Friday, November 11, 2011

German Volume Training (Hams)

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Are there things in life that you have a "love hate" relationship with? One of mine is German Volume Training. The technical term would be "butt loads of reps" I think.

You cannot train like this all the time, you can for a few weeks then you need to lay off and come back to it again, it's way too much volume to do on a regular basis, and it's one of those things that makes you consider carrying your own puke bucket at times.

Monday we started, and since Mondays are hamstrings that's all we did. An hour of hamstrings. First we did a little mobility test for an Active Release Technique appointment I had the following day, I will write about it later.

Then we did laying hamstring curls. For about 40 minutes I think. That's it, nothing else. To get the proper weight Roy had me do 10 reps so he could determine the correct weight for 6 reps. I don't recall how much, it wasn't much but I would be doing them over and over and over, and it was unilateral so that means only one leg is working at a time.

6 reps on the left, 6 reps on the right. Rest 90 seconds. But Roy is really strict about them, keep the hips glued to the bench, don't use the calves at all, it needs to be an isolated contraction of the hamstring only. It's hard.

Again
Again
Again
Again
Again
Again
Again
Again
Again

My hamstrings were hard and pumped. I stumbled when I got off the bench, Roy chuckled a little. I had to get my legs working again.  A long rest then over to the Glute Ham Raise.

I could not do much after that, so we did three sets of 10 but first he wrapped a heavy band over my shoulders so that when I reached the top contraction it was a lot tougher.

I was glad to be finished with that!

Home to a big plate of food. 5 ounce Vittellone patty, 3 ounces sweet potato and about 10 asparagus spears. Water, water, water.

Two days later we would be doing something similar with quads. I suspect it is squats.

Read more about German Volume Training to better understand the protocol.

2 comments:

  1. HI!

    I am a big fan of German Volume Training - especially the Advanced variety!

    Can you cover more on this subject - especially on how can you keep yourself from overuse injuries on this program? T

    PS: This program gave me the best PR in bench press, but it hurt my shoulder/pec and now it did it again with my arms/left shoulder (pain, pain, pain - don't know where it came from!).

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    Replies
    1. Vlad- The key to this is not doing it for very long! This is so much volume you can only sustain it for a few weeks, then you need to go back to regular training. I am not expert, so I really cannot speak to it much more than I have, but if something is hurting, then it's not right and you need to stop.

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