SESSION NOTES: Relative Stamina (580)
With a partner, tag in and out as required. Complete 3, 2, 1 minutes of each exercise for max reps. Take an additional 30 seconds for each transition: Strict chest to bar pull-ups (25% max), strict bar dips (25% max), muscle-ups (if you don’t have MU, skip this movement).
Programming Science:
This session contains an upper body pull based movement (the strict chest to bar pull-up) and an upper body press based movement the dip. The muscle-up combined the two in a more technically demanding movement that is tested in a pre-fatigued state.
The high level of load in this session (with the pull-ups and dips being strict) biases the session slightly away from the pure stamina requirements of some higher rep Relative Stamina sessions, and more in the direction of strength (albeit it for higher reps).
Health and Body Composition Benefits:
This session is a form of resistance training that provides a stimulus with lighter loads and higher volume than a Relative Strength session, though heavier than some other Relative Stamina sessions. While the high levels of fatigue in this session makes it less effective to increase strength and power, it will improve your stamina – the ability of your muscles to resist fatigue.
Often, higher repetition movements are neglected for the upper body (while walking/cycling etc are included for the lower body), but by including these higher repetition upper body movements, we’re helping to develop blood vessels in the upper body which will help reduce cardiovascular risk factors.
High repetition resistance training like this will also improve your flexibility (by going through a full range of motion), posture and coordination. It will also build stability around your joints and spine to give you a healthy musculo-skeletal system and reduce joint and back pain. These movements will also help develop tendon strength.
As a result of this style of session, you will experience changes in blood chemistry, including favourable effects on cholesterol, blood glucose, triglyceride and lipid levels.
In terms of body composition, higher repetition, lower load movements are an important part of an exercise program for increasing lean muscle. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, so increasing it will maximise how much energy your body burns at rest. This makes it an effective session to reach healthy levels of body fat, both visceral fat (around the organs) and subcutaneous fat (under your skin). After this session, your body will go through a prolonged state of ‘EPOC’ (excess post- exercise oxygen consumption), meaning you’ll continue burning energy long after you finish training – further aiding healthy body composition.
Performance Benefits:
The high repetition movements in this session train the ability of your muscles to resist fatigue – increasing their stamina. This comes from improvements in the efficiency of slow twitch (fatigue resistant) muscle fibres.
As a result of the volume of repetitions, this session will increase the mitochondrial density in your muscle cells, allowing them to more efficiently convert energy into fuel. This means you can sustain higher rates of muscle contraction before fatigue or failure.
The higher volumes will also increase capillary density in your muscles, allowing for efficient delivery of oxygen and fuel, and removal of waste products (further adding to the fatigue resistance).
Strategy:
The aim should be to make this session as ‘aerobic’ as possible, which is achieved by completing short sets with short breaks. Large sets require a lot of recovery time, whereas shorter sets will keep you away from failure and maximise the total volume of work.
Your aim should be to complete more than two thirds of the reps you achieved in three minutes in the two minute set, and more than one third in the one minute set.
How it Should Feel:
The limiting factors here should be both localised muscular endurance and muscular strength (under fatigue). Towards the end of each round, you should feel like you’re completing a one rep max.
Scaling Guidelines:
If you’re not able to do muscle-ups, scale the load (using some form of assistance). If scaling the pull-ups and dips, ensure you’re not overscaling so you don’t lose the strength benefits.
If you need to add weight to the session to get the strength benefits, do so.
Modify around injuries with exercises as close as possible to the stimulus of the movement you’re modifying.
Common Mistakes:
Completing a large set initially will reduce the overall volume you can achieve.
