest" at the beginning of the workout before fatigue has set in from other exercises. Towards the end of a workout, after strenuous work has taken place, the athlete’s explosiveness will be somewhat diminished. Trying to perform speed exercises at this point will not be optimal. In the workout example we’re discussing here, which of the four exercises is most dependent on speed? The answer is obviously snatches. This means that the snatches should be done first.

Rule #2

Exercises that are closely movement-related should be performed in sequence. This means that if an athlete is going to perform snatches at the beginning of a workout, the exercises that immediately follow the snatches should be the ones that are most similar to the snatches. In this workout example, which exercise is the most movement-related to the snatches? The answer is the clean pulls. Although the snatch and the clean are different exercises, the triple extension of the pulling movement is a common factor between the two. After the athlete has finished doing snatches, the pulling movement will be "warmed up," so to speak. Because of this, the clean pulls are a good choice following the snatches because the pulling from the snatches will transfer into the clean pulls. Also, going back to Rule #1, the clean pulls are probably the second highest speed exercise in the workout. The snatches will be the most dependent on speed, and the clean pulls are second in the ranking order.

Rule #3

All of the barbell exercises should be completed before moving on to supplemental work. Having said this, the squats should be done after the clean pulls. After the squats are finished, the bar can be put away and the athlete can perform auxiliary exercises such as core strengthening, plyometrics, grip training, etc. Personally, I like to finish each workout with hanging leg raises, two or three other core exercises such as crunches or planks, and crush gripper training. I also like to stretch for ten minutes after each workout. Post-workout stretching should be a permanent part of your training program. Therefore, the workout should look like this:

1) Snatch
2) Clean Pulls
3) Squats
4) Core/Abdominal work
5) Stretching

Variations:

These rules are effective guides for planning your workouts. However, it must always be stated that adding some occasional variety and changing things up can pay big dividends. For example, I once decided that I was going to experiment with performing my strength work at the beginning of my workouts, followed by my speed lifts. I deliberately wanted to be fatigued from heavy strength lifts (squats) prior to the speed exercises such as snatches or clean and jerks. The idea here was that when I finally got to a competition and performed snatches and clean and jerks without the pre-fatigue from squats, my explosiveness would be greater. In other words, the bar would feel lighter on meet day. I trained like this for around six weeks and then went to a meet. Did it work? I don’t think I noticed a big physical change, either positive or negative. I basically felt the same on meet day as I usually had in other meets. But it was fun to train differently for a while. I once snatched 140 kilos (around 90% of my max) immediately after back squatting 250x5, and I think there was a mental benefit from this because I basically started believing that I could snatch 90% anytime, anywhere, regardless of anything.

OFF DAYS!!!

You might decide that you want to train seven days a week. I wouldn’t, but you can if you want to. If you choose to go this route, you won’t need to worry about off days because you won’t have any (until you enter the hospital).

But for those of you who are trying to decide how many days a week to train and which days you should take off, here are a few thoughts. First of all, you have to ask the question, "How many days a week should I train?" If you talk to ten different coaches about this, you’ll probably get ten different answers. I’ve known elite lifters who train six days a week, and I’ve known elite lifters who train three days a week. There is no rule set in stone that applies to everybody. When I was doing the best lifting of my career, I trained five days a week. After a few years of this, I changed to four days a week and guess what? I continued to do the best lifting of my career and even made some solid improvements.

As we have said repeatedly in our series, things are dependent on your personal schedule. Your job might completely dictate how many days a week you can train. If you have a job that only allows you to get to the gym three days a week, then you will have to set up a three-day-per-week program. Nothing complicated there. But it you’re in the fortunate position of having as much time as you need to train, then the questions really begin. Selecting which days are going to be your off days is a strategic move. Logically, it makes sense that you will want to take your off days when you will need them the most. How can we accurately gauge when that will be?

Sundays

I’ve taken Sundays off throughout my entire career, and I think most lifters do as well. Some people have religious obligations that prohibit them from training on Sundays. Some people believe that weightlifting is their religion. Regardless, Sunday is generally a good off day because it freshens up the athlete for the coming week. There’s a sense of completion that accompanies Sundays. A feeling tends to come over people that tells them their work for the week is done and it’s time to relax, mentally unwind, and enjoy the day before the grind starts again on Monday. This is probably why NFL games are televised on Sundays. They practically force America to the couch. One of the best lifters I’ve ever trained with told me, "If you’re a lifter, Sundays are for laying down, eating, and napping." Truer words have never been spoken.

Between D-Day and Armageddon

There should always be a day off between two workouts that are extremely demanding. One way of approaching this is to arrange your most difficult workouts around an off day. For example, you could plan an off day on a Wednesday if you know that you’re really going to be hitting it hard on Tuesday and Thursday. If you’re planning to take Sundays off, as we mentioned earlier, then it makes sense that Saturday and Monday would be big workouts. The overall thought here is that there has to be a structure to your training week. Off days should not be random. If you have a job situation where you know that you won’t be able to train on Saturdays and Sundays, then your Friday and Monday workouts should be the ones where you plan to get the most intense work accomplished.

Finally, an example...

Now, with all those theories and rules lying on the table, let’s just quit beating around the bush and put one week of training down on paper. Here it is:

Monday
- Cleans
- Clean Pulls
- Back Squats
- Straight-Legged Deadlifts
- Abs

Tuesday
- Rack Jerks
- Power Cleans
- Standing Military Press
- Abs

Wednesday
- Snatches
- Snatch Pulls
- Abs

Thursday
- Clean and Jerks
- Clean Pulls
- Stop Squats
- Straight-Legged Deadlifts
- Abs

Saturday
- Snatches
- Snatch Pulls
- Front Squats
- Abs

I didn’t list stretching in any of these workouts, but it should be included in all of them. There you go. Now, let’s take a look at some reasons for why this week looks the way it does.

- Thursday and Saturday are big workouts, hence the day off on Friday. Plus, the athlete will be training four days in a row throughout the week (Mon-Thurs), so he/she will be ready for a day off by Friday. Sunday is a day off for the reasons already mentioned.

- Three squat workouts per week is a good plan for a competitive Olympic lifter. Some coaches actually have their athletes squat four or five times per week, with more moderate weights. I personally have found that doing three squat workouts per week and really hitting those workouts hard will be most effective.

- Doing rack jerks on a day that follows a squat workout is part of the design. The legs will be fatigued the day after squats. Performing rack jerks when the legs are fatigued simulates how the athlete will feel during a heavy competition clean and jerk, where the legs will be fatigued after standing up with the heavy clean. If the athlete can adapt and learn to use the legs in the jerk effectively on Tuesday after the tough Monday squat workout, there will be a benefit in the full clean and jerk.

- Following the competition lifts with a pulling exercise is a good way to strengthen the movement. In other words, always do clean pulls after cleans. Always do snatch pulls after snatches, etc.

- Straight-Legged Deadlifts are designed to strengthen the lower back, stretch the hamstrings, and prevent injury. This exercise does not need to be performed with enormous weights. It is performed with a barbell, but it should be viewed as an auxiliary exercise.

Adaptations

- This program is specifically designed for athletes who are completely concentrating on Olympic Weightlifting. If the athlete is planning to incorporate other athletic endeavors into their training, such as running or mountain biking, then the program would need to be restructured. The intensity and workload of this program will not leave much energy left for additional pursuits.

- Age issues must be considered. I would not have a thirty year-old athlete train five days a week in this manner. If a thirty year-old wanted to train five days a week, the intensity of the workouts would need to be reduced. I’ve trained at twenty years old and I’ve trained at thirty years old. The simple fact is that the body just doesn’t recover as quickly as the years pass by.

- In this particular training week, the two competition lifts (snatch/clean and jerk) are not trained on the same day. This is simply a basic look at how to build a training week. For a competitive weightlifter, it is important to train the competition lifts together on the same day to simulate actual meet conditions. This training week would need to be organized a bit differently to accommodate that principle.

There are a few other things I would like to add about this program, along with program design in general. First of all, the five-day training week I outlined in this article looks very simple. There aren’t any magic exercises in there. In fact, some people might take a look at it and think that it doesn’t look like enough work to make big progress. I’ve shown this training week to several lifters over the years and had them give me the same response, "Wow, this doesn’t look very hard."

Okay... When I moved to Washington in 1993 to train with the Calpian Weightlifting Club, I began using the exact same five-day plan I described in this article. It was very different from how I had trained in the past, but I had been stuck at the same weights for over a year and I needed a change. I came to Washington in January and had a best competition total of 265 kilos in the 99 kilo class. After eleven months of training this way every week, I totaled 300 kilos at the same bodyweight. Now, it’s important to understand that I was pushing myself extremely hard within this framework, as were all the lifters in our club. Our coach had our daily workout weights planned out throughout our entire program, but we were not hesitant about deviating from the plan and loading up personal records on the bar if the time was right to go for it (remember last month’s article?). It was a sensible, organized approach that also encouraged aggressiveness and breaking new ground. All of the information from this article, along with the preceding two articles in this series, give you a solid idea of how I’ve trained throughout my career and how I’ve trained other athletes.

And because of our thousand-ways-to-skin-a-cat understanding, it’s important to acknowledge that this isn’t the only way to train successfully. Can you go from 265 to 300 in one year training differently than how I’ve discussed? Absolutely. Weightlifting coaches sometimes make the same mistake as some religious leaders; they basically say, "Only I am right, everyone else is wrong." The point that I hope we all understand is that there are certain commonalities that make for smart training, even if the daily routines are dissimilar. Despite individual differences in workout frequency, loading progression and exercise selection, every coach will have to use some good old-fashioned horse sense when it comes to program design. "Horse sense," for those of you who weren’t lucky enough to grow up in the boondocks, is a term that refers to sound practical judgment. Sound practical judgment, along with a fantastic work ethic, unrelenting commitment, and high pain tolerance will usually make you a better athlete, coach, spouse, parent, professional, or Jedi Knight. So file down your calluses and get to work, and may the force be with you.