SESSION NOTES: Relative Stamina (486)
Complete 20 bar muscle-ups (5 minute cap, if you can’t do them skip the muscle-ups), then: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 reps of the remaining two movements.
Programming Science:
This session contains one upper body push based movement, one upper body pull based movement and one pull and push based movement.
This session has been designed to allow for very high work output throughout. The five minute cap on the muscle-ups, and the relatively low reps on the other two movements, ensures the time domain is kept low – improving the ability to sustain muscle contractions at a high cycle rate. The indication to complete the muscle-ups only if able, will ensure that the intensity stays high, and that individuals with high skill levels are well tested.
The descending nature of the second two movements is also designed to keep intensity high. As fatigue sets in, the sets get smaller, meaning the work rate can once again stay high.
The push movements and the pull movements alternate, which has two effects. Firstly, there is some degree of recovery between movements of a similar type to maximise volume. Secondly, there is a ‘blood shunting’ effect, where your body is required to deliver oxygen and fuel, and remove waste, from large and alternating muscle beds.
This blood shunting means there will be a cardiorespiratory benefit, and you will have the added challenge of training with high levels of hydrogen ions (the acid feeling you get from high intensity exercise) in your system, and not just under localised muscular fatigue.
Health and Body Composition Benefits:
This session is a form of resistance training that provides a stimulus with lighter loads and higher volume than an absolute strength or power based session. 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.
Although this session is not designed with cardiovascular training as its priority, the higher repetitions do mean there is a crossover to cardiovascular benefits. These include improved cardiovascular endurance, respiratory function and cardiac health.
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. Whereas larger sets of movements would result in the need to pace this session at a lower intensity, the descending sets allow high intensity.
The fatigue resistance 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).
Although this session is not designed with cardiovascular training as its priority, the ‘blood shunting’ effect does mean there is a crossover to cardiovascular benefits. These include improved cardiovascular endurance, respiratory function, intramuscular substrate storage (increasing energy availability for muscle contractions) and increased enzyme activities (increasing the rate of energy delivery to the muscles).
Strategy:
The muscle-ups should be performed as fast as possible. Unless they can easily be completed unbroken, small sets with very short rests are preferred.
The descending reps of the remaining two movements should be completed fast and unbroken, with minimal rests.
How it Should Feel:
Although this session will get cardiovascular, the limiting factor here should be localised muscular endurance, meaning the muscles will be burning and it will be difficult to complete reps towards the end of each set. The descending reps should allow you to remain unbroken in spite of this fatigue.
Scaling Guidelines:
The intent of this session is to achieve very fast, repeated muscle contractions so scale as required to achieve this. Scale the load (with some form of assistance) so sets are unbroken (or very close to being unbroken) rather than the range of motion.
Modify around injuries with exercises as close as possible to the stimulus of the movement you’re modifying.
Common Mistakes:
Underscaling. Ensure that you move fast throughout, with fast, unbroken sets and fast transitions.
