Alright, here's something else that's been bugging me: I look at most of the routines on this site and follow them closely, and I've noticed on several (especially Big Mike's) that a program will call for a specific stress and intensity, yet during that specified week, each day's workout will not necessarily fit into that definition. For example, one week calls for medium intesnity, and during the week, Monday will be 75-80%, Tuesday will be 80-90%, Wed same as tuesday, and Friday will return to the same percents as Monday. Now, how does that work? Is the overall intensity/stress for the week an average of each day all together? If so, how do you calculate that?
As an addendum to this: when using the prescribed stress/volume/intensity chart - what are acceptable ranges for stress programming? I guess what I mean, is what combinations should be watched so as to reduce injury? (i.e. is four weeks at medium stress too much? 4 weeks at high? what do we need to watch for?)
-- Edited by Corey on Friday 29th of May 2009 08:18:53 PM
Yes, the overall intensity for the week is a sort of average intensity for the week. It can be made up many different ways and the right way will depend on your particular training objective at that time of your macro cycle.
How it works (as best as I can describe for right now):
You program your intensities as Low/Medium/High, etc. Those would each correspond to an intensity range. Low would be 68-72% or whatever. Youd determine these ranges by analyzing your training log. I dont have an absolute fixed process for this yet, but if you look at your logs and determine what your averages were for varied intensities of training, how you respond to it, etc, you should come up with some appropriate ranges. Then next thing you would do is look at your log and find a generic correlation between a protocol and an average intensity. For example, if I do 70-80% work, my average intensity tends to be 76%. This also applies to supplemental work. Then, you do some simple math to find some protocols that fit into your overall intensity for the week. This is highly dependent on your training log for customization.
Another thing to remember, this is a polishing step. I wouldnt worry about this sort of thing until youre comfortable with the rest of the programming basics.
