This is the final portion of the 12 Week Metabolic Strength Program for functional fitness athletes. If you’ve been following along, then you’ve already set some PR’s, and you’re probably feeling better than ever. Continue on with this last 6 weeks to maximize your gains.
Before we get into the specifics of this portion of the programming, we need to do a quick recap of this program’s goals. I would also strongly recommend that you check out the 12 Week Metabolic Strength Program (Part 1), before you dive right into this program.
Program Goals
- Increase Functional Strength Capacity
- Develop energy systems to better utilize increased strength
- Increase muscle mass
Primarily, we want to increase our functional strength capacity. This means that I want you to get stronger in a wide variety of situations, not just specific one rep max lifts. Sure, you’ll increase your strength there, but you will also increase your strength in a fatigued state, under less than ideal conditions. To my mind, this is much more usable in the real world, and certainly during a WOD or a metcon.
The second goal of this programming is to increase your anaerobic and aerobic energy system capacity. Increasing these systems allows you to train harder, recover faster, and ultimately they are responsible for great WOD performances.
Lastly, I can’t imagine an athlete working this hard without increasing their muscle mass. This type of anabolic training is best supported by the correct amount of food. Said another way. You need to make sure you are eating enough, and the right kind of food to make the most progress. Now we can get into the specifics of the program!
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Week 7
If you’ve followed along from part one, then you can see we’ve kept the same general flow from the previous six weeks, but the details of the programming have changed.
We’ve maintained our mid week and end of week long WODs. We’ve also switched our complex to a snatch complex. You’ll find, as you continue on throughout the weeks, that the squat and deadlift weights really start to get heavy.
Week 8
It’s important to note that on the lifts that are annotated AHAP, I want you to go as heavy as you can with good form. If your back is rounding, or you’re losing your balance, that is too heavy. You need to practice heavy weight with good form, not just moving the bar!
As I mentioned previously, the last session of the week is a partner WOD. If you’re planning on doing this with a friend, then you need to drop one solo session out of the program. Pick the session that would be the easiest for you to do, and replace it with the partner WOD. You should be working no more than five days per week.
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Week 9
This is the first week where we start to get very heavy. By now you should be way over your previous one rep maxes on your main lifts. You should also feel like you are able to push a little harder or faster on WODs than you have previously.
These long WODs often give you a specified rest period. This is for a reason. I want you to go harder than your normal WOD pace, with the expectation that you will recover during the rest. This is just like interval training in running. You have to practice moving at a faster pace for short periods, and eventually you will be able to maintain that pace for the whole duration.
Week 10
This is our heaviest and hardest week, by far. It is just prior to our deload. I expect that you probably won’t feel the best here. That’s ok. Make sure you are paying attention to your warm ups and cool downs. If anything, I would expect you to take a little more time warming up.
I would also like you to take around 3-4 minutes between these 6×1 AHAP sets. The goal here is to practice pushing a heavy bar with impeccable form. Again, I don’t want any back rounding or other deviations. I’ll accept a little form degradation once we attempt our one rep maxes, but not here.
Week 11
This is our deload week. The weights are still heavy but not as heavy as week 10. Once you finish this week, you should take 2-3 days off and then move into the final week.
This week decreases the overall demand on your body by about 5-10 percent, which allows your body some recovery time for the test week.
Week 12
This is our final week. You’ll notice that this week looks similar to week one. This is for a reason. If you’ve been diligent in your training, nutrition, and recovery, then you will be setting some PR’s, both in your lifts, and in your WODs that you performed many months ago.
For the lifts, I would like a nice thorough warm up, and 3-4 max attempts. Your first attempt should be a small PR, your second should be what you really hope to achieve, and your last attempt or two should be a shoot for the moon attempt. It’s ok to fail an attempt. If you don’t, then how do you know you don’t have more in the tank?
Final Thoughts
This program has been very successful at my home gym, and I had several athletes PR their lifts by week six, and show significant progress by the end of the program. I would expect somewhere between a 5-10% improvement for most athletes. Obviously, newer athletes will show more improvement than this, and very experienced athletes be on the lower end.
Now it’s time for you to go out there and finish this last six weeks. Don’t forget to put your PR’s in the comments below! Now get out there and start training!
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