FRI: Your PPBs Don’t Care About You

We are now five months into your PPBs and it’s time to take a look at your macro results. Each month, we are granted the opportunity to examine our progress within a micro approach, a small window of week to week improvement, but today I’d like you to zoom out and take a look at your PPB results  in the macro, the first five months of your year, to gain a better understanding of your fitness progress.

PPBs are not here for fun and most importantly, they are not here for your goals. They are here for your fitness.

In each day you come to the gym, you’re doing you. You might be going harder on the back squats than your neighbor because you care about absolute strength more. Or, you might be pushing the pace and taking the conditioning portion personally because you care about your cardiovascular work. Or, you might be crushing muscle class because you’re trying to get swole. You get the idea.

PPBs don’t give a shit, though. They only want to reveal your aggregate, total level of fitness across different conditioning energy systems. There is no tweaking or adjusting a PPB for your goal. There is only the truth of your level of fitness.

Let’s take a look at the different zones of PPBs and some areas to improve them if they aren’t moving forward.

Strength Endurance
Get used to moving heavier loads than you are used to for higher reps and push yourself to do them unbroken. For example, a second tier that has 15 goblet squats, pick a heavier weight you’ve never done and do all 15 at that weight, every round. A good opportunity is on high rep ladders (25-20-15, etc) and EMOMs.

Lactate Threshold
The most brutal system to challenge and improve. Barbell complexes and time under tension will improve this system. So will sustained sprints on the bike and erg. Muscle class can help this, as well.

Aerobic Power and Capacity
Exposing yourself to longer work blocks. Going hard for ten minutes will get you good at that. To get better at longer, you must do longer. Specificity principle 101. Take your effort at ten minutes, and gradually get used to extending it. Maintain it for twelve minutes. Then fifteen. Don’t jump right into thirty.

The best advice I can give you is that if your PPBs are not where you want them to be and your overall fitness ability is something you care about, then find what is weakest and address it. Don’t just throw more frequency or intensity at the problem.

-Dave

Friday, 6.1.18

For PPB.
Lactate Threshold 2

10’ Heats
25 RKB Swings (53#/35#)
10 Push Ups
400m Row
*Then rest the remaining time until your heat is back up*
(x3)
Record Total Time