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Four-day training programs

This is an excerpt from Strength and Conditioning Coaching by Michael J Boyle.

Training four times a week is the gold standard for training programs in a perfect world. The following chart takes the components discussed in chapter 3 and demonstrates how these quantities fit into a four-day workout.

The tables on the following pages are the key to this entire book. Once you understand the concept, the table is like a “fill in the blank” template for programming workouts.

On days one and three, the focus is on power development through Olympic lifting or some type of weighted or resisted jump. This is the biggest change we’ve made in a decade from a strength and power training perspective. In order to get the amount of lower-body work I now feel is required, we’re forced to move our Olympic movements to what’s primarily an upper-body day.

This is a basic template for a healthy athlete, but not for every athlete. For athletes with injury problems who are unable to Olympic lift, we may substitute trap bar jumps, jump squats or jumps on the MVP shuttle. The important thing is to get some explosive resisted hip and knee extension, not to force everyone to Olympic lift.

Note that Olympic movements aren’t paired with other strength exercises. Exercises with a high neural and technical demand shouldn’t be paired with another physically demanding exercise. The explosive, total-body nature of these exercises isn’t conducive to this. In our setting, we’re using our diagonal patterns and/or rotary stability exercises during the time between explosive sets.

Days two and four of the strength and power program consists of pairs of major multi-joint exercises sometimes complemented by a core exercise or a mobility drill to form a tri-set.

Without using a tri-set concept, it’s difficult to address all the categories that must be included in a program. Although this is a compromise, our structure keeps the workout to approximately an hour. Research indicates that strength workouts longer than that can result in significant cortisol build-up.

Moving explosive lifts to our upper-body day also allows a third pair of exercises to be added to the workouts on days two and four.

The third section of the program varies depending on the specific phase of the program, but it generally includes an overhead or vertical press, a rotary exercise and some type of rehabilitative or specialty work for the hips or shoulders. On days two and four, we may add some type of additional posterior-chain work.

More Excerpts From Strength and Conditioning Coaching

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