Written by Corey Hayes
Now that I am in the training market, I spend copious amounts of time reviewing peoples training. This includes every pro training log, my training partners logs, and probably even your very own mother’s log. I do this to study the methods being used then I compare and contrast to find the common factors. When doing this, I end up finding the good and the bad. Everyone writes about the good stuff but leave out some important information.
The bad that I find throughout everyones training is volume and intensity infrequences. There is usually no rhyme or reason to the amount of work done after the main lift, with some guys doing WAY too much and some doing WAY too little. Luckily you have me, the guy with nothing to do but read training logs. I’ve created a system that can be used in conjunction with ANY style of training, Whether that be the Cube Method, linear periodization, or the conjugated method.
Lets call this system the dollar method. Each training day you are given a dollar to spend on training, this dollar is spent on the exercises you choose to do. How do you know what things are worth? Simple. Ive assigned different values to different intensity ranges as well as exercises.
50 cent piece – The 50 cent piece is obviously going to take up most of your dollar but this is where most of the work and stress is done. This is reserved for main lifts which the competition lifts and variants. These are lifts done at 85-95% of max.
Some sample exercises you can buy with the 50 cent piece include:
- Squat, Box squat, Band squat, Chain squat, speciality bar squat.
- Bench, Floor press, Board press, Chain bench, Reverse band bench, Sling shot bench.
- Deadlift, Deficit deadlift, Block pulls, rack pulls, band pulls
Quarter – 25 cent exercises are like big assistance movements. These are where alot of muscle or speed is built. These exercises are compound lifts in nature but the intensity is lower than a 50 cent exercise. The intensity for a quarter exercise can range from 70-85% and should be done for mulitple sets and reps. Some exercises include:
- Speed work, Olympic squats, opposite stance deadlift, close grip bench, wide grip bench, extra wide squats, cambered bar bench, snatch grip deadlift, etc
-A note here, some of you may be thinking about speed work and saying this range is too high. Well again, I analyze everything. If you take the band weight at the bottom of any of those lifts, you’ll find yourself in this intensity range.
Dime – 10 cents doesnt seem like much but with time and persistance you can save enough to buy something worth having. I view exercises in this range much like that, its not going to do a ton for you in the short term but in the long run you will see major benefits. Its about months and years here, not days and weeks. These are usually isolation movements and are very useful in bringing up your stubborn weak or small muscle groups. The intensity range for a dime exercise is anywhere from 25-60% and is used with a lot of volume. Anywhere from 40 to 100 total reps can be used here. Some exercises include.
- Skullcrushers, dumbbell presses, glute ham raises, lateral raises, band pushdowns, flys, pulldowns/pullups, dips, lunges, etc
Nickel – 5 cent exercises are commonly the most likely to be skipped. These are exercises that work the muscles that arent directly used in the competition lifts but help keep us balanced and injury free. I also include abs in this section because they are easy to recover from and almost always skipped. Nickle exercises are used to hit muscles like the biceps, calves, abs, neck and grip. Volume is high on these exercises and should never be skipped. If you look at any great lifter, none of them have a pencil neck, small abs or weak hands do they? I didnt think so.
Ok so now that you know the basic system, Ill show you an a few different example squat days to show you how to put it together and make it work.
Exercise: 1.00 Dollar
Example 1:
Squat: 6 sets of 3 @ 80% -25 cents
Olympic squats: 4 sets of 6 -25 cents
Straight leg deadlift: 3 sets of 8 -25 cents
Lunges: 2 sets of 15 -10 cents
3 sets of abs -5 cents
3 sets of calves -5 cents
3 sets of neck -5 cents
Example 2:
Squats + green bands: work up to a 2 rep max – 50 cents
Snatch grip deadlift: 3 sets of 8 -25 cents
Glute Ham raises: 4 sets of 12 -10 cents
Hyper extensions: 4 sets of 12 -10 cents
Pulldown abs: 5 sets of 15 -5 cents
So now that you have a way of simple organization of your workouts, stop selling yourself short.
Corey Hayes is an up and comer to the strength and conditioning world. He is currenty a student at Eastern Kentucky University and a Professional level powerlifter. His best meet lifts are 725/425/675 at 220 raw and 880/640/680 at 242 geared. He has future plans of taking over the world and making a living doing what he enjoys, the iron game. Facebook, YouTube
