How we train.
I have been getting a lot of questions from various places about how Jon North, Donny Shankle, Kevin, Tom, and Spencer train. Thought I would do a short explanation.
First, Mon, Wed, and Fri. These three days are our heaviest, hardest days. We normally have two training sessions, one from about 9am till 11am, and the second from 2pm till about 5pm. These times may change somewhat to work around other stuff that is happening in the gym, but its usually set up similar to that, a shorter morning workout, then a longer afternoon workout. And, sometimes some of the guys will have another short workout around 7pm to do squats, other times squats will be done in the afternoon.
The morning is usually dedicated to doing moderate weights in the competition style snatch and clean and jerk, and sometimes some squats are done, but often not. If squats are done, it will be a high intensity, very low volume workout, like working up to a max single. A morning workout from say Jon might be working up to about 130-140kg for 3 singles in the snatch, then the same in the clean and jerk with 160kg. If he were doing front squat it would be up to a max single either before or after the other stuff.
Afternoon workouts on these days involve working to a maximum on the snatch and clean and jerk, then backing off with some doubles. The doubles might be some lift variation, such as lifts from the hang, or with pauses at the knee or just off the floor. On Monday and Wednesday afternoon, we sometimes use a lift variation even when working up to the max single. The most popular being lifts from the hang, or from blocks either above or below the knee. On Friday afternoon, we always use the competition style lifts, and usually make it some sort of contest, with $$ for the winner. We can base it off a max lift and how close each lifter can get to his current contest maximum, or we might set a percentage, such as 95%, and see who can do the most singles without missing. We normally have prize money in the $200 to $500 range.
We also back squat on Monday and Wednesday, but not on Friday, either after the afternoon workout, or if someone is tired and needs some rest to back squat hard, we will just come back after about 2 hours rest and a meal and do it at 7pm.
Tuesdays and Thursdays we do a snatch variation to start. Often it is power snatching, but depending on the person it might be the no hook grip no foot movement snatch. After that, it is largely a matter of working on weak points. Jon always does various jerk exercises. Donny does a lot of back work including pullups, barbell rows, etc. Kevin often does more power cleans and power snatches. It is very individual. Most of the time most of the lifters train only one time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes we will schedule two workouts, but usually content of exercises for the day will be the same, just more work is done. Most of the lifters also do a pretty good amount of lower back work, often in a seperate workout that I dont really "count"... back extensions, reverse hypers, kettlebell swings, etc.
Saturday we only do one workout, beginning at noon and we all try to be out of the gym by 2pm to have some downtime and get some rest. The start, and focus of Saturday is squats. We all backsquat, its our hardest squat session of the week and makes up most of the workout. Then we do overhead work, the content and excercise depends on the lifter and where we are relative to any major competition. After that is over, the lifters are pretty much free to choose how to end the workout. Spencer likes to muscle snatch, Jon does snatches from a deficit, Donny and Tom like to do a lot of KB swings and back work.
So that basically sums it up. Minimum of 9 and a maximum of 15 workouts a week. Some things that are set and stay the same for each lifter, other things that can vary quite a bit from lifter to lifter. Usually about 22-25 hours a week that are spent training.
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04-05-2012, 08:45 PM
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