If I haven’t scared you off with the first part of this program, then surely the second portion of my 12 Week Functional Endurance Program will do so. If you’ve been following along with us so far you’ve made some great improvement in your endurance, and I would suspect you’ve also made some great strides in your overall strength as well. Keep reading for the full details of part 2!
Broadly speaking, this portion of the program picks up where part one leaves off. We’ve kept the same training split, with three days of pure endurance work, and three days of WODs and strength component.
Just as before, there is one day of overlap where you can choose to do an easy run in the morning, and a WOD/strength session in the afternoon. You don’t have to do it this way. You can move that easy run to the weekend, but you will cut into your rest days. Make your choice and live with the consequences!
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The 12 Week Functional Endurance Program (Part 2)
This part of the program will be six weeks in length with one deload. You will also find that the last week is a mirror of week one. This allows us to compare our progress from those many months ago. It also allows you to post those sweet PR’s on the Instagram. I mean, if it isn’t on IG then did you even PR bro?
Week 7
This is the first week of part two. You’ll notice that the overall volume of running has been reduced somewhat. You will also notice that the intensity and running speed has increased.
The next thing you will notice is that many of the strength moves will be listed as a TM. This is a technical max for the day. It is not a personal record, or PR. TM means that you should work up to the heaviest weight you can handle with technically perfect form. Let’s use the power clean TM as an example.
Here I would expect you to warm up and then gradually increase weight in the power clean, right up until your form starts to break down. This could be any number of things. You might end up going to low, or doing a squat clean. You might start splitting your feet much too wide. Any of these are degradations in form, and not what we are looking for. There is also no expectation that you increase load week to week. Some days you’ll do better and some days, not so much. I want heavy reps with solid form.
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Week 8
In this week, we see an increase in running speed for the intervals. This is going to help you feel comfortable running at a new PR pace, both for the mile, and the 5k. It sounds silly, but you can’t run faster unless you practice running faster.
Those of you who’ve read my book on functional fitness programming will know that I often advocate programming the WODs with the same muscle groups as the strength work. This ensures that you get enough effective volume to build muscle mass, and strength. Otherwise, you tend to stagnate.
For the strength moves that are not listed as TM’s, we are gradually increasing in intensity, relative to one rep max. At this point in the cycle, you should feel that these are very heavy, but not impossible reps. Most of you should be moving the weight pretty well provided you are eating enough, and recovering appropriately.
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Week 9
This week really starts to ramp up the intensity in the running, WODs, and the strength. Make sure you are doing the little things like warm ups, and mobility correctly. I find that when athletes start to take short cuts, that’s when injuries, and poor training sessions occur.
The other common pitfall I see, is when athletes know they can run faster than the prescribed pace, and they start to make every workout max effort. Resist the urge to do that, both with the endurance work, and with the strength work. You are making progress, but there is still more work to be done. The only exception to this is when a max effort is specifically required.
Week 10
This is going to be the most challenging week yet. You will be running faster than you ever have before. These intervals shouldn’t really be max effort in any one interval. You might find that as an overall training session it feels like a max effort. That’s exactly the kind of work that leads to tremendous progress.
On some days you might feel like you’re running a little low on gas in the tank. That’s fine. I recommend that you warm up a little more thoroughly than you normally would. Extra technique work and stretching can help you get into the right state to train. I can tell you from personal experience that I’ve had some of my best all time performances on days when I didn’t feel much like training.
Week 11
This is our deload week. The promise land is here, and you can stop making dad noises after getting up off the couch. Don’t act like you have no idea what I’m talking about!
As always, deload weeks are the chance for your body to recovery from the accumulated stresses of the training cycle. This means less overall volume, but we will still keep a fair amount of intensity, especially in our endurance work.
You’ll note that two of the running session are longer intervals at max speed. These intervals allow you to get used to running at roughly the same speed you will be running when we set our PR’s next week. Pay special attention to how you feel during these longer efforts, so you understand what it’s going to feel like next week.
Week 12
As was stated earlier, this week is the exact same as week one. This is where all your hard work pays off. In order to set yourself up for success, and huge PR’s, I recommend you read this article about adding carbs to your diet during important chunks of training.
I recommend keeping the exact same training schedule as you have been throughout the cycle. Don’t make any changes just to make changes. For the lifts, I recommend three attempts at each, after a thorough warm up. Your first attempt is a conservative PR, your next is where you really would like to be, and your last is a moon shot PR.
For Fight Gone Bad, I recommend using a video camera or another person to count as you tend to cut intervals short to record your reps. This doesn’t sound like much, but if you drop 5 reps each round, you might have lost 5% of your PR!
The last WOD will require a thorough warm up. You can’t go into short, intense WODs cold, and expect to warm up during them. That is a recipe for disaster. Ideally you will warm up your power snatch and do a few short intervals of 3-6 reps of each to get your energy systems ready.
Final Thoughts
This has been quite a long training cycle. By now you should be fitter than you’ve ever been before. Depending your goals, you might want to stick with more endurance oriented work, or switch to a muscle building program.
Either way I’d advise you to take a look at the physical attributes that are holding you back the most, and pick a program that helps you shore up that particular weakness. As functional fitness athletes, our weaknesses hold us back more than our strengths can assist us. Now get out there and start training!
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Hi Jake, great program, the Weds running, what are the rest intervals?
Thanks
Nick
Those are your choice. Minimum is double run time up to three times your run time.
With the power clean strength work, is it ok to substitute deadlifts? My wrist doesn’t love heavy cleans…I can often get around that during accessory work and WODs if I use DBs or KBs
Todd, that’s an ok substitute. Ideally you’d sub deadlifts with a light to moderate elastic band as that’s closer to the power requirement of a power clean. Don’t stress if you don’t have a band though.
Thanks! Looking forward to starting the program. Training for a half marathon Spartan race up and down a mountain in summer and this will be my first block of OCR specific training!