HIIT Block:
Five rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
25 GHD Sit-ups
25 Hip Extensions
Strength Block:
back squat 10-3-10-2-10-1
press 10-3-10-2-10-1
This is ‘wave loading’, and requires your body to switch between metabolic stimulation and nervous stimulation.
The sets of 10 should not be easy sets; they should be taxing (10 reps is very hard, 12 reps would be impossible). You should have a longer rest before the low-rep sets (up to 2 minutes) and they should also be very hard. But one will only influence your performance on the other a little bit. High-rep activities are usually limited by your metabolism (how quickly you can feed the muscle and how quickly you can remove waste). Low-rep activities are usually limited by your mervous system (how quickly you can recruit force at near-maximal speed.)
Sometimes, people refer to ‘slow twitch’ and ‘fast twitch’ muscle fibres. The truth is that when you start to lift a load, you begin by recruiting slow-twitch muscle fibres. Always. If the slow-twitch fibres aren’t strong enough to move it, you recruit faster-twitch fibres. But the slow-twitch fibres are always turned on first; you can’t bypass them.
A heavier load will require more total recruitment, and if you’re good at lifting (and you’re fast), you can recruit more fast-twitch muscles faster.
So while the slower-twitch Type 1 fibres will be used in the heavier lifts, they will call their buddies for help pretty quickly. They’ll fatigue on the higher-rep sets, but the better you are as a lifter, the less the high-rep sets will affect your heavier, low-rep sets.
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