Advanced Training Methods 3 - The Judoka Weekly Schedule

The Judoka Weekly Schedule

Professional Judokas (Judo practitioners) often use a strength training cycle which is both very simple and very efficient. This training schedule was also popularized as the 'one lift a day' schedule.

What they basicly do is, after their technical judo workout, the coach will name one exercise and one exercise only, and the trainees will go on to perform 7-12 sets of this exercise. One day it will be squat (5 rep range is optimal here), the next pull ups hanging from their Gi (Kimono - for added grip benefit) and the next will be deadlifts, etc...

For gymasts/acrobats and BW trainees, it is a good schedule to implement, both for beginners and advanced.

The only drawback for an advanced athlete will be his need to cover more movements.

What I have devised as a solution is the 'One Routine a Day' workout schedule.

One Routine a Day Schedule

The first day in the training week the athletes will go on to perform one pulling oriented routine (not only strict pulling motions, but oriented in this direction) on the rings, the next will be a pushing oriented routine on the p-bars or paralletes and the next will be some kind of a maintainance routine for leg strength. Advanced athletes will repeat this twice for a total of 6 weekly workouts, repeating each routine twice.

This is a high volume schedule, and should be accompanied with an higher intensity-lower volume cycle for best results.

Example

Rings-Pulling Routine

Mup -> lower to cross 3 sec -> pull back to f-lever 3 sec -> f-lever pull ups 3 reps -> straight body pull to b-lever 3 sec -> lower to german hang -> straight body pull back to inverted hang -> kip to support -> 3 cross pull outs

Paralletes-Pushing Routine

V/L-sit 3 sec -> press handstand (any version) -> full Pirouette -> HSPU 3 reps -> lower to stradle L-sit 3 sec -> planche 3 sec -> planche push ups 3 reps -> V/L sit 3 sec -> press handstand -> hold handstand 10 sec

Other recommendations

1. Perform 5-7 routines a day.

2. I like to implement iso/dynamic stretching for the lower body in between sets, during pushing/pulling routine day and uper body stretching between sets during leg days. This should be performed while resting, for optimal use of training time. (This is not an intensity cycle in which you perform at your limit, and though, you can use more of an active rest periods without hurting your performance and get more out of your training time. Do not try this on intensification phases.)

3. During the Leg day I will use a simple routine, maybe one lift a day also, for only 3-5 sets. For example: 3-5 sets of 5 reps weighted jumping pistol for height. Do not try to push too hard here also, as the volume of upper body work will use your full recovery abilities. I'm not one of those overtraining panics, but you will not advance as rapidly as you can if you fail to implement this principle.

4. Do not exceed more than 3 weeks on this schedule before going to an intensification phase.

5. Lower total routines performed each day to 3, every 3rd workout from the same kind.

6. Use spotting during the routines if needed, and provide a strong spot, making the athlete use less than his full capacity for strength. This will make sure the cycle is kept under accumulation catergory.

7. Devise your own routines according to your abilities, facility,etc, there is nothing written here in stone.

Would you still work the static holds (eg planche and lever progressions) in addition to this, or would you simply increase the hold times in the series? Is additional conditioning such as Crossfit style GPP, HIIT, or sprints beneficial to this in your experience?

Scott,

If the static elements are implemented into the routines, I will still supplement the routines with specific work for them, but will decrease 50% in volume - instead of 15 minutes combined planche-f-lever work, 7.5 minutes.

Additional conditioning beneficial? to the routines? certainly not.

If you ment beneficial to your overall athletic development, maybe, depend on your goals, but if you try to improve upon the routines during this point of time, I would move conditioning to maintainance at this time.

I'll say again what I have said many times:

only beginners and few talented advanced athletes can improve multiple skills and abilities. Most people need to concentrate their efforts in a narrow field and move everything back to maintainance.

Dont get me wrong, I'm one of those who wants to be jack of all trades, master of none, but sometimes the way to get there is by concentrating your efforts during differenet training cycles on differenet fields.

This is also my critisism on the crossfit aproach for optimal physical development. I argue 'one can do what they do better than them' using multipile specialization aproach, especialy during developmental stages.

Ido,

Thank you for the reply. I greatly appreciate and respect your advice. Are there any must read books and articles that you would suggest? I, of course, am anticipating the release of Coach Sommer's books, but would like to learn as much as possible in the meantime. Perhaps we could start a sticky?

If you guys are going to start a 'recommended reading' thread I will contribute my top 10 to it. Will require some thought and a search in my library first...

Yes please Ido I would be very interested to know .

Click here for the --->Recommended Reading Thread

Ido, can you recommend a gymnastics-style "leg series" for this training style?

Ido,

I had a thought regarding taking this format of intensification/ accumulation in this post and applying it to Coach Sommer's progressions. My idea is to simply do the harder exercises in the intensification phase (3X3-5 reps) and for accumulation you would drop back a few progressions and do something like 5 reps (but 5 easy reps with more sets that stress through volume). You would de-load every third workout and each intensification phase you would increase by a rep until 3X5 is met in which case you move to a new progression. You would increase accordingly each accumulation phase also.

My only thoughts are that firstly this wouldn't work with statics, but the statics could be put on a steady state and only increase every 8-12 weeks. Secondly would it be wise to follow Coach Sommer's change of exercises each training session throughout the week or to do a smaller number of exercises to focus on a more limited number of goals?

The reason for me doing this is that I feel it is a good way to increase work capacity (accumulation) which I personally need and this also might give others ideas if they feel the same need for this increase. Does this format seem feasable?

PS I hope that you enjoyed your trip to France.

Many Thanks.

Rob.

Can we have more examples of pushing/pulling routines?

I've been doing the one Ido mentioned, but I've scaled it down a bunch to keep fatigue away. Consolidation/GTG type training with no time limitation. Sometimes I do these all throughout the day without feeling any fatigue until the very last sets when cumulative fatigue kicks in.

Parallettes (pushing):

V-sit 6sec -> Handstand pushup -> 1-arm handstand 6sec left & right (wall) -> Negative HeSPU -> Straddle L 6sec -> Half-straddle planche 6sec -> V-sit 6sec

I haven't messed around with rings because I've been mostly just doing the same WOD over and over with the goal to improve on the statics and the dynamic reps. I do the ring strength with the MU -> Dip -> BL -> FL progression, increasing the amount of dips and making the statics more difficult.

I'd love to have some sensible ring/parallette ideas like the one above to do Ido's One Routine a Day -method. For instance, what can I sub for full pirouettes? I can't do them atm, and I don't know of any skills that would substitute them.

This sounds neat. Can't be as effective as the WODs, though, right? :?

Patrick Smith said:

This sounds neat. Can't be as effective as the WODs, though, right? :?

Depends on what you call effective and how you measure effectiveness. I'd say this trumps doing WODs in skill development and overall strength increase, but WODs induce greater hypertrophy. Depends on what you're after.

Khassera said:

Patrick Smith said:

This sounds neat. Can't be as effective as the WODs, though, right? :?

Depends on what you call effective and how you measure effectiveness. I'd say this trumps doing WODs in skill development and overall strength increase, but WODs induce greater hypertrophy. Depends on what you're after.

I see. Sounds perfect for after class Karate and Judo conditioning then.