More Thoughts on Grease-the-Groove and High-Frequency Training

     In my last article, I presented a few workout routines along with some training ideas for using high-frequency training (HFT) with what is commonly termed “grease-the-groove” workouts.  After writing it, I had a few thoughts still rumbling around my mind for some various ways that you can implement and use HFT.  HFT, just like other methods of training, has multiple routines and programs that you can work with.

     Grease the groove training is sometimes called synaptic facilitation.  Why?  It comes from Russian research on strength training and the methods that the countries from the former Soviet Union used in both weightlifting and powerlifting training.  “Soviet research clarified that repetitive stimulation of a motoneuron increases the strength of its synaptic connections and may even form new synapses… the process is called synaptic facilitation or, in lifter speak, ‘grease the groove’... by frequently practicing your competition technique with a moderate weight you will be making your muscles more and more responsive to the central command.  So in competition you will be trying as hard as usual but lifting more.”*  In the same book, Pavel recommends that most GTG training should be done in the 70-80% of the lifter’s 1-rep max range—“heavy enough to notice, yet light enough to pay attention to the technique and not need to get psyched up.”  Basically, you train relatively “easy” in that 70-80% range with multiple sets of relatively low reps and then repeat often.  I also refer to it as “easy strength” training.  If you’re after hypertrophy only, then you can also use what I call “easy muscle” workouts.  You lower your percentage down to 50-70% and do multiple sets of more reps, but everything else is pretty much the same.  Those are the “basics” of the training but how do you go about actually implementing it?  You have several options, all of which will work.

Start Easy, Slowly Add Volume

     One option is to start your training with a low-volume program.  Just how low will depend on the number of days that you train.  Select a training frequency that you know you can stick with.  If you can only make it to the gym 3 days per week, then train on a full-body program.  3 days of training per lift/muscle group should be the lowest frequency for HFT.  Whether you train 3, 4, 5, or even 6 days per week, start off with an easy workout.  Do no more than 3 sets for each lift.  You might want to start with just 2 sets.  You could, for instance, do a workout of squats, overhead presses, and thick-bar deadlifts for 2 sets of 5 reps on each lift.  Stick with that for at least one week, two would probably be better.  For the next couple weeks after that, add another set, so that you’re doing 3x5.  After another couple weeks, go to a 4x5 workout.  And, yep, after another couple weeks, move to 5x5 on each lift.

     Don’t force adding weight to any of the lifts.  Start with, say, 80% of your 5-rep maximum on each lift.  Add weight naturally.  Read that last sentence another few times until it sinks in.  Add weight when your workouts start feeling easy.  You’ll know when you know.  There’s no need to get psyched up for your workouts, take a pre-workout of any kind, or act like an enraged madman before any of your lifts.

     If you’re a powerlifter, just train the 3 powerlifts.  If you want to get “all-around” big and strong, then train with some kind of squat, a pressing movement, a heavy pull or two (one each for your lower and upper body), and maybe a curl.  You won’t need anything else.  Your training plan might look like this:

Monday:

Squats

Power cleans

Tuesday:

Bench presses

Weighted chins

Barbell curls

Wednesday:

Squats 

Power cleans

Friday:

Bench presses

Weighted chins

Barbell curls

Saturday:

Squats

Power cleans

     On the following week, reverse the workouts so that you do the benches, chins, and curls on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday and the squats and cleans on Tuesday and Friday.  There are no set/rep recommendations for a reason.  Follow the suggestions above, or something similar.

Use a “Set” Workout Throughout the Program

     Another option is to start the program with a “set” volume for each training session that doesn’t change from workout-to-workout and throughout the training cycle.  It needs to be something relatively hard but not too hard.  At first, you should be sore from the workouts, but your body will adapt to the training.  Once it does adapt, you stick with the volume until you are no longer sore at all from the training and perhaps even a couple weeks beyond that.

     A workout that I mentioned in my last article does this with bodyweight training.  Do 100 push-ups and between 30 and 50 push-ups each day, at least 6 days per week.  If you are well-conditioned already, it will need to be even higher than those numbers, though this method of training works best if you’re not accustomed to bodyweight training.  Don’t do any pre-determined number of sets and reps, just count your total number of reps on each movement.  I mean, you could do 10x10 on the push-ups, but this works best if you just do each set until the reps either get hard or until your reps slow down.  You might do 25 on your first set, 20 on your 2nd and 3rd, and then 15 reps on your 4th and 5th set, and finish with 5 reps on your last set.  It’ll probably be easy for the first couple of days, but by the 3rd and 4th workout, you’re struggling and you might have to do more sets of less reps in order to complete the hundred reps.  You’ll be tired and fatigued by the end of the first week, probably in the 2nd, as well.  But you adapt to it and by the 4th week, you’re doing each workout with relative ease.  Stick with it for another 2 to 3 weeks and then move on to something else.

     You can also just do your sets periodically throughout the day or in 2 or 3 sessions.  Do it however you want.  Just get the total number of reps in.

     You can do this with weights, as well.  Select the workout that you’re going to do and the number of days per week that you’re going to train.  If you select a full-body workout done 3 days per week, then, again, select 5 “big” compound lifts and select your total number of reps based on how heavy you’re going to train.  If you’re just after hypertrophy, shoot for 50 reps on each lift.  If you’re after strength along with muscle, then select 25 reps.  And if you’re only after strength, shoot for 10 to 15 reps.

     You might do this:  Train with squats, power cleans, military presses, weighted chins, and barbell curls.  Do 25 reps on each day using 80% of your 5-rep max on each lift.  To start with, you might do 5x5 or even 3x5 and 5x2.  As the weeks go by, decrease the number of sets it takes you to get all 25 reps.  By the end of the training cycle, you might be doing 2x10 and 1x5 or anything similar.  Once you reach the point that you’re quite easily doing 12 reps on the first set of each lift, it’s time to move on to something else.

     Another option is to use a set/rep combination that doesn’t change.  So, you might opt for 3x5 on each of your lifts.  Start the program using 90% of your 5-rep max on every movement.  The 3rd set of each exercise might be tough but you can still get all 5 reps—that’s the weight you’re shooting for, so if you need to drop a little below 90%, that’s perfectly fine.  Stick with the same weight and the same set/reps until the workouts get easy and only then do you add weight.  So, you might do the same workout every day for 3 weeks.  At that point, you add 10 pounds to the big lifts, such as squats and deadlifts, maybe bench presses, and 5 pounds to smaller lifts such as barbell curls or even overhead presses.  I wrote “maybe” on bench presses, because you might only want to add 5 pounds to any of your presses.  Like all GTG methods, you’re trying to coax strength gains through frequent training and not trying to force it.

Cycle Your Training Loads

     This option has the widest range of training variety—options within options within options.  It deserves a training article of its own.  A lot of my essays and articles are based on this premise.  Here, I’ll just give you a few of the ways you can load cycle.

     By the way, if you enjoy training hard, then this is the option for you.  If there’s a “problem” or an issue that some lifters have with “easy strength” or GTG methods in general, it’s the fact that the workouts, for the most part, are easy.  Maybe the general training public wouldn’t understand such a complaint.  Get great results without actually working out hard?  What the hell is there to complain about that, would probably be the average reaction from the couch potato who struggles to, well, you know, get off the couch.  But lifters train because they love to train, hard and ultra-heavy workouts included.  By cycling your training loads in your high-frequency workouts, you can lift heavy or hard periodically.  Just how periodic will depend upon the program and the individual lifter’s work capacity.

     If you’re new to HFT and/or full-body workouts, the best option to start with is a Bill Starr-style heavy-light-medium program.  For detailed information, read my article on Starr HERE or, even better, purchase my book that lays out the system in detail.  However, for the sake of our discussion in this essay, let’s keep it simple.  Train 3 days per week on a full-body program.  Use the same sets and reps on each training day—that allows you to control workload with ease.  The first workout is your heavy session, the 2nd is your light one, and the 3rd is your medium workout.

     You can train 6 days per week with H-L-M training, using a 2-way split, if you just want to go to the gym each day.  Train, say, squats and pulls on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and presses (along with whatever auxiliary lifts) on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Don’t do any more training for each lift than what you would do using the 3-day model—just split the typical full-body workout in half.

     To get the most benefits out of GTG and HFT, though, I think you need more than just 3 days of training per lift/muscle.  I think, for most lifters, 6 days is probably too much.  Which means that your “sweet spot” for HFT is going to be either 4 or 5 sessions.

     For 4 days of training, I like a heavy-light-medium-light schedule.  Train on a 2-on, 1-off, 1-on, 1-off, 1-on, 1-off split—in other words, you might train on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  A sample program, to give you an example, might look like this:

Monday - Heavy:

Squats: 5 sets of 5 reps.  Do 2 or 3 progressively heavier sets followed by 2 or 3 sets at around 90% of your 5-rep max or simply do 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps, working up to an all-out set of 5.

Deadlifts: 5x3.  Use the same protocol as the squats but drop your reps to 3.

Bench presses: 5x5

Tuesday - Light:

Squats: 3x5.  Use around 70% of the top weight used for the Monday session.

Power snatches: 3x3

Military presses: 5x5.  You can work up to a heavy weight here since the exercise itself will keep your workload down.

Thursday - Medium:

Squats: 4x5.  Work up to 85-90% of the weights used on Monday.

Deficit deadlifts. 4x3

Bench presses: 4x5

Saturday - Light:

Squats: 3x5.  Use a weight slightly heavier than the Tuesday session, but lighter than Thursday’s.

Power cleans: 3x3

Close-grip bench presses: 3x5.  Use the same protocol as the squats.  You can also substitute this with military presses and do the same workout as the Tuesday session.

     Keep in mind that this is just an example of what you might do.  Some advanced lifters can train with more sets at each session and some lifters will do better with only 3 sets for each lift at every single session if they are naturally “low-volume lifters.”

     You can also follow a “Russian” system of 4-days-per-week of training a la Sheiko, where you do 2 squat sessions, 2 deadlift sessions, and bench press at every single workout.  If you want to know what that would look like, then check out my article From Russia with Strength and Power.

     For a 5-day protocol, do 1 heavy session, 1 medium session, and 3 light workouts.  It might look like this:

Monday: heavy

Tuesday: light

Wednesday: light

Thursday: medium

Saturday: light

     The Monday and Thursday session should essentially look the same as the M/TH workouts in the 4-day program.  The Tuesday and Saturday light sessions should also look the same.  At the Wednesday workout, use weights that are lighter than both the T/SA workouts.

     If you’re an advanced lifter, or a lifter who naturally understands his body, you can follow a more intuitive model of training by taking a “Bulgarian” approach.  Train however many days in a row that you want.  On each day, just work up to a “max” on your lifts, whether it’s for 5 reps, triples, doubles, or even singles.  Your weight will naturally “wax and wane” and your loads will just cycle from that.  For details on exactly what this would look like, check out my article The Bulgarian Way.

Jump in the “Deep End” Right from the Start

     For those who are advanced enough to handle it, you can just start with a heavy, high-volume program.  For a couple of weeks, you’ll feel like absolute hell, but then your body adapts to it.  At that point, watch out.  It’s time for gains.  One caveat, I suppose: You can’t really call this GTG and it’s certainly not “easy strength” since every single workout is going to be hard from the outset.

     If you decide to take this route, take off for at least 4 or 5 days before starting your training, maybe an entire week.  Sit around, relax, and don’t do anything.  Eat as much food as possible.  What would the program look like?  Something like the “Smolov squat cycle” is what I have in mind.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, it looks like this:

Weeks 1-2 - Break-In Weeks:

Squat 3 days per week, working up to a heavy, but not entirely “all-out” set of 5 reps.  This will prepare you for the actual training.  If you’ve already been following a HF squat regimen, you can just jump right in with the program below if you wish.

Week 3:

Monday: 4 sets of 9 reps using 70% of your 1-rep max

Wednesday: 5 sets of 7 reps @ 75%

Friday: 7 sets of 5 reps @ 80%

Saturday: 10 sets of 3 reps @ 85%

Week 4-6:

Follow the Week 3 workout but add 10 pounds to each day every single week.  The original Smolov program recommended adding 20 pounds in week 4 and 10 pounds to each lift in the weeks after that.  I think just adding 10 pounds to each lift will work fine.  In week 7, you rest for several days and then test your max.  If you use it for a powerlifting meet, do a light squatting session on Monday and then rest completely after that until your meet on Saturday.  You can also continue it for another several weeks if you’re making gains and want to see how far you can push it.

     Can you follow this for all of your lifts?  Probably not.  It would simply be too much.  If I was going to use it for a full powerlifting meet, I would deadlift once a week on the Saturday session and bench press twice weekly, on Monday and Friday.

The Sum of Things

     For even more programs, search through the blog.  At this point, about half of my programs probably follow the HFT route.  Do a search for “high-frequency training” or “easy strength” or “grease the groove” and you should find plenty.

     These workouts are great for strength but also for building size, as well.  The difference, basically, will come down to how you eat.  If you’re trying to pack on size, then eat as much food as you can each day and relax as much as possible outside of the gym.  You can also use it to stay lean or get lean while building strength.  When preparing for a powerlifting meet, I used HFT programs, lost weight during my pre-meet phase, and still got stronger each week as the meet approached.  Whether you’re trying to get big and strong or just strong, eat enough protein each day.

     Follow any program that you select for at least 8 weeks, outside of the bodyweight suggestions, which might run its course by 6 weeks.  You can stick with any program for 12 weeks, if you want, though that will probably be about the limit for any program, not just the ones in this article.

     If you have any comments or questions, leave them in the “comments” section below or send me an email.  If you enjoyed this article and enjoy my blog in general, then consider purchasing one of my books.  Click HERE for information on all of my books currently available for purchase.

*Power to the People Professional: How to Add 100s of Pounds to Your Squat, Bench, and Deadlift with Advanced Russian Technique by Pavel Tsatsouline