Okay, so I have become frustrated with how I am making progressions to harder exercises. What happens is I finish a progression standard, like 3 sets of 30 full squats, and the I move to the next step in Convict Conditioning. When I move up to Close squats, if I do a warm-up, I ed up moving from 90-100 squats in a workout to 30 squats total. This makes my workout easier but it takes all the accomplishment I felt before and throws it out the window. It feels tiny and worthless for me, and I am not convinced that the next step is so much more difficult that it can make up for the drastic reduction in Time Under Tension.
I was also watching some youtube videos that explained the directions in Convict Conditioning more clearly than I have ever understood. The idea that I should begin with 1 set of the beginner standard and then not add another set until I reach one set of the intermediate standard. Example: Begin Wall-ups at 10 reps 1 set. Do one set until I can perform a solid set of 25 reps. Only then do I move up to doing 2 sets. This makes much more sense than the random ways I was adding on reps or trying to interrupt the text.
So now I have a few problems with my progression:
- Loss of psychological reward
- Loss of Time Under Tension
- Unstructured increases
What is my solution for this?
I will adopt the above described method of increase my reps before my sets. When I reach a progression standard, the next workout, I will repeat that exercise and on the end I will add as many of the next Step as I can. When I reach 1 set of the beginner standard I will drop a set of the previous step and continue working on increase reps in the 1 set of the new step. This will continue until I replace all of the previous step with the new step.
Example:
Yesterday I did 3 sets of 30 full squats. Next Wednesday I will do 3 sets of 30 reps AND as close to 5 reps of Close Squats as I can get. Let us assume I reach 5 reps. The following Wednesday, I would do 2 sets of 30 full squats and 1 set of 7-10 Close Squats.
02014-09-17
3:30 Full squats
02014-09-24
3:30 Full Squats
1:5 Close Squats
02014-10-01
2:30 Full Squats
1:10 Close Squats
02014-10-08
1:30 Full Squats
1:10 Close Squats
1:5 Close Squats
This would continue till I reach the Progression Standard of 2 sets of 20 reps. Now, would I get rid of that first set ever? No. It would become a more strenuous warm-up. So for Uneven Squats I would end up with 1 set of 20 Close Squats and then my Progression Standard of 2 sets of 20 uneven squats.
Right now I am thinking of how to make a structured progression method for the Handstand Push-ups, but that will require much more thought on whether I want to progress against a wall or stop and master away from the wall handstands.
Harper Wall 