Phase 2 - crosstraining

BASIC strength

12 Week Program

3/24/2025 - 6/15/2025

Phase 1 for us was a “foundational/hypertrophy preparatory phase”. We worked on making sure our bodies were able to handle the rest of the year’s training program. We built up to a fairly high volume of training that helped us increase the size of our muscles. At the same time we worked on improving our range of motion for each of our joints, strengthened our tendons, improved our ability to decelerate in our foundational movements, and improved our ability to stabilize our spines in various positions.

For Phase Two, we will be focused on developing all things strength. We are going to take the increased work capacity we have and work to increase the absolute force our muscles can generate for both our barbell and gymnastics movements.

Training force development (i.e. strength) with the barbell is fairly easy. You simply add more weight to the bar and use movements that allow for greater loads. You also reduce the amount of repetitions per set. The weight you can lift at 20 reps is far less than what you could do for 3 reps. The set of 3 reps can be heavier and lends itself to greater strength development. The 20 reps will spur greater gains in capacity. We already have great capacity after Phase 1. We need more strength.

Adding ‘weight’ in gymnastics is not as straightforward. We have been working on pull ups, for example, to increase the ‘load’ used in pull ups we could work on weighted pull ups. However, in general, you will want to increase the range of motion or decrease the mechanical advantage of the movement to increase ‘load’ in gymnastics. Muscle Ups would be an example of increasing the range of motion for both dips and pull ups. Handstand Push Ups would be a decrease of mechanical advantage compared to a push up. The push up requires you to press from chest to arms length roughly 60% of your bodyweight. The HSPU requires you to push nearly 100% of your bodyweight from top of head to arms length. The push up actually has a slightly higher range of motion for the arms to press compared to the HSPU, but the load is far greater for the upper body in the HSPU.

With the added focus on increased strength, we also have our Memorial Day Murph workout coming up… well, on Memorial Day. Murph is our traditional workout borrowed from Lt. Michael Murphy who died in combat in Afghanistan in 2005. The workout consists of running 1 mile, performing 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 air squats, and finishing with a mile. You may divide the pull ups, push ups and air squats however you would like, but the workout must start and finish with a mile run. A 20lb weighted vest is optional.

This means we will need to work on our running, and will need to make sure our basic bodyweight movements of pull ups, push ups, and air squats are up to snuff so we can perform extremely high repetitions of them. This creates a little bit of tension in the program. As illustrated above, strength is developed by taxing the body with heavy weights and less repetitions. Running distance and performing high repetitions are just the opposite. They require lots of reps performed with “lighter” weights.

With that said, much of what we did with Phase 1 was to build those higher repetitions, and we can craft workouts where it is front loaded with heavy loads and consists of light back down sets to maintain a higher volume of work. This compromise position will help us both develop our strength and to maintain, if not improve, our ability to perform high repetitions of lighter loads.

PHASE 2: 3/24/2025 - 6/15/2025

WEEK A:

Monday:

Primary: Back Squat
Secondary: Power Clean

Tuesday:

Primary: Bar Muscle Ups
Secondary: Handstand Push Ups

Wednesday:

Primary: Snatch
Secondary: Snatch Extensions

Thursday:

Primary: Bench Press
Secondary: Deadlift

Friday:

Primary: Bar Muscle Ups
Secondary: Handstand Push Ups

Saturday:

Primary: Front Squat
Secondary: Power Clean

WEEK B: