If you have not read last month's article, Power Curve Training, please take a look if you are interested in the philosophy behind this workout. To sum it up quickly, the emphasis is on the development of the anaerobic components of fitness, such as strength, power, explosiveness and speed. The idea is that frequent practice geared towards a specific goal is the fastest way to make progress. At the same time, endurance and work capacity are developed by practicing these same drills at a rapid pace for an extended time period in two or three hard workouts per week. The idea here is that you train for neural efficiency on the strength days and energy system adaptation during the hard workouts. Additionally, by frequently practicing your target lifts, your increased strength will lead to higher intensity levels during your weekly hard workouts. Thus, your strength and work capacity increase in concert with one another.

Here is the plan I have followed for the past month and a half. For every two week period I chose three lifts to focus on. I trained these in a "Grease the Groove" or Density Training format every day. My strength in these movements improved rapidly. In the single arm swing with the 2 pood I went from barely swinging it to shoulder height and nearly dropping the bell to explosively swinging it over my head. Strength develops very quickly training in this format. My presses with the 1.5 pood also progressed very rapidly. This paid off during my weekly "hard" workouts, because I was now doing multiple sets of clean and presses with a pair of 50lb dumbbells for reps, alternated with weighted pull-ups. My improved strength allowed me to train with a higher intensity during my hard workout, which is one of the benefits I mentioned above.

Here is a table listing the lifts I performed during the first two weeks. The first column shows the three lifts that I focused on in each "Grease the Groove" session. The second column shows auxiliary lifts that I threw in as an extra set during each session throughout the day. I would only use one or two of these auxiliary lifts per session, with anywhere from 5-12 sessions per day. The idea here is maintenance, not improvement in the auxiliaries.

TABLE 1- Weeks 1 and 2 Strength Program

The combination of the Clean and Press, Pistol and Evil Wheel was a pretty good combination. It hit every muscle in the body and trained a variety of movement patterns. In week three, I decided to change the exercises to expose my body to a new stimulus. I decided to approach the next three weeks as a progression towards improvement in the "program minimum" described by Pavel in the Russian Kettlebell Challenge book. Basically, it is a program consisting of the bent press and the one arm snatch. Here is a table for these next three weeks:

TABLE 2- Weeks 3, 4 and 5 Strength Program

I pretty much omitted the auxiliary lifts during this period because I was very busy with other things. I occasionally did some of the exercises from the first two weeks or from the auxiliary list, but I didn't exactly put the pedal to the metal. Snatches and bent presses are plenty demanding by themselves. This pretty much sums up the strength portion of the program for the last 5 weeks, now I will move onto the twice-weekly energy systems workout.

My idea for these workouts was to really push myself. I kept the rest periods short and even did supersets and circuits so that I could go from set to set with minimal down time. For my workout, I chose to modify the "A" workout from the Pavel Tsatsouline interview. Here is what the workout looked like:

TABLE 3- Energy Systems Workout

My third workout was a real puker, so I only did it occasionally as an extra workout. In the five week period I only did it three times, because it would have been too demanding and counterproductive to do it more often. Basically it was a combination of sprinting and Kettlebell lifting at the tennis courts. Here is how it went:
5 snatches per arm.
Sprint 4 courts, rest for about 15 seconds, sprint back. Rest 15-30 secs.
2 clean and presses.
Sprint 4 courts. Rest, then sprint back.
5 snatches per arm. Sprint 3 courts, rest, sprint back. Rest.
2 Clean and presses per arm, sprint, rest, sprint back. Rest.
5 snatches, 2 courts.
2 clean and press, 2 courts.
Now, here I decided instead of doing 1 court, I would start all over again and do another Same as above for 4,3 and 2 courts.
So I did the same thing as above, just with a few slightly longer rest periods.
35 minutes later, 72 courts of sprints, 60 snatches and 24 clean and presses later, I wanted to puke. It was a very brutal workout, so it was sparsely thrown into my Power Curve program.

This is pretty much it. During the past 5 weeks I have made some great gains in strength, athleticism and even body composition. I noticed that I am now a bit leaner, but slightly heavier on the scale at the same time. I would recommend this workout for anyone, but be sure to adapt it to your own needs and preferences. That is one of the key parts of Power Curve Training. Enjoy the pain, enjoy the gains!