2011 Recap

2011 was the most successful training year I've had since college.  I attribute most of the positive things to starting up this blog in June.  I don't even know what I did for training the first half of the year. Haha.  I hit two solid PR's towards the end of the year.  Most importantly, I learned a lot about how I react to new types of training stimulus.  Some things I learned:

• I react well to high frequency in bench and deadlift.
• I can bench with low intensity everyday. Medium intensity every third day.  Very high intensity every fourth day.
• I've developed a high work capacity over the years.  I can and should do something physical 5-6 days a week.
• Mobility work (soft tisssue, stretching, dynamic movements, etc) needs to be done on a daily basis to keep improving.
• Strength ladders are a great tool that I should used in planned training blocks.
• Kettlebells are great for recovery, conditioning, and generally make my joints and body feel awesome.
• I cannot recover from 2x a week high volume squats and 1x a week med/high intensity deadlifts.
• I don't think I can pull full heavy reps on a weekly basis and progress on the squat.
• Only benching, doing chins and dips 5x a week will fuck my shoulders. (Imagine that haha).
• The standing Overhead Press is fucking awesome.
• At least 2+ weeks away from the barbell every few months allows me to progress more quickly.  I'm pretty sure I'll take at least 3 weeks totally off from strength training every August.
• I need a minimum of 4 weeks to sufficiently overreach. Another week to deload and/or intensify.  Maybe another week to realize. Then maybe another back off week after that.  At a minimum my training blocks must be 6 weeks.  8 weeks is more realistic if I'm trying to progress in more than one lift.  2 weeks of a back off are likely needed when training for 6-8 weeks straight without any reprise.

Overall, I'm pleased with 2011.  The list above list of "things I know" is pretty specific.   Thats ok. I just need to keep setting up training plans where I walk away and know something.  Whether what I know means something works or doesn't work makes no difference.  They are both useful.  I'm at a point where I operate in a training fog.  I can clearly see some things right in front of me, but I don't know enough to navigate in a straight line from point A to point B.  Only time and experience lifts the fog.