We see our adult members as athletes just like our youth, high school, and college athlete members.
The demands placed on a competitive vs every day athlete’s body on a daily basis are different. But both want to perform well when it matters most. For competitive athletes, that’s on game day. For our every day athletes, that’s when their doing yard work, catching themselves from a misstep off of a curb, playing with their kids at the park, etc. In other words, every day is game day and readiness is a top priority.
We understand the need to be ready for whatever life throws at you. Our weekly training model prevents Adult Athletes from over-training/under recovering. The daily undulation of intensity and volume is key in managing acute and chronic stress incurred by our athletes. Managing this stress allows our athletes to improve performance, increase resiliency, and decrease chronic pain.
Whether we are in a strength or a conditioning focused time of our annual training calendar, our daily undulation looks something like this:
Monday:
Intensity- Moderate
Volume- Moderate
Tuesday:
Intensity- High
Volume- Low
Wednesday:
Intensity- Low
Volume- Low to Moderate
Thursday:
Intensity- High
Volume- Low to Moderate
Friday:
Intensity- Low
Volume- High
There are very few things in the strength & conditioning space that are all or nothing. That said, the higher the intensity of a workout the more taxing it will be for your nervous system and the higher the volume of a workout the more taxing it will be on your muscles. That said, workouts that are higher in volume have a higher potential for muscular soreness that can impact readiness for the next workout. For this reason we put our high volume day on the last day of the week. This ensures that if an athlete is sore from that workout they have two days off from the gym to recover before returning to training.
Monday and Wednesday’s intensity and volume are set with the high intensity of the following day in mind. Because Monday and Wednesday are not high intensity days we like to add in exercises that are slightly more complex and place a higher demand on skill level and coordination. The lower load and lower intensity allows more movement variability than higher load and intensity. Low to moderate days are opportunities to explore the various options we have for completing a movement problem and from that exploration make a decision about the most effective and efficient solution to that movement problem.
Tuesdays and Thursdays high intensity work means that these workouts generally use less complex exercises to allow for higher intensities without seeing large, detrimental breakdowns in technique and movement quality. Preserving movement quality is a key training principle of our program.
The Daily Undulation used in our Adult Fitness & Performance program is one the strategies we use that sets training at VPSC apart from others. We don’t do boot camp style workouts that ask for high volume and high intensity at the same time. We don’t do CrossFit workouts that ask for high levels of skill, potentially under load, while fatigued. Our training is purposeful, mindful, and relentlessly consistent.