Thoughts.

You want to be smart about your training. Again, you can look through my previous summer workout materials for some further guidance to this end–check out my initial summer workout post for an idea of what my training schedule was once like. You can work consistently without overtraining if you’re smart about structure and know when too much is too much. A few guidelines to that end:

-Lifting: If you do body part splits (whether you choose to do this or not should depend on your goals–I always opted for more of a full-body routine), you can work on back-to-back days; otherwise give yourself a day away from lifting between heavy lifts (anything taxing on you in terms of focus–conditioning work with light weight, while taxing, does not burn you out for lifting the next day).

-Conditioning: Depending on the extent and intensity with which you condition, you can do this almost every day. I’ve often found a good conditioning workout to be the perfect panacea to DOMS the day after a taxing lift. As a matter of fact, I would heavily recommend throwing some GPP in following your lifts–it’ll get your body working in new ways as different muscle groups are still recovering from the efforts of the previous day, and in my opinion this allows you to work through some deficiencies you might not have been compensating for when at 100% strength. Ironing out the kinks will make you that much better when you do get back to full strength. Note that DOMS has not been shown to have any actual adverse effects other than being uncomfortable–work out and work through it, and force your body to improve.

-Plyos: In contrast to conditioning, Plyos should be done on a more conservative schedule. While you can always power through a conditioning session, “powering through” plyos usually means piss-poor form and an increased injury risk (the same is true for lifting heavy–don’t wait playing “how much is too much” with yourself; be proactive and protect your body instead). Do plyos when you’re fresh. This includes speed work, and really heavy lifting (we’re talking 1 rep max and stuff in the <3 range). DOMS is not a complete nonstarter here, but make sure you can focus enough to work though it--sometimes it can sap your focus, and other times the DOMS is a sign of some fatigue and it really is a nonstarter.

Do plyos/speed work either immediately before your lifting, or immediately after (if you’re not killing yourself lifting–this allows you to take advantage of the complex effect whereby the shortening of your muscles from lifting allows for generation of more explosiveness. Again, make sure you’re fresh enough to really focus on what you’re doing–the nervous system is the primary beneficiary of this sort of training, and it won’t learn if it’s too fatigued.

-Overall Structure: You can power through 4 or 5 (or potentially more) days of hard training a week for a good while, but without proper focus on recovery you’ll find yourself plateauing before too long. A couple good ways to ensure your body is getting enough recovery to deal with cumulative fatigue buildup include doing proper flexibility and recovery work (massage, yoga and the like–activities that are lower-impact and generate bloodflow) on your off days or following workouts, and every so often (once every 4 to 6 weeks–this will vary depending on how much training experience you have, and generally gets shorter as you get more experienced and can therefore work with more intensity per workout) inserting an “off” or “recovery” week, where in lieu of the usual intense workouts, you give your body a bit of a rest. I don’t mean taking the week off entirely, I mean instead of lifting super-heavy, lifting a little lighter for significantly reduced reps/sets–don’t tax your body to the limit, merely rev it up and then ease back down to normal mode. Condition, but condition for half as long or with less intense exercises. Plyos, use your discretion–if you notice your vertical falling, for instance, you might leave them be entirely and give your body a true break there. The idea, as with recovery activities, is to get the blood flowing more than to push your limits. In so doing you give your body room to adjust to the stress that’s been placed upon it, and you’re likely to find that you come back much stronger/faster/more explosive the next week.

Additionally, to avoid mental burnout taking an actual off week every couple months is not a terrible idea. Remember that it’s recovery, not work itself, that makes you stronger–so while you can and should work your ass off, if you do so consistently you should know that a bit of down time will do more good than harm.

-Finally: TRACK YOUR PROGRESS. As with goal setting, this is absolutely essential. Think of program design, in its entirety, as a big blueprint, the workouts themselves as the construction, and tracking of progress as quality control (or as a foreman). If you’re not checking to make sure the blueprint is being adhered to during construction, how can you be sure you’re going to get the intended result? Goal setting and program design give you an initial heading…keeping a workout log gives you a map of where you’ve been and where you’re going. Getting a little metaphor-heavy here, but you get my gist.