The idea of a “shock training cycle” or “shock week” is certainly nothing new. Many authors have talked about this concept and this concept can often be found in some of the Russian texts.
The idea behind it is that you set up training so that during a certain period of time you actually increase the intensity and/or volume and/or frequency as a means of “shocking” your system into a new level of fitness. Of course this sort of approach comes with a price as the body gets beat down by the frequency/volume/intensity of training and oftentimes the improved level of fitness is not noticeable until after a restoration period (typically 1-2 weeks but definitely depends on the individual athlete and the amount of training done in the shock phase) where the fatigue that has accrued during training can dissipate.
This first article will discuss some concepts I feel are fundamental to setting up a shock training cycle. Following parts of this series will look at some research around this concept and talk about some practical ways I have applied it before for conditioning and strength training.
What are you trying to improve?
As you look to set up this training cycle or training week you need to first ask yourself what it is you are trying to enhance. Because there is a high amount of intensity and frequency directed at one key quality during this training phase it is difficult to try and focus on multiple qualities. Thus, you need to be very clear about what it is you want to improve so that everything else can be minimized and/or dropped from the program during this time. I know people get very nervous about taking things out of their program but the good news is that this sort of training phase will only last 1-2 weeks (depending on how much frequency of training you choose to prescribe) so you wont risk losing the other qualities you have trained and the benefits that you are hoping to make in the key quality should be something that will improve your capacity for sport (IE, this should be a key quality that is directly linked to the physiological needs of the sport you compete in).
Make sure you are fit!
This sort of training is demanding on the body. There is no need to rush to this type of training if you do not have a solid base level of fitness and are able to tolerate it.
Variables to manipulate
There are a few variables that you can manipulate when performing the shock training cycle:
- Intensity – Intensity needs to be high during the shock training cycle. During this time you will be pushing your body and working over 90% for a majority of your training sessions.
- Frequency – Training frequency is a key variable to manipulate during this sort of training phase. Unlike a more normal training phase where the frequency of your hard/intense workouts is spread out with days of lower or medium intensity between them, during this phase you will try and repeat high intensity sessions with greater frequency (often 2-3 days in a row). While this does create a higher amount of fatigue on the system it raises fitness as well and once that fatigue dissipates, as indicated above, that new fitness level can then be displayed.
- Volume – The final variable that can be manipulated is training volume. I put this one last as I find, from experience, that the two variables above are the most important. Generally, if you are training with that high of an intensity and performing frequent workouts you may find that you don’t require a ton of training volume to get what you want from the program. Where volume may come into play is during the weekly workouts. Because the frequency is high you may choose to manipulate volume, for example, day 1 may be a high amount of training volume and day 2 (the next day) may be similar amount of intensity but a slightly lower training volume. Additionally, volume can be manipulated based on how the athlete is feeling or testing (if you are monitoring certain factors of readiness) and volume can be dialed down or up from there. This would become particularly helpful if you were stretching the training phase out to a second week. If the athlete is fit enough (see point 2 above) then they should be able to handle several workouts in the first week and recover well.
Looking ahead to part 2
That is a little bit of background on the “shock training cycle” and some of the things I think about when using it. A lot of times people want to be high intensity year round, whether it is with their strength training or with their conditioning. Unfortunately this type of approach tends to break you down and also tends to place a ceiling on the amount of improvement you can get when you actually do ramp up the intensity and frequency in one of these shock training cycles. It is analogous to having the stereo on volume 10 all the time. Eventually it just gets annoying and you try and tune it out (or break the stereo). By being methodical in your approach you may get more benefits from your training program. The last thing I’ll say is that this stuff works only in certain phases of the year, mainly the off-season. In-season training is a pretty different animal and trying to do something like this in-season, when competition is the most important thing, is foolish. Thus, we tend to take this approach in the mid to late off-season once the guys have been training a bunch (typically 8-10 weeks of training leading up to this where they perform a concurrent training program with volumes of different qualities being manipulated based on what they need to work on in that phase) and their fitness levels are high and they are ready to tolerate it. The next parts in this series will look at some of the research (mainly done using energy system training) and I’ll provide some of my own ideas for using this with conditioning and/or strength training.