Tactical Barbell II: Conditioning

Reading

I

PROGRAMMING

INTRODUCTION

You have something very valuable in your hands. A lifetime’s worth of training knowledge. Drawn from the world’s most extreme arenas. Lessons learned, and best practices from military operators, tactical law enforcement, martial artists, and others that rely on their physical capabilities to survive and thrive in some very harsh and unforgiving environments. Places where there’s more at stake than winning a medal, or getting a bruised ego. Bottom line, with these people, their training has to work.

By implementing the strategies in this book, you will cut your learning curve down by decades. If you’re in your twenties, I am envious at how far you’re going to be able to take your fitness. The path has been laid out and handed to you on a silver platter. You’ll get to avoid costly amateurish mistakes that lead to injury and burn out. If you’re older, you’re going to reclaim that confidence you once had in your physical abilities. You may have forgotten what that feels like. Prepare to be reminded.

It’s great having a 600lb squat and 400lb bench press. But, as an operational athlete, if you can’t run, work, or thrive for long periods of time in a multitude of energy demanding environments, you are ineffective. Your big bench press is useless, your big squat is useless.

Tactical Barbell proposes you work towards being a different kind of athlete. The kind that is not only extremely strong, but also highly conditioned. If you look carefully, you’ll see these people all around you. That guy on your Emergency Response Team with the 350lb bench press and a sub 9 minute 1.5 mile run. The old Marine Sergeant that can run 6 miles in under 40 minutes, deadlifts over 600lbs and can do 30 (non-kipping) pull-ups.

We want to avoid being the guy with the 700lb squat that gets gassed walking up the stairs - or the marathoner that tops out at 10-20 push-ups. One of the biggest myths being perpetrated is that you have to choose between being chubby and strong or lean and weak. You don’t. There is an elite middle ground.

So how exactly do you get very, very, good at everything?

It’s NOT by combining everything into one random super-workout and repeating. That’s a great approach for working up a sweat, and releasing some endorphins – not so great for actually progressing your abilities. Most of you probably have this figured out by now.

Tactical Barbell takes a simple, structured, three pronged approach to conditioning.

It consists of Base Building, followed by a transition to a more specific conditioning protocol. Periodic maintenance of lower-priority fitness domains complete our model.

In Part I you’ll be introduced to the TB2 conditioning protocols. First up, Base Building, which serves as a kind of basic training for everyone. Base Building will harden the body, harden the mind, and prepare you for what’s to come. From there, you’ll transition to one of two specialist continuation protocols: Black or Green. Both protocols have several variations to fit your unique goals.

In Part II, you’ll be let in to the Tactical Barbell Training Vault. You’ll have access to over 50 high quality conditioning sessions, some of which have been provided by some very hard, extreme people.

This isn’t going to be a mishmash of exercises thrown together laundry-list style to make you feel like you’re doing something because you’re busy and complicated. Instead, each session fits into a broader category, and is used to develop certain attributes at certain times during your training plan. For example, certain sessions are designed to stimulate cardiac hypertrophy and are almost solely used during Base Building and Green protocol. Other sessions might focus on speed-endurance or anaerobic capacity, and are primarily used with Black template. Other categories include work capacity, cardiac contractile strength, and lactic/alactic development. So no need to worry, there is method to the madness. You won’t be running around working up a sweat for nothing. Each session is designed to progress your skill and ability in a certain category. You’ll get to choose the unique sessions you are drawn to, and insert them into your protocol when that category is called for.

In Part III, we go over options for tweaking and customizing your protocol. We’ll also talk about incorporating real life – i.e. sports and training. For those of you that don’t want to think at all – you’ll be provided with the 17 week program we use for clients that are preparing for entry into tactical law enforcement (i.e. SWAT, ERT etc.). It consists of an 8 week Base Building phase followed by 9 weeks of Black protocol, individual sessions picked for you.

By the time you get to the end of this book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of how to program your conditioning. You’ll also know exactly how to incorporate your strength training, whether you use TB1 or something else. You’ll know how many conditioning sessions to do per week, what attributes those sessions develop, and how the rest of your life fits in. You’ll learn how to choose the systems you need to prioritize, the systems you need to maintain, and how to handle the logistics of both. You’ll have a thorough grasp of the skeletal structure of TB2, and how to fill it in to meet your particular goals. This is not an academic textbook approach to conditioning.

Tactical Barbell is all about simple, direct, concrete approaches that bring about results. We’re not interested in putting a unique spin on things, turning fitness into a neuroscience discussion, or conducting a marketing experiment. You’ll be provided with the hard-earned tools and approaches used by the pros, to get you where you want to be. That’s it. It’s all about having a simple, intelligent, and actionable plan. It’s easy to be hard, harder to be smart. If you’re tired of hype, politics in fitness, and countless streams of conflicting information spewed by the inexperienced, welcome home.

OPERATIONAL ATHLETES – THE ROADMAP

Before we get into the details, let’s look at our big-picture three-step approach for both operators and civilian multi-skilled athletes.

STEP 1 – BASE BUILDING

Build a base of general endurance and strength FIRST.

General Endurance will primarily consist of aerobic development.

Strength will consist of both maximal strength and strength-endurance.

Operators/operational athletes will use occupational-specific endurance sessions. Run, ruck, swim, etc.

Civilians/others can utilize any of the listed session provided.

I can get fancy here and talk about ‘resilience’ training, and movement skills blah blah all day to make things seem complicated. The truth is you will develop things like resiliency and everything else you need through all facets of your training, by simply showing up and doing the work.

STEP 2 – CONTINUATION PROTOCOL

After Base-Building, use a continuation protocol. Your continuation conditioning will consist of anaerobic system development, work capacity, speed, power and strength.

This is your main training plan, which is specific to your individual needs.

Actively progress the systems you need to excel at, maintain the systems you don’t.

Your continuation protocol will be customized for you. Occupational requirements will dictate what skills some of you need to prioritize. The protocol of a SWAT member will differ from that of a military operator, which will differ from that of a recreational athlete.

If you’re a military operator, your continuation protocol will continue to progress endurance training along with other traits.

If you’re a civilian or non-military operator (police ERT, HRT, SWAT etc.), endurance may be set aside and maintained while other skills are aggressively advanced.

Scale individual training sessions based on skill level and needs. Military operators might perform an LSS run for 2-3 hours, a civilian novice might start with half hour increments.

STEP 3 – MAINTAIN LOWER PRIORITY FITNESS DOMAINS

Maintain, rather than attempt to actively progress your lower priority fitness domains. For example if endurance is low on your priority list, it shouldn’t make up a significant portion of your training.

There are several approaches to maintenance, including a periodic return to Base Building, or the inclusion of a minimal amount of lower priority training.

This three step framework will put you light years ahead of anyone trying to do everything at the same time ‘super-workout’ style. This is similar to the approaches utilized by professional athletes/teams, career mixed martial artists, and others that are serious about their training. Unless you’re satisfied with a generic, general level of fitness, training by its nature cannot be general, or cookie-cutter. Working out can be generic, training cannot.

CONDITIONING

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. This isn’t a textbook, but I do want to paint a general picture of the systems we’re training so you understand why certain things are done the way they are, or included in this book.

Conditioning. What is it exactly? It’s very simple;

Conditioning is your ability to produce energy to meet the task at hand.

That task might be fighting an opponent in a cage, ruck marching for 20 miles while carrying an 80lb load, or sprinting as fast as you can for 100 meters. All require energy. Different types of energy, and different ‘fuel’ sources.

Conditioning is not just ‘cardio’. There’s interplay with strength, strength-endurance, power and other systems. The body is interconnected and complex, so there is a lot of overlap and debate as to what the boundaries actually are between things like ‘strength’ and ‘conditioning’. For our purposes ‘conditioning’ is improving energy production. I won’t be getting great detail, but if you’re interested in going deeper refer to the ‘References/Recommended Reading’ list at the end of this book.

The body’s general ‘fuel’ consists of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). The engines that put that fuel to use are the aerobic and anaerobic systems. Creatine-Phosphate, lactate, muscle glycogen, stored liver glycogen, oxidation of fatty acids (fatty tissue), all play a part in generating energy or facilitating ATP. It all depends on what energy systems being used. For example, a 100 meter maximum effort sprint is powered by stored ATP/creatine-phosphate. You won’t be tapping into your body fat for energy, as you would if you were running a marathon.

Put aside your image of aerobic training = jogging for a moment. The aerobic system generates the majority of ATP for most daily activity. Unless you’re performing an activity that has you go all-out for about 10-120 seconds or less, the aerobic system will be providing you with the majority of your energy.

A well-developed aerobic system can provide energy for hours. It utilizes both sugar and fat in the process. It supports and enhances the anaerobic system by helping ‘reset’ it when the anaerobic system gases out. The better your aerobic system is, the quicker you can get back to using the anaerobic system. Here’s the downside. The aerobic system doesn’t generate energy as quickly as the anaerobic system. Slow steady state jogging for long periods of time is a classic demonstration of aerobic energy at work. But don’t let that very specific example fool you, the aerobic system will provide most of the energy for almost any work or exercise you do. That energy may be ‘background’ or ‘supporting’ energy in some cases, but it is there working away.

The anaerobic system (which includes the lactic and alactic system) is capable of generating energy extremely fast, but can only sustain that energy for about 10 seconds (alactic system) or 60-90