mini-cycle of power in the middle of strenght phase

[tiago]

I read the latest entry no the blog (the mini-cycle) and thought about incorporating this approach in my training plan. Why? Basically because I've done eight strenght workouts and I'm still far from my personal best for each hold. Actually, I started regressing on some of the holds, which made me think this HB training isn't going anywhere.

So, while in the middle of my strenght training, I started a 8-day power cycle, in the hope that I'll be able to recover some mental freshness for the 3 or 4 hangboarding sessions I got left. It will also give me the opportunity to figure out what I can do on the new campus board I will work with. As I have a lot of time until beginning of September, when I'm planning to peak, I could easily fit this extra week of bouldering-campusing in the middle of my strenght cycle.

After this, training will resume as originally planned, with 4 more hangboard sessions, a three-week power cycle and a three-week PE cycle.

The mini-cycle (in bold) will go like this inside the macro-cycle:

8 HB sessions

1 week power (July 2-9)

4 HB sessions (July 11-20)

3 week power
3 week power-endurance

So, has anyone tried something like this?

[MarkAnderson]

I've never tried anything like that, but it's an interesting experiment.

Regarding the premise that you're current Strength Phase isn't going well, remember that summer training often looks worse on paper due to higher temps. Hangboarding is condition-dependent (just like almost everything else), so it's common to hit all your personal bests in the winter seasons, and then struggle to match them in the summer. There are some things you can do to improve your training conditions, but the bottom line is, focus on the effort you put into the workout, and don't worry so much if you aren't seeing stellar results.

[tiago]

Thank you for your reply, mark. As soon as I finish mini power cycle and the hangboarding phase I'll post the results.

[tiago]

So I finished the minicycle as mentioned above (actually I finished it a long time ago; I'm in the middle of the PE phase) and I noticed zero improvement on the hypertrophy phase. I'm convinced that the gains are not high in the summer; other than that, I had a relatively good power phase (I suck at bouldering) and I am feeling huge improvements in my PE phase (actually, I'm afraid I might be peaking too early...) Let's see how it ends...

As such, I can conclude the mini cycle didn't have the desired outcome (to improve my bad results on the hangboard this season). One more lesson learned...