Impulse Strength & Fitness

White Paper

Strength Training with

High Frequency
Maximise strength, lean muscle mass, and general fitness by
challenging the common wisdom in modern strength training

by Matthew Perryman, CSCS

July 2010
White Paper: Strength Training with High Frequency Impulse Strength & Fitness

Abstract
In modern strength & conditioning circles, the principles of training stress and recovery are
often taken as axiomatic, born out by both academic research and practical experience. That
said, we have precious little formal knowledge regarding how to maximize training variables,
and limited information on the body's recuperative powers. Most of what we take for granted
as fact is extrapolation and speculation. In this white paper I wish to discuss the common
assumptions regarding training stress and recovery, explore reasonable criticisms of those
assumptions, and to lay out a programming strategy that can take advantage of a modified
understanding of these factors.

What We (Think We) Know

Strength athletes rely on common styles, modes, and methods of training. For these
purposes, anyone who relies on weight training to develop strength as a primary goal will be
considered a strength athlete. This includes powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters, throwers,
shotputters, strongmen, & bodybuilders.

Modern strength programs derive from a handful of shared sources, namely a handful of
books that detail Soviet-era knowledge and practice; trends in Western strength training
that developed in the 20th century; and contemporary re-interpretations that have emerged
from the combination of the first two sources.

Very little is derived from current sport and exercise science in terms of practical application.
Professional organizations issue routinely issue position statements on the subjects of
programming and periodization, and while research is ongoing, those stances inevitably
default to the three sources listed above.

There is very little new in the practical side of strength training.

From a scientific standpoint, contemporary research serves largely to illuminate the

physiological basis for existing training practices. It is descriptive, with only weak practical
application beyond confirming why many accepted practices are effective.

Periodization and related methods of programming are among these practices. While various
methods of organizing training and designing workouts have been in use for decades, there
is surprisingly little research support for these methods, and for the physiological
mechanisms of adaptation that periodization models exploit.

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In particular, I'm speaking of the body's responses to exercise-induced stress, which includes
both positive (or fitness) gains and negative (or fatigue) effects.

Modern understanding of stress and adaptation originates with Hans Selye's General
Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) model. The GAS model is a black-box model that serves as an
abstraction of the actual process. It only defines what happens in a general sense; it does
not lay out hard, defined limits.

In particular, we cannot say what would concretely define positive adaptive stress, nor what
would encompass a truly exhaustive stress level. Even contemporary research into central
fatigue has yet to provide those answers.

This is exacerbated by the paucity of research into strength athletes, and in particular high-
performing strength athletes. The bulk of exercise science deals with endurance athletes.
What little does examine resistance exercise is almost always performed in untrained or
recreationally-trained individuals.

Ironically, one thing we do know is that a highly-trained strength athlete will demonstrate
entirely different physiological and psychological responses as compared to an untrained or
novice-level athlete. This makes it difficult to generalize from that research to high-
performing strength athletes, and casts doubt on such speculation. We shouldn't dismiss the
research, but filtering it through the lens of practicality means the bulk of it has only limited
utility.

In particular it is the assertion that the human body can only 'tolerate' a fixed amount of
resistance exercise in a strength program that I wish to call into question. Strength athletes
are commonly told they must respect hard limits on workout frequency, and to a lesser
extent on daily volume in a single session, if they wish to avoid staleness and overtraining.

While there is a rationale for this, limits on weekly frequency and tonnage are quite possibly
a bottleneck in modern strength programming. Intensity is, rightly, considered the primary
variable that drives adaptation, while workout frequency and volume are limited if not
intentionally minimized. Yet we recognize that some progression in workload must occur in
order to facilitate long-term progress in intensity (or training weights). Despite this we're
told that volume must be carefully controlled and frequency should never exceed two or
three workouts per week.

There are considerable gaps and unknowns in the knowledge base that make it impossible to
make any such conclusive statements. The contradition between the need to drive
adaptation with progressive stimulus and the prescription to limit or minimize workloads is
worth further discussion. In particular, the assumption that one cannot or should not
increase workloads, versus the idea that one may be able to gradually and incrementally
increase these variables within certain ranges, that I wish to discuss.

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The Case for Daily Training

In contrast to orthodoxy, which places limits on the weekly volume of strength training, the
practices of strength athletes past and present seem to follow a different trend.

In these groups there is an assumed trend towards progressively heavier weights and higher
intensity. There is also a trend towards higher weekly volume (calculated as tonnage, the
pounds or kilograms lifted per week) which is inevitable as one gets stronger, unless specific
steps are taken to reduce the amount of volume.

In some cases this increase in volume results from higher training frequency. Weekly
tonnage may or may not increase as a function of the number of workouts; that is, a lifter
may increase his weekly volume by doing more work in a fixed number of sessions, or he
may add more total sessions.

While it may appear at first glance that there are a variety of programing strategies and
training methods in use between different strength athletes, this is deceptive. If you zoom
out and look at the broad strokes as opposed to focusing on the details, the picture becomes
far more clear and certain common themes emerge.

In spite of the name, daily training does not imply lifting each and every single day. A better
name might be frequency-oriented training or progressive tonnage training. Regardless of
the name, the methodology discussed here implies weight training at least five days a week
with at least three sessions for any given exercise.

The first evidence in support of the idea can be traced as far back as you care to look in the
history of strength sports. A glance at the routines attributed to 'Golden Age' strength
athletes, extending from the late 19th century and up to perhaps the 1960s or 1970s, provides
much insight. The current trend towards more minimalist strength workouts is a modern
invention. Many lifters from this era used frequent and high-volume programs, often
training five, six, or even seven days a week with workouts that would be considered
excessive now. And yet, they worked – even in situations before anabolic steroids entered
the picture.

Yes, we can attribute some of this to genetic aptitudes and, in some instances, to anabolic
steroids. Genetics undoubtedly play a role when talking about wonders such as Paul
Anderson, Doug Hepburn, or Bob Peoples. Lifters from the 1960s on to the present will
always have the specter of anabolics handing over them regardless of how much (or how
little) drugs contributed to their success.

Even so, this is this not sufficient to dismiss the concept out of hand. We can write off some
absolute results as a consequence of drug use. What we cannot do is dismiss a relative

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effect for any given person. That is to say, you can still take something away from the theme
even if the exact workouts may not be compatible.

A handful stick out from the 'Golden Age' physical culturists and have helped shaped my
viewpoint over the years. Bob Peoples, Paul Anderson, Doug Hepburn, Anthony Ditillo, and
Bill Starr all stand out as accomplished lifters that have also contributed to the body of
practical knowledge. The commonalities between their ideas on training are greater than the
differences, with an emphasis on frequent, heavy training which was adjusted or varied
regularly.

When contrasted with the modern trend towards “functional exercise ” and the dominance
of the barbell, it may be a surprise to realize that many powerlifters trained with machines
and so-called isolation exercises even into the 1990s. With the rise of internet communities
and the popularity of Westside Barbell's training methodology, this changed dramatically.
Nevertheless, successful powerlifting routines from the beginning of the sport in the 1960s
on int the 1990s resembled “bodybuilding” workouts. Powerlifters going back to Pat Casey,
Don Reinhoudt, Ted Arcidi, Larry Pacifico, John Kuc, Vince Anello, Kirk Karwoski, Ricky Dale
Crain, Lee Moran, Doug Young, Bill Kazmaier, and the great Ed Coan all made use of routines
that look more like muscle-group split workouts than anything considered a powerlifting
workout today.

Boris Sheiko, coach of the Russian national powerlifting team, has become a popular figure in
recent years. Sheiko's programming is heavily influenced by older Russian sports science,
and this is clear in his model. The basic routine is a four-week training cycle which is waved
in a heavy, medium, maximum, light fashion. Instead of relying purely on training intensity,
the majority of his cycles emphasize volume and use only moderate percentages in the 60-
80% range. This is exemplary of the Russian style of training, in contrast to more popular
Western methods which tend to push “intensity”.

The common theme between these powerlifting schools of thought, whether Sheiko's style of
wave-loading volume with low reps or the older linear-style bodybuilding-influenced
training, is that you do more work and spend less time trying to max out.

There is an ongoing research project undertaken in Sweden that examines a comparison

between low-frequency and high-frequency training in competitive powerlifters. The
Frekvensprosjektet (Frequency Project) compared 27 lifters in two groups: one trained three
times a week, the other trained six. Volume was equal between the two groups. The final
study hasn't been published yet, but preliminaries suggest that the six-day group blew it out
of the water. Once this is reviewed and published, it will be a powerful case in support of this
concept.

For those of you interested in bodybuilding, an equally strong case can be made. Classical
bodybuilders tended to train more in the fashion of Hepburn and Ditillo, frequently with
heavy weights. Even in the Weider era, greats such as Dave Draper, Franco Columbu and

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Arnold himself would variously train with the high-volume bodybuilding routines they
popularized, along with occasional use of strength-focused powerlifting routines.

Bryan Haycock, who has been ahead of the curve regarding workout frequency, has held
similar thoughts on high-frequency workouts. His Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST)
system starts out with three full-body workouts each week, and as the individual
progressively adapts it can incorporate more weekly workouts.

Athletes in mixed-quality sports, which require a blend of strength, endurance, and specific
skills, quite commonly train 5-6 days a week for at least an hour or two each day, often more
than this. Manual laborers may be involved in strenuous work for 8-12 hours a day, forty or
more hours a week, and they adapt to it. Research has indicated that these individuals show
no biomarkers of excessive stress after accommodating to the schedule.

The list could continue for many pages, full of examples of athletes that do more training
than is thought to be practical or useful. And yet it continues to work.

In a broader scope, it makes little sense that our bodies would require 48-72 hours of intense
recuperation from a bout of maximal exercise. It would make far more sense that the body
could adapt even to these extremes of frequency if given the opportunity. It would be an
uncomfortable process, in the same way that a person's first weight workout is
uncomfortable; yet we don't suggest that beginners stop lifting weights because they are
sore the next day.

Current science has little to say on that. Contemporary thinking holds that our limits on
volume result from hard physiological limits; the actual practices of strength athletes
indicates otherwise.

Instead I think that strength athletes seeking maximum performance should focus on
gradual, progressive adaptation to higher tonnage along with an emphasis on increased
training weights, and that this higher tonnage should come at least in part from a higher
number of workouts. Greater training loads, and the adaptation to those increased loads, will
result in greater strength adaptations over the long run.

Discussion
If this method works so well, then why do so few people do it, and why does the mainstream
knowledge say otherwise?

The lifestyles of most people now aren't compatible with high-volume training methods.
Most people don't want to be in the gym that much, and will be quite content with goals that
can be achieved with far less time and effort.

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Strength & conditioning circles rarely tend to think outside the constraints of common
knowledge. The majority of strength coaching professionals and trainers simply follow the
common knowledge rather than tinkering. There is some wisdom to this. For many non-
strength sports, there is little rationale to maximizing strength in 'gym exercises' at the
expense of other more important goals. For those working with the average fitness-seeking
client and even beginners interested in strength sports, there is little rationale for overly
complex training.

Indeed, the extremes of volume and frequency have little if any place in the programs of
beginning and intermediate lifters. Weight training 3-4 days a week is easily sufficient for
even competitive strength athletes.

Bill Starr once wrote that strength athletes must use gradual, incremental increases in
workload over months and years. Starr likened this to widening the base of a pyramid – from
a wider base, you can eventually build a higher peak. If you are content with the peak you can
reach from standard programming, then there is little reason to push for more.

A quote from Dr. VM Zatsiorsky has always stuck with me:

“Train as heavy as possible, as often as possible, while staying as fresh as possible. ”

Fresh, in this context, is the opposite of stale. Russian sports science considered staleness to
be equivalent to the current concept of overreaching or plateauing brought about by
excessive exercise. Zatsiorsky's idea is that you should train hard and often, but this is
limited by your ability to recover. If you could tolerate higher frequency, you'd be able to train
heavy more often while remaining fresh.

Our notions of fatigue and preparedness are founded in solid concepts, but are severely
lacking in specifics. The reality is that you as an individual can't know what will happen
without doing it and observing the results.

We are led to the idea that the body's ability to adapt will, itself, adapt. By training the body
to the point of exhaustion and providing time to recover, you will stimulate that process. The
base continually widens, you can train harder and more often. High-frequency training
models are doing exactly that: they condition the body to handle repeated bouts of strength
exercise, and in turn the body can benefit from doing more high-quality training.

Another criticism often raised is why one would need to continually add more volume and
more workouts when orthodox programs will work just fine. There is truth to this as well. I
would submit that a lifter would have little reason to explore this approach until progress
has been exhausted using more conservative programming. The cycling of intensity can carry
a person a very long way, but there are limits.

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Sooner or later, the lifter will have to widen the base and start thinking over the long-term to
maximize the peak. That's where progressive frequency and tonnage will enter the picture.

Various performance-enhancing drugs, primarily anabolic steroids, are often cited as the
number one reason that the high-frequency progressive-tonnage method of training would
be ineffective in drug-free lifters.

While it is almost certainly true that lifters at the top are using chemical assistance to some
degree, this is not so simple a conclusion to draw. We must compare the programming of
top-level competitors to the relatively mild programs that would be recommended to
recreational and presumably drug-free lifters in order to see why this may not be the case.

The Bulgarian weightlifting team was reputed to have trained for upwards of eight hours a
day, broken up into half-hour modules focusing on a specific lift. The Chinese lifters allegedly
lift in a similar fashion. Contrast this to the suggestion that you should train an hour a day, 5,
6 or even 7 days per week. There's excessive, and then there's excessive. This is a matter of
context.

Further, when you consider that the progress towards these extremes is made over months
and years, rather than taking an entirely unaccustomed lifter and throwing him/her into a
high-volume program, it's much more believable.

I would make the further suggestion that those able to thrive on low-frequency “intensity ”
driven programs are more likely to benefit from AAS use. “Intensity ” focused programs
provide a very large stimulus at one go, and then allow recovery to take place.

The frequency approach does exactly the opposite, building up the entire body and preparing
it for higher output by building a foundation of muscle and improving skill and work capacity.
You get in shape to train. Training to a limit once or twice a week may work briefly, as in the
case of peaking cycles, but is not a sufficient stimulus to improve overall adaptive ability over
long periods of time. In the case of maxing out each week, you need something else to build
the foundation, and that role is served by ergogenic drugs that create the effect without the
training.

Things I've Tried

First, the disclaimer. There are a few caveats I must emphasize. This is not suited for
beginners simply because they lack the body awareness and thus the ability to be honest
about their level of exertion. If you coach beginners, the story is different.

This is not going to be compatible with everyone due to differences in lifestyle and
personality. A casual exerciser will almost certainly find this to be excessive and
unnecessary.

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While a large criticism against this style of training is that many individuals will face too
many lifestyle stressors to allow for it, that need not be the case. Your ability to tolerate and
thrive on this style of training will be an individual decision dependent on how motivated you
are to achieve a particular goal.

This is written for people who are interested in maximizing their strength with little or no
supportive gear. I have nothing against competitive powerlifting, but you may find that what
I suggest here is excessive for those that lift with equipment on a regular basis. This is
oriented towards the development of unequipped and, for lack of a better term, more athletic
strength.

That out of the way – having tried the method myself, I have become convinced that it is not
only effective, but used properly it may be the most flexible way to go about a strength-
training routine.

I started out with a template geared towards hip and low-back strength, oriented around
front squats, good mornings, and several assistance exercises. That was good fun for a few
weeks, but proved to be too much work for the long run. The most basic and probably most
effective template is one that cuts out all the chaff and focuses on the basics, and that's
what I migrated towards. Each workout now consists of a squat, a press, and a pulling
exercise.

There is definitely a benefit to cutting out assistance exercises, even those that may be
important to you. The one exception has been weighted chinups to balance out bench
pressing, and dumbbell rows on days that I don't deadlift. Otherwise sticking to two basic
lifts and one back exercise each day has proven to be the best strategy for frequent lifting.

I've personally found wonderful results by alternating back and front squats, and bench press
with overhead press on a daily basis. Pulling exercises are weighted chinups paired with
bench pressing, for shoulder balance, and varieties of rows and deadlifts paired with
overhead pressing and front squats.

Heavy deadlift workouts have been limited to once a week and the majority of these have
been stiff-leg pulls from a deficit or pulls out of a low pin in the rack, with one heavy workout
from the floor every 2-3 weeks. Adding in a second pulling session of speed deadlifts at 50-
70% or using clean-grip high pulls would be an attractive option for a second deadlifting
workout, although I haven't tried it so far.
Workout A Workout B
Back Squat Front Squat
Bench Press Push Press
Weighted Chinup DB Row or Deadlift*
* Deadlift only trained heavy once per week

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Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Back Squat Front Squat Back Squat Front Squat Back Squat
Bench Press Push Press Bench Press Push Press Bench Press
Deadlift
* Can be sequenced in A/B format, so that the following week would begin with Front
Squats and Push Press on Monday.

How this would compare with doing only back squats and bench press I don't know for sure.
Likewise, it's conceivable that you could alternate many varieties of squats and pressing
throughout the week, such as box squats, good mornings, incline bench press, floor press,
and board presses. Again, I can't comment on how well this would work, although both
options are certainly worth experimentation.

I have been training with the daily max method, working up to a moderately difficult 1RM for
the day and then following up with back-off sets planned from that. Note that the daily max
is not a competition max. I don't use pre-workout stimulants, supportive gear, or any
elaborate psyching-up rituals. The daily max is the weight you can hit after a warmup and
without getting nervous to lift it. This alone minimizes the stress of a session and keeps CNS
fatigue in check.

You definitely have to get in the mindset of leaving reps in the tank and leaving energy in the
gym. Most of the time it's preferable to leave the gym feeling like you didn't do enough. You
should feel the itch to go back and do more – and that's just fine, because you'll be coming
back tomorrow to do it again.

You need some way of knowing how hard you're working and how much you really do have
left in you. The gold-standard of effort-grading is the Rating of Perceived Exertion (or Effort),
abbreviated RPE. The old-time lifters often suggested against 'training on nerve', which is
what we'd now call grinding or training to failure. RPE is just a way of grading this relative
effort; it can be a simple 5-point scale, where 5 is absolute maximum and 1 is sitting on the
couch. It can be the 10-point scale that has been popularized by powerlifter Mike
Tuchscherer in recent years, or you can just write down a description like “really hard ”, “not
sure how I got that rep”, or “way too easy” which is a fall-back I've used for years.

Doing many warmup sets is good for the conditioning effect it provides and for the fact that
they add to daily volume. My rule of thumb is that you should hit at least 8-10 sets on the
way up to the daily max. As your conditioning improves and strength level climbs, you can
add even more. Here's an example of a back squat session:

20 (bar)x8, 60x5, 100x3, 110x2, 120x2, 130x2, 140x2, 150x1, 160x1, 165x1

Back off 20kg – 145 / 3x2

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Most days there will be a trade-off between your top set and your back-off work. Other days,
great days, you may find that you can do well on both. I've found that doubles and triples
seem to work best, and that a 20kg drop from the peak weight is a pretty good place to start.
You might be able to get away with fives, but you'll have to pay attention to recovery.
Personally I think fives are too much.

John Broz has mentioned that his lifters may try to work back up towards a new max after
backing off if the weights start to feel light. This would require exceptional work capacity and
may not be doable more than once or twice a week. So far I haven't found any need (or ability)
to involve that kind of wave-loading, but I would leave it on the table as a possibility. In my
experiments so far, one daily peak is plenty when followed up with the back-off sets.

These variables have to be handled in a very gradual progression. When you first start,
working up to a daily max may be all you need to do. Once you adapt to that, start adding in
minimal back-off work. After that, slowly increase the number of back-off sets. Be
conservative, and realize you'll probably feel bad at each new stage of progression.

I alternate my sets of pressing and squatting. This isn't super-setting, just alternating
between each exercise while resting normally. It allows you to keep the rests shorter and
move through the sets faster. I try to keep the rests between sets to around two minutes at
the most. Ideally you want to rest just long enough to catch your breath and let your heart
rate stabilize before doing the next set. As you get closer to the daily max you can take a
little longer but it should never be longer than 3-5 minutes, and only that if you're trying to
hit a new PR.

While you have the option to hit a PR lift any day of the week you feel up to it, I've found that
leaving aside one day each week to really get after it has worked well. This has been my
Friday workout, which gives me two days to rest after the fact. I still don't go crazy, but I'll
allow a little more psyche-up than normal and maybe an extra hit of caffeine before working
out. This has consistently resulted in a better workout, if not some kind of PR.

You could say that I'm advocating training the powerlifts in the same way that Olympic
weightlifters train. Instead of focusing on the slow, grinding element of a 1RM, train the lifts
in an explosive, smooth, snappy manner. I make that comparison explicitly to counter the
idea that you can't train the powerlifts frequently because they have a larger eccentric phase.
They do if you consistently load them up and force out grinding reps. That doesn't have to be
the case; Olympic lifters squat too.

Watching most of my training videos, I see that my lifts tend to look smooth if not exactly
fast even at maximum attempts. Work that feels maximum to me very rarely looks
maximum on camera.

The immediate counter is that lifters are interested in 1RM attempts, not in being fast and
explosive and springy. That is quite true. It's also true that if you train in a way that gets you

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stronger, then you can spend a few workouts straining against weights. People have done it
for years – it's called peaking. Train the lifts explosively, leave reps in the tank, and strength
will come.

With two injured shoulders, a previous tear in the adductors of my left leg and a more recent
tear in the vastus medialis (tear drop) of my right leg, injuries were foremost on my mind
when I began the experiment. I was surprised that all of these prior injuries actually felt
better with regular training.

Broz has stated that you can expect to feel banged up somewhere almost every day, and I
have found this to be true. The difference is that these are minor annoying pains, as opposed
to full-blown injuries. With my injury history, that's much preferable, and in fact may be one
of the strengths of this kind of training. Everything that I've hurt in the past has come about
due to “intensity” training. Volume training may leave you feeling more beat up and with the
rotating mystery pain, but so far it has injured me far less than the alternatives.

Note that even rest days can be adjusted on the fly too. When it comes to rest and recovery,
the old saw about recovering outside the gym is still accurate. Nothing here has disputed
that. You still need rest and should use rest days as a recovery method in their own right.

Well-designed programs tend to build in rest days and deloading weeks to handle rest. What
most people don't realize is that this suffers from the same drawback as planned weights.
You may be sitting around twiddling your thumbs on a deload week you didn't need, when
you could have gone in and smashed a PR. Planned rest a useful tool, but it can also be seen
as missed opportunities.

Anthony Ditillo was a big fan of training every single day, until you got too beat up – at which
point you'd just take a few days off. When you felt better, you went back to the gym. I use a
modified version of that approach. I am available to train Monday through Friday, and I want
to take the weekends off no matter what. Ideally I get to the gym five days a week. If I feel
bad, I may take off Monday to get three days off. If I have a legitimately bad workout, I take
the next day off.

I use a lot of ibuprofen to control inflammation from frequent exercise. Inflammation

releases cytokines which are thought to be one of the key signals of overtraining and central
fatigue. Ibuprofen blocks the action of cytokines at least to some degree, and thus it may
help to mitigate some of the symptoms of daily training. It seems to help me sleep better,
and I also feel like I have better workouts when I take it the night before. This could be
placebo at work, but it's worth mentioning.

Train until you get beat up, then take time off. When you have a bad workout, take the next
day off and push recovery. Your performance at the gym is the most important thing; you
can feel like crap and still wind up having an awesome workout. Just feeling bad isn't a good
enough reason to stay home.

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To paraphrase Pendlay, how you feel is a lie. Physiological responses, including mood, are
deceptive. The only reliable way we have to measure performance is to show up at the gym
and lift weights.

A legitimately bad workout is when you show up and you just can't turn it on. You don't just
feel bad, your lifting is reflecting it. You're justified in cutting it short and taking the next day
off when that happens.

Autoregulate your rest days and you will miss fewer opportunities to lift at your best – and
you'll be taking rest when your body needs it, instead of when the program says you need it.

So far, this daily adjustable training system has provided results far beyond what I thought it
could, and it has been far less strenuous than I could have ever expected. Part of the benefit
is in challenging accepted wisdom and in the mental toughness that is required to train
through soreness and train when you don't feel like it.

I think that the flexible nature of the programming is the real strength here. On any given
day, every part of your training is entirely dependent on what you can manage at that
moment. Even rest days are determined by your performance.

The drawbacks of most periodized routines can be summarized as trying to shoehorn the
dynamic processes of the human body into a fixed plan. This generally works, but also
constrains you to the program instead of physical readiness. Using the daily adjustable
system lets you train hard when you can and rest when you need it.

Things I Want to Try

The above is a summary of my experiences with the high-frequency daily-adjustable model
of training. While I've tried several permutations, there are other ideas that have occurred to
me which would be worth exploring.

I think it would be interesting to alternate frequent squatting with frequent deadlifting,

although I'm apprehensive about that for several reasons (none of which have to do with fear
of injury or overworking myself). This was Bob Peoples's preferred mode of training, and I
know of one person right now training this way with good results.

Alternating upper body and lower body workouts over a five or six day workout would be fun,
as per Doug Hepburn. Focus on squats and deadlifts, then presses, upper back, and curls on
alternate days. Brian Siders trains this way, using variations of the powerlifts and assistance
work similar to Westside.

I'd also like to try a classic powerlifting/bodybuilding routine as I described earlier, using am
autoregulation system to program the lifts and then following up with bodybuilding-style

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isolation work. Once you've squatted to a max every day, a lot of options open up for you that
might not have seemed so realistic beforehand.

Block periodization would be interesting to explore, alternating between high-volume/high-

frequency phases and low-frequency peaking cycles. The high-frequency method I outlined
above is virtually a textbook example of an accumulation phase. You could also train in
blocks for certain goals, like hypertrophy for specific muscle groups or strength in particular
exercises.

As it stands, the daily adjustable system is handling progress without any specific planning
beforehand – which I consider to be a huge advantage – and I see little reason to change. For
those people that like consistency and predictability in their training, the block periodization
system would be worth consideration.

Acknowledgements
For helping me flesh out the concepts herein, directly or indirectly (and in some cases
without their knowledge) I must give thanks, in no particular order, to the following people:

John Broz for kicking off the whole idea with his philosophy (and amazing lifters); Glenn
Pendlay & Dr. Michael Hartman for the invaluable information from their research and
coaching experience; Drs. Mel Siff, Yuri Verkoshansky, & VM Zatsiorsky for a wealth of
irreplaceable Russian knowledge; a whole slew of lifters including Bob Peoples, Doug
Hepburn, Bill Starr, & Anthony Ditillo; and not least, Borge Fagerli, Michael Novak, Bryan
Haycock, Dan Moore, & Dr. Mathias Wernbom for helping to flesh out and test these ideas,
discuss the pros and cons, and generally figure out what's going on here.

It is very much appreciated.

About Impulse Strength & Fitness

Impulse is a strength & conditioning coaching and consulting business owned and operated
by Matthew Perryman, CSCS. Matthew has been coaching and training for over a decade,
with an intense interest in exercise physiology and practical methods of strength training
and athletic development. He is interested in unorthodox training methods and just about
anything that can make the process of physical development more streamlined and
effective.

Read more at http://www.ampedtraining.com and http://impulsestrength.co.nz

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