#2. Always Leave Something in the Tank After Each Training Set and Session!

Many athletes (if not the majority) head into the gym, and aren’t happy unless they feel that they pushed themselves to their limit that session. Unfortunately, this practice really taps into performance and power gains over time, as well as increasing the risk of injury.

1️⃣An important principle to consider is what some people know as “training drop-offs”.

A “training drop- off” is a percentage of how much your performance degrades over the course of a training session. For example, if I can bench 300lbs max, and lift during a session to the point where I can only manage 270lbs (due to the fatigue of the workout), I have “dropped off” by 10% during my workout (note: this is a lot).
If I can perform a standing vertical jump of 30” and by the end of a workout, can only go 29”,then I dropped off around 3% on that workout. Some sources have advocated dropping off between 4-10% per session and then resting by 3 to 7 days after each workout before repeating that movement. Although this idea can be useful when an athlete has tapped out gains via a high frequency approach (see the previous point), it can make things difficult for athletes who need their nervous systems stimulated more often.

2️⃣you MUST HAVE high quality reps with anything that represents the skill (or is close to it) of what you are trying to improve, it is my opinion that any drop off here should signal the end of the session when training speed, or any specific sport skill

For example, if you are running 30m dashes, and achieve a best of 3.20 seconds on your third sprint, if you run 3.26 on your fourth sprint, you should likely end the session. In some cases, you could run a fifth, but if you again failed to beat 3.20 seconds on that fifth sprint, then you must end the session!

3️⃣In higher repetition strength and barbell training, or endurance training, you can drop off a little more

since the nervous system component is not as strong, say 2-5%, but anything more than this can take too long to recover from, and in my experience, is too risky of a venture in training.

4️⃣In low repetition strength (now we are getting into more specific skills), the same no drop off rule should again apply, and this is perhaps the greatest mistake commonly made in athletic performance.

In this case, when training for either strength or power in the weightroom, think working with any weight above 75% of one’s 1RM, and repetitions below 5, you should always feel as good, if not better, walking out of the weightroom as you did walking in.

In other words, when training the nervous system (speed, skills, power) don’t drop off, and feel better walking away from the session than you did walking into it!✅

5️⃣ If training the structure of the body (such as muscular size or energetics) or endurance (cardiovascular capacity or lactate tolerance) then we can “drop off” in each particular session. My advice here is to start with small drop-offs, and work upwards as athletes can handle and tolerate more training.

6️⃣ You should attempt to walk out of the weight room or the track feeling invigorated when it comes to training strength or power, and not like you just got hit by a truck! The key to long term success is consistent training where you manage fatigue properly.

- Getting a lot of good, quality reps in over the course of time through a mixture of high-frequency training, novel training stimuli, and occasional lowered frequency training efforts will help to ensure success.

Of course, different athletes have different preferences and responses here (you’ll see on day 10), so knowing how this is the case will help you optimize your training even further.

2 comments

Rotger Elite Performance

skool.com/rotgerelite

This community helps athletes improve their TRAINING and PERFORMANCE with my science-based training principles.