On to the Next Stage
By Travis Mash
For www.EliteFTS.com
Now that the Arnold is over, it’s time to place all of my focus on Olympic lifting with some focus on speed for the bobsled. I want to do all of this and still get stronger in powerlifting. The two questions are how to do all of these at the same time and why. I’m going to try and answer both of these questions beginning with the why.
“Why” is actually a very good question. It all started with a middle-age crisis while losing my dad and the only girl whom I’ve ever loved all in the same year. Now it has turned into a quest! Can a 33-year-old man really increase his explosion and speed at an age when most “experts” say it’s impossible? I’ve heard thousands of times at seminars that athletes start slowing down after 25 years old. Well, I think that’s crazy!
In my first months of training, I’ve already proven to myself that this is wrong. Now I start the journey. The essence of the quest is to prove to people of all ages, genders, and races that nothing is impossible, and it’s never too late. Nothing could be more rewarding in life then to influence other people’s lives in such a positive way. Using God’s gifts to help others is, to me, leaving a legacy. To scoot through life never having the courage to lay it all out and risk it all isn’t living at all. When I turn 70 years old, the last thing I want to say is that I should have or could have done this or that. I hope this helps explain the reasons for my quest.
How. To some, this is the bigger question. With three sports, the two key components are training arrangement and volume. The first thing that I did was find out what they all have in common like posterior chain or explosion. I then took some of the differences and made a workout.
Here’s what I’ve come up with:
Day 1 (let’s say Monday)
Morning session
Overload sprint work (pushing or pulling a sled with varying weight, using a weighted vest, or running uphill)
Upper body work and abs
Evening session
Dynamic clean and jerks (roughly 60–70 percent, sometimes adding bands or chains, one set of eight reps with 30–45 seconds of rest)
Clean pulls with bands or chains, 90–110 percent, one set of 3–6 reps
Day 2 (Tuesday)
GPP work and flexibility
Day 3 (Wednesday)
Morning session
Dynamic box squats (same volume as normal without the circa max phase) so 50–60 percent plus bands or chains, two sets of eight reps
Lat work and reverse hypers
Evening session
Dynamic snatches, 60–70 percent with or without bands or chains, one set of eight reps
Snatch pulls with bands or chains, 90–110 percent, one set of 3–6 reps
Romanian deadlifts with or without chains or bands
Day 4 (Thursday)
GPP work and flexibility
Day 5 (Friday)
Morning session
Sprint form work and bounding
Evening session
ME (a version of one of the OL lifts)
Ex clean from boxes of varying heights; snatch from box; power clean; power snatch with chains, bands, different size bars; reverse band (I have a cool way to do these)
Upper body work and reverse hyper (I’ll do my bench work on this day)
Day 6 (Saturday)
Just an evening session
ME form of either a front squat or overhead squat
Ex either with chains or bands, cambered bar front squat, overhead drop squats, heavy squats, starting from the bottom position of each with bar suspended from a pin or chain, box squat of either
Plyometrics
Front squat or overhead squat (whichever wasn’t the ME exercise) for volume or lunges
Good mornings with varying bars
Abs
Day 7 (Sunday)
Morning session only
Over speed sprint work with bungee cord or running downhill
While my emphasis is on Olympic lifting, the sprint volume is turned back, not the intensity per number of sessions to allow recovery. The three days of sprint work will get trimmed down to two days the closer that I get to the American Open in December, and the intensity will start to drop some as well. With powerlifting, I’ll still be working on the squat and the bench, but the deadlift will be cut out for the most part. However, with all of the pulling and posterior chain work that I’ll be doing, the deadlift will be there when I need it again.
If powerlifting was my main focus, I would trim the Olympic lifts back to only two dynamic sessions—one with the snatch and the other with the clean and jerk, which would precede a lower body powerlifting session. I hope this clarifies how I will manage the volume of my training while preparing for three sports. This will be the challenge of my life, but that’s what it’s all about.
Travis Mash made history at the 2004 GNC Show of Strength by totaling 2414 lbs in the 220 lb class. This total surpassed the legendary Ed Coan and places Travis as one of the greatest powerlifters in history. He pursued Olympic lifting for awhile and trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In 2001, Travis’s best lifts included a 970 lb squat, a 705 lb bench press, and an 800 lb deadlift, all done in the 220 lb class.
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