Welcome to AES-14, similarly to AES-13 we aim to get you 40 minutes of training that focuses on muscle building weight training and 10 minutes of core and conditioning (more conditioning in this cycle though). We expect that you are using this to complement Hyrox days for more cardio. We are going to pack your time in this program full of resistance training. We follow a regional body part split. The weekly training split is as follows.
Sunday: Upper body Push
Monday: Lower body squat, hinge and claves
Wednesday: Upper Body Pull
Thursday: Lower body squat, hinge and claves
Friday: Full Upper Body
By the end of the week, we will have hit all the major movement patterns several times. You will get plenty of volume in the squat, hinge, push, pull, and core with a great mixture of unilateral work and bilateral work throughout the week.
The big lifts that you will train for this cycle are the incline bench press, sumo deadlift, split squat, strict dips, strict pull-ups, back squat, and the seated barbell press.
Expect to see slight variations of these movements from week to week as we progress. Slight variations help improve your movement ability, they help you keep engaged, and they are similar enough that you are going to see progress nicely.
We will see again the Pull ups and strict dip but with a different format: Max reps in 10 minutes. Beat your record every week. If you plan to use resistance band, keep the same type of band for the entire cycle. the progression here is to try to achieve a higher number of reps every week. Focus on proper form and full range of motion.
Look out for accessory strength work in our strength balance sections. These often hit smaller muscle groups. We’ll be exploring rear delt fly, dumbbell Romanian deadlifts, lateral dumbbell raises, bicep and tricep variations, and single leg hip lifts.
And we have several unique styles of Core and conditioning station included in every session in this cycle with different varieties to help you keep engaged to hit your cardiovascular system every day.
Early Cycle approach
Approaching the first and second weeks of a new training cycle differs from how you will approach weeks five and six. Although we want you to push the effort every week, starting a new training cycle with a little room in the tank is important to allow you to progress for the remaining 4 to 5 weeks of the program. With every new training block comes new exercises, reps and set formats, and conditioning styles. To get the most out of the six-week training block, we recommend taking the first and second weeks closer to RPE 7-8 on most exercises to allow for progressing towards RPE 9-10 in the later weeks. This structure eliminates the need for deload weeks and allows for long-term sustainable progress.
Late Cycle Approach
As you approach the last couple weeks of the training cycle, you should be familiar with the formats and exercises. Utilize this to your advantage to maximize the stimulus you can get. The greater the stimulus, the greater the adaptation.
The later weeks of the cycle are where the benefit of variety and consistency match in a beautiful medley. There is a sweet spot between these two variables that we at SQD5 believe is the best way to progress in training for a long time. Variety is beneficial for various reasons; consistency is potentially even more beneficial for various reasons. SQD5 is built on a combination of variety and consistency, leading to athletes feeling not burnt.
