The January Blitz Is On!!

It's a new year and the perfect time for a blitz while we have some time between public holidays.

I've had this planned for a while now but I wasn't sure if I was going to do it but the time seems to be perfect so here we are.

The blitz involves training a specific training quality multiple days in a row at high intensity, high load and high velocity.

As we are training everyday and the focus is on high quality work, we have a set drop off point that once we reach, we stop that phase, have 1 day off and start the next phase

We started phase 1 on Tuesday which was strength. For this we used only 2 exercises: bench press and trap bar deadlifts.

For each day we worked up to a 1 rep max for each exercise and then we decreased the weight to 94% of that 1 rep max and continued with single rep sets until we reached 10 or failure, whichever came first.

So here's what my phase 1 looked like:

Phase 1; Strength

Tuesday
Bench Press 1 Rep Max - 100kgs
94% Singles - 94kgs x 10

Trap Bar Deadlifts 1 Rep Max - 152.5kgs
94% Singles - 143 x 3 (hands were torn apart!! we did a lot of warm up sets not really knowing where we would finish which took it's toll on my tiny hands)

Wednesday

Bench Press 1 Rep Max - 95kgs (could have maybe gone higher but I had no spotter today so played it safe rather then get pinned to the bench all on my own!!)
94% Singles - 89kgs x 10

Trap Bar Deadlifts 1 Rep Max - 145kgs
94% Singles - 136 x 10 (put some thin wraps on the grip handles and battled through the pain barrier - hands still the limiting factor though...back, glutes and legs felt good though)

Thursday

Bench Press 1 Rep Max - 92.5kgs
94% Singles - 87kgs x 10

Trap Bar Deadlifts 1 Rep Max - 140kgs
94% Singles - 132 x 10 (we tried some clusters with this today so I did 3 x 1 with about 30 - 45secs between each set, then Lachy went, then I went etc to try and give the hands a bit more rest...worked alright but the damage was already done)

We finished up this phase after 3 days.

If we went the double wrap like we did Thursday then we might have been able to go another day with this but my hands were done.

Our drop off point was when our 1 rep max was 90 - 95% of Tuesday's 1 rep max which for me was 137kgs so my quality would have more then likely dropped further on the 4th day, possibly below 90%, which I didn't want.

We only used the drop off point on the 1 rep max, not the singles. They were just there for extra volume and nervous system purposes.

Phase 2 starts tomorrow where we are training force absorption and I'll give a rundown of that phase once it's completed.