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Mike
Mike is a currently a coach at DeFranco’s Gym in Wyckoff, NJ. He studied under Buddy Morris and James Smith while at the University of Pittsburgh and has also studied at various physical therapy practices. He has coached levels of athletes from Pro-Bowl, MLB, to pre-pubescent athletes and has also consulted for high caliber athletes worldwide.
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Mike has also written articles for various websites and is the founder of a website that provides free information in hopes of properly educating a mass of coaches and athletes around the world.
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Extensive versus Intensive Training

by: Mike Guadango

Intensive work is anything that you need more than 24 hours to recover from. Extensive work is anything you need less than 24 hours to recover from. By that definition, you can perform extensive work every single day without rest. However, you should still program in load reductions.

It has been said that after accumulation blocks (i.e. blocks of training where you are systematically increasing the volume) that it is not necessary to implement load reductions or deloads (which I have flirted with). I don't agree with this. Though the stress from accumulation is limited by intensity, the accumulated volume still needs to be deloaded to give the body a chance to recover and adapt. Obviously, this is also dependent on the accumulation block... I'm speaking in generalities. In my personal experience training, and with what I’ve observed from my athletes, results are typically heightened when deloaded post accumulation and/or prior to intensification. In other words, after a period of increasing the workload, the deload period is ideal for overreaching.

After base levels of GPP are created, I utilize the high/low method from the late great Charlie Francis (www.charliefrancis.com - buy everything you can). This alternates days by rating the intensity, high, medium or low. Low intensity (extensive training) takes 24 hours or less to recover. Medium intensity takes less than 36 hours to recover from. For this reason, medium intensity work is accounted for as a high intensity day. And high intensity work takes 48hours or more to recover from - it's the definition of intensive.

Now, regarding recovery and extensive work, most people tend to think that just because they didn’t max out or go to failure that they did what would be classified as extensive work. People may go as far as to classify anything under 80% to be extensive.

So, according to this, in theory, you could perform typical body building workouts on extensive days: Monday, Wednesday & Friday perform your sprints, jumps, throws, heavy squats heavy bench, heavy pulls. Then perform your bodybuilding workouts on extensive days: Tuesday – Back and Bi’s, Thursday – Chest and Tri’s, Saturday – Legs and even Sunday – Forearms and shoulders.

Technically as long as you don’t go above 80% or to failure you can do that every day right? This is not the case. It's not black and white. There are some instances where you CAN do that, but as Charlie Francis has said, “just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.”

The point of extensive days is to get in extra work to increase your work capacity while still not doing too much, allowing for your system to recover. You really think you can recover fully with a body building split on extensive days? Your system will be too shot.

After tempo work on low days, I will typically pick exercises that have a low motor unit involvement to deliver a “pump” to my guys. C’mon now, everyone likes getting jacked. I’ll let them hit some light shoulders and guns, but nothing too crazy. That being said, don’t think that I will rule out main lifts entirely on extensive days. I’m not opposed to utilizing demanding exercises like bench, squat or deadlift at low intensities or concentrically. I’ll do this to promote blood flow and restore range of motion. As you can see, many roads lead to Rome.





CATEGORY: Training