Undulating Periodization Strategies | JTSstrength.com

hey everybody Chad Wesley Smith here for juggernaut training systems today we're going to be talking to you about undulating periodization you know there's a lot of different periodization strategies out there and a lot of times you'll hear about daily undulating periodization or what is referred to as depth and the way that I program is involves undulating periodization but I would not consider it to be daily undulating periodization as it's not variable based on any type of daily feedback or autoregulation in that sense in the broader sense of that term rather it's a more long-term planning of undulation z' that's really going to help us in three main areas of the scientific principles of strength training if you're not familiar with these principles we have a full playlist of videos that discuss them we'll link it right up appear up there one of one of those spots they'll be a link to it as well as down below in the info and those three principles that this Anjali interiorization strategy is really going to help bolster and improve our fatigue management overload and the principle of SR a stimulus recovery adaptation so first off let's establish that what I'm talking about is geared towards more intermediate and advanced athletes the only time I would see it being appropriate for a beginner athlete or necessary for our beginner athlete to employ a strategy like this is if they're working maybe you know shift work where they are you know three days on two days off or four on three off that type of thing where they have a lot of a lot of fatigue and stress to be managed outside the gym beyond that beginner athletes should probably be fine to get away with more of a linear periodization strategy it wouldn't require these changes and and more intricate management of intensity and volume so the way that it's going to affect fatigue management and be able to improve our fatigue management when designing programs is that you're going to avoid accumulating too much fatigue because training does not happen in a vacuum and fatigue that is generated isn't just from you know squat workout generates squat fatigue and that has its own category and a bench workout generates bench fatigue and that has its own category and deadlifts has its own category now they all generate fatigue on the system the body does not differentiate between squat invention and dead lifting so there is cumulative fatigue so if I have a very hard squat workout on Monday very very taxing nervous system muscular system so on and so forth that is going to affect my Tuesday bench workout maybe my Wednesday deadlift workout Tuesday's bench is going to affect Wednesday's deadlift Wednesday's deadlift is going to affect Friday's squat is going to affect Saturday's bench numerous different ways that you could structure the week but understand that the the fatigue being generated from one lift or one you know focus training day carries over to subsequent days undulating the periodization and varying the levels of intensity and volume through the different lifts is going to help avoid too much fatigue being accumulated and maybe one lifts suffering at the benefit of another undulating periodization is a strategic application of SRA the stimulus recovery adaptation which means when I introduce a stimulus which generates fatigue and we have to generate fatigue to build Fitness these different lengths SRA curves are the length of the SRA curve is going to vary based on how much fatigue is being generated so we could have a very very hard workout which has a longer SRA curve we could have a easier workout that has a shorter SRA curve and that's going to allow us to may fit the most hard training the most overloading training in to a specified time period so they we're training on a 3 up 1 down schedule 3 weeks of hard train followed by a 1 week D load we want to do as much hard training as you possibly can in that time or let's even say you have three months before I meet 12 weeks the more hard training you can do in those 12 weeks the stronger you can potentially get by the meet but if you're if you aren't applying some level of strategy to the way you set - the way you set up your frequency and the way that fatigue is managed within that that frequency you're not going to get to do quite as much training so the undulating strategies that we're going to talk about today are going to allow you to fit more hard training into a bit more of a compressed time period and you know still manage fatigue still have proper recovery but be able to do more hard work which in turn is going to allow you to Prudential II become stronger finally it's going to affect overload because the stronger and athlete becomes the heavier weights they are lifting the more experienced they are the bigger stronger more muscular they are the more stimulus they will derive from a single training session so when you get an athlete who is very very strong and the weights they're lifting become very very heavy at a very hard workout up here a lot of fatigue is going to be generated from that a longer SRA curve is going to be developed but you could run into a problem there because as they generate a lot of fatigue and would require a longer SRA curve before being able to do another comparable workout they are now potentially going to run into an issue of decane technique as different physical qualities so strength hypertrophy tendon and ligament integrity technique neural fatigue all have different lengths SRA curves technique is very short if you have this big training session and then you wait a full week or two weeks in some programs cases between those you could actually experience some technical decay so as the athlete becomes capable of greater and greater overload they need to be more strategic in the way that they organize their training so they can make sure that technique is still developing while you know they're not beating up their joints tendons ligaments too much the nervous system is able to recover between these very hard overload sessions again make sure you refer to the scientific principles of strength training playlist here on YouTube the book by dr. Mike is retell dr. James Hoffman and myself to learn more about these topics the final factor is going to make this undulating periodization strategy so valuable so potentially valuable to you as an athlete or for the athletes that you coach it's going to create an improved predictability of training training that has a direction to it and this is all part of phase a train that has a more predictable direction to it is going to allow for you as an athlete or coach to better say this is the day that I'm going to feel strong as a competitive power lifter or even a plot' trying to apply this idea to weightlifting or strongman could be appropriate the better that you can say this is the day the competition day or my athlete will be the strongest the better coach you will be the more successful athlete you will be this is something I take a great amount of pride in that I have peaked extremely well over the duration of my powerlifting career I you know very proud of Marisa every time that she puts her best lifts of the Train cycle on the platform the day that it matters and it goes beyond just peaking because of course being ready for that one competition day is the most important thing but within the course of a training cycle you're going to have days you know where you feel great you're going to have days where you feel rundown days where you're supposed to go heavy days that aren't designed to be as heavy and creating this undulating strategy is going to give you a better understanding control of which days you're going to feel good on so you can plan for those to be heavy days which days you're going to feel rundown on so you can plan for those to be lighter days because usually with every big high heavy hard day that you have what comes to follow that a day where you feel fatigued so then you're able to use that later fatigue day to still accomplish good work to still develop technique to still get volume in but not you know to not be guessing at it a perfect example of this and a violation of phase transition and probably the biggest violator of phase transition is Bulgarian style training you know squat everyday training and Max and I have talked a lot about his 13 years of experience squatting for multiple daily maximums and he talked about you know that there was there was no way for him to tell which day he would feel good on some days where he felt terrible he would lift really well some days where he felt good as good as you could feel doing that he would lift very poorly but there was no way for him to know this is the day that I will feel great and he said even taking a taper or a day or two off did not allow him to that way either because there's no direction to that type of training so it lacks the predictability which is critical to be able to peak optimally for competition there are two models that I'm going to going to show you of different undulating periodization strategies that I use one will just refer to as the intermediate and one the advanced the enemy could also be called alternating and the advanced model could will be a low medium high strategy so first up the alternative model for more intermediate athletes even advanced female athletes this is how Marissa ended training the structure this is how Kristin Duns Wars training the structured advanced men's lifters may be in a lower weight class particularly shorter lifters as they're not able to generate as much fatigue because the bar is not moving as far this is how Kevin Torres is training is structured this is a usually a four up one down strategy that is going to kind of alternate weeks between very hard deadlifting in weeks 1 & 3 or weeks 2 & 4 are very hard squatting and benching in the alternating the opposite week of the deadlift so we're going to have this type of strategy going on so as you can see in the graph showing just the squat workouts so you see the blue dots for the squat workout you know starting out in week 1 with a medium you know slightly on the lower side of medium difficulty workout so on the x-axis we're going to have time you're seeing the days down there Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday and on the y-axis that's basically showing the relative difficulty of the training session and I'll get into that a little bit more so starting out with our first squat workout in week 1 we're having you know a lower side of medium but still a fairly challenging workout this is going to be a lot of like seven eight our PE work for a good amount of volume then later in the week our second workout of the week is going to be a little bit less challenging usually about 75% as difficult I would say as the first workout of the week and as we move on to week 2 the first work week gets a little bit harder than the first workout of the week was the previous week because the principle of overload dictates that training must become more difficult over time and then finally that second workout of the second week is up on the high relative difficulty side of things and we repeat that process again over the next two weeks so you know we will implement different exercise selection here usually doing high bar what I usually do with Kristin and Marissa high bar early in the week low bar for the second workout of the week the weights end up being about the same between those but the higher weights are relatively harder at high bar earlier in the week than they are at low bar and then on the high workout that as a low bar either up to a maximum single with a rep max after that or just the rep max you know individual differences are going to dictate some of the some of the changes there now as we bring in the bench workouts you can see following a very very similar pattern to the squat workouts find that the squat and bench work harmoniously together a little bit better than the deadlift they tend to respond more similarly to different training strategies so you can see almost an identical pattern through there the only real change is that in the high week the hard week for the squattin the squat and bench we have the hard bench workout early in the week the hard squat workout later in the week and that is done again strategically nothing we're doing here is just by accident we're doing that because a hard bench workout is much less are much more unlikely to have a negative effect on the squat workout where if we put a really hard squat workout on Monday and then try to have a hard bench work on Tuesday the bench workout would suffer a lot more from that squat workout whether it's stress on the wrists and elbows from a low bar position or just general nerville neural fatigue now looking at the the third list a deadlift and have two different colors here for the deadlift the yellow dot being our primary deadlift workout and then the green dot being a secondary deadlift workout I distinguish between these two because they are periodized two different ways the yellow dot our primary deadlift workout is going to follow the same strategy as the squat and bench just flipped so instead of going a medium high medium high followed by a B Lotus I know the deal is cut off in the graph now the deadlift will go high medium high medium and so that they're inverted from each other so week one can be very hard stressful work for the deadlift while week two very hard stressful work for the squat and bench alternating throughout the secondary deadlift workout we treat a bit differently just because the deadlift is so much more neroli taxing that trying to put two workouts of it that are comparable difficulty the way we do in the squat and bench has tended to just not work out as well and we just have a more linear periodization strategy for that second deadlift workout which is often just focused on technical development trying to keep it much more low neural stress and is done after the second squat workout of each week so for example the high deadlift workout in week one depending on the phase let's say we're in a strength phase for Marissa might be up to five rep max in the deadlift so that was recently three fifty five four five followed by back down sets three twenty four three sets of five and then some accessory work like vert pull back raises or GH RS maybe some rows while the second deadlift workout of the week the secondary deadlift workout could either be you know three sets of five deadlifts at 275 to 295 if it's an earlier more general phase it might be rdls or vert poles at that point just a deadlift movement to help stay in touch with tech technique to give those muscles some extra stimulus to respect the idea of the technical SRA curve being shorter so you don't want to even though the the neural SRA curve for the deadlift is very long that might make you inclined to say well I should only deadlift once a week but in doing that strategy technique tends to at least not at best stagnate definitely not improve and at worst at worst start to decay so we want to keep technique improving throughout now we're going to discuss the more advanced low medium high undulation model and this is what I would be using for myself athletes like Steve genteel e.t pupula Brandon Allen Evan men singh guys who have put up these really big you know two thousand plus pound totals but this strategy could also be appropriate for intermediate lifters who for whatever reason whether that's you know genetics lifestyle factors like jobs sleep nutrition have a hard time recovery so this is going to have a little bit more recovery built into it and it's going to work on the principle of these three different types of workouts low workout medium workout high workout easy medium hard rotate through those to create fatigue management for each given lift and then also to work harmoniously together to create these more predictable trends and better fatigue management of all the accumulated fatigue through the three different lifts so looking at the squat first we start with a low squat on the first day that would be Monday week one followed by a medium squat on Friday week one then a high or heavy squat on Monday week two a lot of fatigue is going to be accumulated from that so what do we need to do to decay that fatigue bring it back down to a low workout obviously that low workout because the principle of overload is going to have to be harder than the previous low workout and the same thing with the medium and the same thing with the high but going through this low medium high low medium high structure is I found it to be extremely helpful to know that on the days that are supposed to be high I feel good I can lift and push the heavy weights on that one and you know what follows that I'd say where you feel really run down your joints hurt weights that feel should feel light feel heavy but that's fine because it's by design we're programming lighter weights on those days maybe still for a lot of volume and it's not going to be fun to do them it's not going to be a great feeling work out but you're going to get through it anyways so it's going to add that level of predictability to it so we follow that same strategy or that strategy low medium high low medium high and then a D load for the squat now looking at the bench workouts the bench will start on the medium workout the first Tuesday we're going to be benching on Tuesdays and Saturdays again I'm showing you the training schedule that I use that I use with the majority of my athletes it is not necessarily the right one or the best one but it is a way to strategically and soundly apply these principles that we've talked so much about so this is just the way that I do it there's a lot of good ways to do it a lot of possible ways to satisfy these principles so benching on Tuesday and Saturday we're going to start out with the medium workout on week 1 day 1 or week 1 Tuesday and then a hard workout on week 2 on Saturday or sorry week 1 on Saturday and we want to get that hard bench workout in before we have the really hard squat workout because again if you're squatting low bar and I'm sure you know those of you watching who do squat low bar can relate to this after that hard squat workout elbows hurt your shoulders hurt the last thing you want to do is have a heavy bench workout so we have that the heavy bench work on Saturday then the heavy squat workout on Monday and right now you're probably feeling very beat up and you don't want to have a have a hard bench workout luckily it comes back down to a low bench workout on tuesday week 2 then back up to medium on Saturday week 2 and then again before we get to the heavy squat workout we're going to have the heavy bench workout on week 3 Tuesday and then finally after the heaviest squat workout of the whole program of the whole cycle on that week 3 Friday you'll still have a low bench workout and again it might feel terrible and that's fine it feels terrible by design we're expecting it to feel bad that's why we program the lighter weights or manipulate exercise selection to allow you to still have a good workout to still satisfy the principal overload and do hard work but without it you know just compounding fatigue and pain on top of itself as it would if you had hard squat workout on Friday hard bench work on Saturday over and over finally as we put the deadlift workout in there again the squat bench and deadlift these rotations are all working independently just as we had in the intermediate alternating model in this in the deadlift working out we have two different days of workouts here our primary one which follows a high low medium strategy and then our secondary deadlift workout which we do after our second squat workout in the week and that's kind of its own periodization model just a linear periodization of relatively easy workouts 60 to 75 percent as difficult as the the first workout of the week and you can see with the deadlift week one heavy hard hard workout we start the cycle off with that and it's maybe not the most optimal thing when looking at just one training cycle one four-week block three weeks up one week down but over the course of the entire training cycle when keeping in mind that the deadlift is the most fatiguing and you need to take your heavy ear cut out heavy deadlifts the farthest away from a meet relative of the three lifts it ends up working out just fine so we go heavy and week one followed up by again light workout we always want to follow the heavy work out with the light workout because the heavy workout is going to generate the most fatigue it's going to make you feel the worst for the the next subsequent workout so we go low in week two back up to medium in week three and then finally in week four I D load though all of these lifts work independently of each other through this high medium low structure or low medium high structure and it's all it's important how they all work independently of each other what is even more important is how they all work when you put them together training does not happen in a vacuum the squat workout you do on Monday affects the bench workout on Tuesday the bench working on Tuesday affects the death of work on Wednesday that affects Friday that affects Saturday that affects the next Monday it all has to work together fatigue is being accumulated through all the different lifts where I bench workout can be negatively affected by a squat workout vice versa and so on so that's why we use this alternative high medium low strategy and I think it works so well when you put them all together to create a trend of week one and into early week two is up in a lot of harder workouts relatively harder workouts in that timeframe you're going to have a hard deadlift week one Wednesday medium squat week one Friday hard bench week one Saturday and then a hard squat on week two Monday those four workouts are going to generate a lot lot of fatigue those are all going to be you know pretty challenging - very challenging workouts so what do you need to do after that you need to follow them up with lighter workouts which is why on Tuesday Wednesday Thursday as an off day and then Friday of week two we have low bench low deadlift low squat to decay that fatigue and now you're going to start to feel better and better coming into week three where we come with high bench on Tuesday medium deadlift which is still going to be a very challenging workout and then our biggest squat workout of the whole cycle on that last Friday so it and because the principal overload once again dictates training must become more difficult over time the second low workout is always harder than the first low workouts always heavier or has more volume in it the second medium workout always heavier has more volume than the first medium workout and same thing with the hard workouts so our trend ends up being if we're going to assign just like a difficulty on a one to ten not necessarily an RPE scale here just a general now for the point of demonstration just a difficulty one to ten our first week maybe is a six or seven our second week you know a four or five and then the third week you know eight nine maybe even attend depending on how many hypertrophy phases and strength phases you're going to after one after another that is going to change you know if you want the the last week to be a nine or the last week to be a ten but it's that trend of pretty hard easier very hard D load very easy that's going to allow us to create better fatigue management by strategically using the stimulus recovery adaptation and manipulating overload so we can create long term training predictability so that you can better know these are the days where I'm going to feel strong where I can go heavy all trending towards this is the one day that matters most where I'm going to lift the most weight that I've ever lifted the day of the competition so we have two different models we have the the intermediate alternating model and then the advanced high medium low model hopefully this gave you some better insight into potential ways to better structure your or your athletes training if they're struggling with fatigue management you don't feel like they're they're able to get enough hard work in in whatever timeframes you're dealing with this can be a great great tool to use it has been extremely successful for me this is the type of model values for you know 20 to 48 total 2314 total 2325 total the alternating model is what we used with Marissa for her world record in the 52 kilo class the high medium low you know got Brandon Allen 2300 T pupula the world record 242 in sleeves at the time now Kevin Tory has all those big tall Steve Gentilly big PRS this is a very very effective all and I know looking at it you know the whole graph altogether especially on the high medium low looks a little bit overwhelming and maybe confusing but as you look at each lift independently I think it should create you know a better understanding of how we're manipulating relative volume and intensity for those lifts to set you up for the most long-term success possible so hopefully you learn something in this if you enjoyed the video please out of the channel

Channel: Juggernaut Training Systems

Views: 140,236

Rating: 4.9691958 out of 5

Keywords: chad wesley smith, undulating periodization, powerlifting, powerlifting programming, program design, juggernaut training systems, marisa inda, scientific principles of strength training

Id: LbmCDI_EHKY

Length: 26min 44sec (1604 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/bigcoachD]

and yet every god damned day someone posts about bulgarian method training. Good video.

[u/Axwellington88]

Nice video, especially if you are following his programming guides from his book (A thoughtful pursuit of strength). I just finished a week 2 hypertrophy squat workout and it was HARD As fuck but I did it.. and looking throughout the planning i understand what he means about , hard, medium, and easier workouts..looking forward to an easier squat workout friday is even better when you know it is going to make you stronger in the long run. Always great stuff from the Man CWS

[u/samhatescardio]

Great video. I wonder if all his athletes are only benching twice a week. I would've thought someone like Marisa would be able to manage more bench frequency. Although maybe she does and he just wasn't getting too into the nitty gritty of it.

I love videos like this where you get to see real application of training principles. Although I'm not sure why he doesn't consider these examples DUP, but I think that just comes down to semantics of definition.

[u/TheUnseenPants]

Quick question for the programming gurus. I'm still a beginner (1040@175) and I have been using a lot of the principles detailed in the Scientific Principles of Strength Training. I've had great success with programming for myself using the methods in that book but I am wondering whether it'll be harmful to me as a beginner to apply undulating periodization? I understand that this type of strategy is for intermediate/advanced lifters but would it have any downsides for a beginner? Is it worth it to just stick with linear periodization until my gains stall?

[u/RugbyDork]

Maybe I'm just not strong enough for it to be a problem yet but I don't feel that my squat or deadlift workouts generate fatigue which effects my bench training in any meaningful way. I've always categorised fatigue as lower body and upper body separately and trained back to back with very high relative intensities in each without any discernible issue. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of some of our more advanced lifters on this subject if you lot see this so that I know whether to expect it later in my training career.