Prepping for this meet I was determined to take what I have been doing the last two years and apply it in some way to the Conjugate System. I felt we came up with a great molding of two theories that would harvest some drastic strength and technique improvements. The closer we got to the meet Julia and I both were licking bounds which seemed beyond what we were both anticipating. We think we may have figured out why the culprit was and it was more to my surprise than hers.
The "Conjuphasic" part of our training was not the problem, I actually think this molding of theories is fantastic. I felt phenomenal coming out of our 9-week block of this, what followed is where we both fell into overtraining. I am taking the hit for this, I structured and laid out our progression leading up to the meet, as a coach it was hard for me to swallow this pill as it affected my outcome and now my wives as well. After the first nine weeks, we spend another 8-9 STILL PUSHING and I am confident I missed the mark and put us both into a state of overtraining as Julia's training lifts started to have negative returns as did mine and injury ensued. This is the first time I have experienced true overtraining before, the signs were obvious but my ability to navigate it was clouded as I chalked it up to, "peaking always sucks". Huge lessons were learned and my next attempt at this style of training will reap much greater benefits.
The plan went south when we added a "transmutation phase" or a phase to get accustomed to the straight bar again (with accommodating resistance) right before attempting to peak. During this Julia felt at her best and noticed once we entered into the first week of peaking everything was regressing. I found myself last a few weeks longer into our peak then felt the regression set in. I am currently implementing this style of training with several clients and my intern and have drastically cut down the weeks and manipulated this phase to give a de-load to some and skip it entirely for others who I do not think need it. Eager and excited to watch what areas we build up that were previously exposed as weaknesses.
All in all this experience gave me a great lesson in training, coaching, and understanding my abilities in both roles when using these systems. Manipulating training protocol and tracking the bodies response can be a very fun thing, as well as, frustrating to the max. I experienced both over the last three months and can take a step back and say, it was worth it.