Chaos & Pain: Hazzard's Thread Of Utter Insanity

[Hazzard]

Much like Steve, Faz and Silverback are doing in both of their threads, I was to discuss a little about high volume, high intensity training, Chaos and Pain styleee. I've been reading through Jamie Lewis' training book, the dude who owns and writes for the site and his mantra is essentially: lift heavy and lift often and I'm trying to design a batshit crazy mental and insanely brutal training routine based around it. Because I love lifting heavy shit and putting it down.

On one part of his site/the eBook he talks about basically doing a squat, push and pull three times a week each. You pick a movement from each grab bag of lifts: back squat, front squat, squat lock out, jump squat, etc. for the squat collection of lifts.

I've had a (brief) play around and come up with something like this:

Monday – Squat and pull
Tuesday – Push and Pull
Wednesday – Squat and push
Thursday – Squat and pull
Friday – Push and pull

Reads like something out of a masochist's wet dream, I know, but bare in mind that pulls aren't just deadlifts and rack pulls and the like - they also include rows, chins, cleans and shrugs in all their varieties.

So if I put together an example routine it would be something like this:

Monday - Heavy back squat, heavy conventional deadlift
Tuesday - Heavy bench press, Pendlay rows
Wednesday - Box squats, push press
Thursday - Light front squats/Squat jumps, Heavy sumo deadlift
Friday - Equipped bench press (either shirted or slingshot), chin-ups

There'll be other bits here and there, arm and ab work, but that's the jist of it, with exercises mixed up along the way whenever I choose.

[big_swede]

Great Idea Haz. I tried an approach like that but I was not experienced enough at the time so I burned out pretty fast on it, I also rushed into it kinda. Im a big fan of this kind of programming, its brutal and lifting should be brutal, thats why we do it!

I would love to do something like this in the future again, with more knowledge and experience under my belt!

[Fazc]

Hahahah I literally just sent you a PM about this, before I saw this thread.

[Fazc]

As long as deloads are adhered to, training the lifts/variations 3-4 times is viable and for me productive. I'm not even going to debate that as it works too well for me to question.

What does interest me is how to work in volume and top-end strength at the same time. Intuitively I don't like the idea of separate strength/volume phases. I just don't like it, I like being a maximum of a week away from competition shape all year around and I know it's possible. With the 2 weeks loading, 1 week unloading routine I know this is possible and again that's not something I would want to debate. What I am interested in refining is how to include top-end work as well as volume work across the week. Some thoughts:

1) Some peaking work is required for both strength building and maintaining/increasing both peak and strength in lower rep ranges.

2) Bulk of the work should be high volume. I have gotten away from high volume stuff to my detriment I think. I started off this experiment doing a bunch of volume work but that has slowly been replaced with less and less of that and more max work. That needs to be reversed.

3) Typical percentages for strength vary from as low as 70% (Smolov) across 80% (Waterbury/Sheiko) to 85%(C&P/Bulgarians).

4) Using volume recommendations from Prilepins is useful. However we(I) are in a different place to Sheiko and are more like Smolov as pretty much 33% of our training time is downtime (1 light week of every 3). The remaining amount of time needs to be hard work, much harder than what is present from Sheiko.

Based on the above points I'm thinking of going in the other direction with sets/reps and increasing the volume across the week. Using the various percentages with different variations in the week -

Squat training for a week

Equipped Squat 90% singles
Partial Squats & GMs 80% triple
Squats 70% fives

For a lot of sets... maybe as high as ten.

That's where my head is at now, any thoughts?

[BigJosh]

Looking forward to seeing you smash this Hazz!

[Hazzard]

Combining top-end work with volume I imagine being fairly difficult, I'm liking where you're coming from with the combination of HAF (heavy as ****) singles equipped along with reps with a lower percentage, although, at least from my experience, I'd be tempted to up the percentage or make sure you do a whole bunch of sets (like the 10 you said) - depending on how you feel, etc.

If you want it to be a volume day then you need some real brutal numbers, at least from what my experience with Smolov told me. Like I said, be that either from 7-10 or so sets of 5, or 75-85% depending on how insane you're feeling. For example, if I did 5s using 85% of my 1RM (240) then that's only 205kg, which I know I could do with ease - I've done 215kg for example.

If you want to do this day using something slightly Smolov-esque than it has to be brutal, insane, and make you collapse to the floor in exhaustion and excitement at finishing when you're done - as it did often for me!

I'm not really the guy to ask when it comes to progression or cycling or whatnot, I suck at that stuff, I just know how to lift heavy shit basically and the ins and outs of specific training styles and ideals. Which is essentially why I want to do C&P.

Going to start tomorrow trying some singles with 230kg on both squat and deadlift. BIG.

[Fazc]

Thanks for the response Hazz, I'm mulling it over in my head with some other stuff.

Back to your thread:

The body can handle a lot more than what is typically seen and adaptive abilities do increase if you give them time. Your routine while crazy looking is do-able as long as you temper your enthusiasm initially. I really would suggest deload weeks if you're not good at holding back or working with percentages (as I am not) because pushing hard like that ALL the time will mess you up. C&Ps injury list is extensive, as well as the Bulgarians he likes. You know I love a good high frequency training routine but from the digging around that i've done injuries are relatively common. I really would stress every 3rd or 4th week be a light one.

Here is my current schedule by the way, so you don't think you're completely crazy (or you think I'm just as crazy)

PM Sessions (Varying rep schemes, usually 6 singles or triples, and sometimes ramping upto 1 top single)

Day 1: Equipped Bench, Bent Row
Day 2: Equipped Squat, Equipped Dead
Day 3: Slingshot CGBP, GMs
Day 4: Raw Squats, Deficit Deads
Day 5: Slingshot Bench, Shrugs
Day 6: Raw Bench, Partial SQ, RDLs

AM Sessions (Various, singles or 6 doubles or triples)

Day 1: Power Clean
Day 2: Press
Day 3: Snatch
Day 4: BTN Push Press
Day 5: Power Clean
Day 6: Press

[Kuytrider]

I've read the C&P book as well and I really wanted to try something insane out. However, I'm nowhere near strong enough nor do I have the requisite miles on the clock (and thanks to Fazc for his help). I've managed to crank out a tough 6 session template without killing myself (I hope!).
I figured you would try something mental Hazz. Best of luck

[mab54]

Wish you the best of luck with the routine hazz, it looks really good. I have been reading a lot of C&P in the past few days, really wanting to do something like it myself in April.

[Fazc]

I've thought about it some more and it makes sense to me. Using Smolov volume recommendations and applying them to how I train. I will name it:

CONJUGATE SMOLOV! (TM) You heard it from me, here first!