Month: February 2022

The Useful Strong Stuff Journal Vol. 35 A Case For Offseasons

Right now I am in an offseason from lifting weights hard.  I find it hard to even call it an offseason because I don’t even have a season to be honest.  I am an adult, I just workout.  Even without an actual season I think an offseason now and then is a good idea.  There are a lot of benefits to having an “offseason” phase to your workouts where you just chill out a bit. 

An offseason is a time to be less strict.  If you are dedicated to your workouts that is a good thing.  Mentally it can be nice though to just have some fun and be less strict.  This lets you do things like move workouts around to go do fun things or focus on work priorities.

The offseason is a good time to try new stuff.  If you are caught up in churning forward towards goals it can make it hard to try new stuff.  If you have a program that is working, why would you change it up to try a new exercise?   You probably won’t want to change what is working.  In the offseason you get a chance to just try new stuff.  If it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t matter.  You might find something that works well and then you can work that back into your base program.  Experimentation is a lot of fun, and the offseason is probably the best time for this kind of thing.

I don’t worry a lot about hitting certain numbers during an offseason period of workouts.  I just relax and take what is there for the day and move on with life.  This is a lot less stressful than trying to do something specific in a workout.  There can be a lot of stress associated with trying to hit a certain number in the gym.  Getting a break from that can be very healthy.

The offseason is a great time to get healthy too.  If you are always pushing hard you are going to start to accumulate nagging injuries.  These might be minor injuries but they start to have an impact over time.  In an offseason you can often rest and let things heal.  This lets you come back to training in a way that you can properly train instead of just dancing around injuries.

Sometimes an offseason in your workouts can also be good just so you can focus on your real life.  The gym is a fun hobby, and good for health.  However it starts to take a bit of energy out of most of us at some times.  It can be good to have an offseason to just focus on other things. 

Thinking about having an offseason is something most of us have to do proactively to some degree.  If you are working out for fitness and not competing in any way there is not really a natural offseason.  All the days, weeks, and months tend to just blur together.  It can be a trap to fall into just moving along at our workouts without much change in intensity for a very long time.  Over the long term adding in offseasons will probably lead to greater results from our workouts.  Changing pace now and then is a good, there is a reason athletes and coaches insist on doing it.

Going one step further there are likely other aspects of our lives that could benefit from an offseason.  A break from social media is kind of an offseason.  A break from big projects can be an offseason.  A break from professional develop can be an offseason and recharge batteries.  Professors have utilized sabbaticals for decades to work on other projects, that is just an offseason from the university.  Your offseasons will be your own, they have a lot to do with your goals and responsibilities.   If you can find space to have an offseason though you might just find yourself revitalized, fresh, and further along than you would otherwise be.  Grinding forever is hard, and there is no reason to do things the hard way if we don’t have to.

Useful Links                                                        

I am constantly on the search for new ways to get stronger, healthier and more awesome.  Here are some of the best things I have found lately.

Strength and Conditioning

Good video on foot pronation in the squat.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01Udfnd84eo

A nice article on the merits of direct oblique training, it is worth consideration because you don’t see a lot of people training obliques with much intention in the gym.  https://www.elitefts.com/culture/coaching-logs/oblique-training/

This training program seems like a rather reasonable approach for people that are burnt out and wanting to back off training for a bit.  https://www.elitefts.com/education/8-week-reset-program-for-the-stressed-lifter/

Mindset

I like this approach to adding in new habits to life.  https://zenhabits.net/perfectionism/

The Old School Back Routine

Author’s Note: This routine was written as part of a conjugate training system, if you are not doing conjugate training that is cool too.  There is an option below of how to make it work as a standalone workout outside any conjugate framework.  If you are not super familiar with that kind of training I recommend reading this page for more information.  Article: How I Do Conjugate Training. 

This is the kind of routine we used to do back in the day.  This really hits the upper back with a lot of work.  Lower back would still be done on your lower body days with this kind of program.  I wanted to bring this program back into the fold so I brought it back with the tweak of doing all this back work after bench press work in a more strength based program.

When To Do It

This is a good program to do if you want to do a lot of volume to bring up your upper back.  The back can take a lot of workload and this program lets you really hammer your back with a lot of it.  This workout would typically be part of your bench press day or for a solo back day.  If its on a solo back day just leave out the pressing main lift.

Main Lift

If you are doing conjugate training follow the conjugate recommendations, otherwise you can bounce down to the non-conjugate recommendations for main exercises.

Conjugate

This workout can be used on either max effort or dynamic effort day for the upper body.  If you are in great shape you could do this as both days if you really want to bring up your upper back.  If you perform it twice a week make sure you are doing enough shoulder, triceps, and chest work in your free time.

Just perform your main lift as you would normally do it.

Non-conjugate

The bench press should be your main movement of the day with this workout.  Use whatever set and rep protocol you like for your bench pressing.

This workout can be done as a solo back day if you want to leave out the main movement.

Supplemental Movement

On this program supplemental movement is left out in favor of just building up the back like crazy.  If you feel like you need more pressing you could do a backoff set or two after your main lift if you’re doing this on max effort day.  You can also do dumbbell presses after your main back work.

Program

Perform a full warm up before starting with the main exercise.

ExerciseSets/reps
Main Lift as you normally do. (Some sort of bench press typically.)Whatever you normally do.
Bent Over Barbell Rows4 sets for 10-12 reps
Pulldowns or Pullups4 sets for 10-12 reps
1 Arm Dumbbell Rows4 sets for 10-12 reps
Close Grip Pulldowns or Close Grip Pullups4 sets for 10-12 reps
Barbell or Dumbbell Shrugs4 sets for 10-12 reps
Free Time Extras – 10 minutes at end. Good Idea to do some abs.Some curls would be good.Some lateral raises would be good.Light facepulls could go here. Lighter DB pressesOther assorted upper body movements are fine.Keep reps above 10.  Don’t do anything too crazy here.

Picking Weights

Pick weights that feel too easy and move up from there in following weeks.  If you cannot do a lot of pullups, just stick with pulldowns.  If you are very good at pullups then by all means do weighted pullups. 

Progression

Add a little weight each week or a few reps to the workouts.  You don’t have to do this across all exercises. 

You can also start adding in a couple extra sets each week.  This means 1 or 2 sets extra for the whole workout, not 2 extra sets per exercise.  The back can take on a lot of work and this works for some people. 

Length

Do this for 3 weeks.  If you like how it is going a second 3 week run would be reasonable.  During a second 3 week cycle feel free to add in intensity methods like strip sets and forced reps.  Use intensity methods sparingly and for only a couple sets.  Beyond six weeks, you can keep trying to run it until the wheels come off if that’s your thing.