Dan also said he believes long term improvements require a volume base and he believes in building work capacity.   This got me thinking about what I understand about this term ‘work capacity’ and the need for a volume base.  Let’s tackle the issue of work capacity first:

 

 It’s the ability to perform work.   Supertraining author Mel Siff defined work capacity as “the general ability of the body as a machine to produce work of different intensity and duration using the appropriate energy systems of the body.” Coach Dos says: ‘In essence we are assuring that over time, we will also be able to train harder and harder for longer periods of time with greater intensity.’

 

Coach Swole offers this definition:

 Workout Density: The amount of exercises, reps, and sets that are performed per workout. Think super-sets.

 Density builds capacity.

 

According to Coach Dos Remedios Work capacity involves several physical qualities, these include:

 Core strength

 Muscular endurance

 Aerobic and anaerobic capacity

 Body composition (% body fat)

 Joint mobility (range of motion, durability)

 

Most comprehensive S&C programmes these days usually have work capacity in the programmes in various forms.  For advanced athletes its the filler and/or finisher of a strength session.  It can also be a stand alone work capacity session be it repeated sprints, sled pushes, circuits, barbell complexes etc.  My contention is that Work Capacity will automatically increase as you get stronger in these athletes (this is another way to increase it) so my question is how much extra ‘work for works sake’ do I need to be doing to increase general fitness? And how does general fitness help me achieve a specific goal?

 

I know that the more ‘work’ I do the more that cuts into my recovery ability- which is vital to get me ready to do my ‘high intensity’ sessions when I need to be fresh!!!!  So I don’t just want to be doing mindless work.  Let’s look at some of the applications of work capacity training!

 

Work capacity: do more work in each session

One of the simplest ways to do this is to use SUPERSETS.  Check out the full article here for an in depth blog I found on this concept:

 

Below is another way of getting more density.  Just have a few supplementary exercises after the main ‘strength’ exercise where you can either rep out on the last set (exercise 2 in example) and/or finish with some high rep body weight exercises.

 

 

Work capacity: Do more work in the the day, the week.

 

For me work capacity is not just about getting more work done in each session by targeting the above qualities (basically things you can do tired because it’s just about getting it done).  It’s about getting more work done each week, month, year by doing more sessions.  This way you are building up the athlete’s ability to handle more and more work without any one session compromising their recovery ability.

 

Here is a link to a good article on ways to increase work capacity by adding extra sessions with EliteFTS

 

It basically recommends use of extra recovery work outs, workouts to target weak points, specific work capacity sessions such as dragging a heavy sled for 200 yards then resting 30-45 seconds.

 

Another way to do it is to put more sessions in the same part of the day such as an example from Coach Dos below:

 

7:15-8:15: Weights (includes some plyos, core strength, etc.)

 8:15-8:30: Warm-up and agilities/speed

 8:30-9:00: Conditioning

 9:00-9:20: Water and stretch

 9:20-11:00: Practice

 If you did the above morning you would have developed a large work capacity no doubt! And one of the things I do with our adolescent athletes is slowly introduce more sessions in their week so they get used to having sessions every day and then on some days double sessions! 

Overall I  believe in using a concurrent training philosophy and training all the biomotor abilities within a given training week.  I tend to use the reverse periodisation concept for Tennis so I will focus more time towards important competitions focusing on ‘enduring‘ the anaerobic qualities of strength, power and agility once I have developed them in earlier blocks.    This is about increasing my athlete’s ability to do more quality work at higher intensities.  Prior to that there will be a mixture of  muscle endurance in the weights room and aerobic/anaerobic work on the track/treadmill to build a conditioning base but conditioning is not the focus.    This leads to my second point:

 

The second thing I wanted to comment on was Dan’s point about needing to build a volume base.

 

 

Traditional linear periodisation (such as is still prevalent in track and field and triathlon) focuses on building volume first to get the miles in and then progressively build intensity.

 

In terms of strength qualities  you will hear a lot of S&C coaches saying that you need to do a ‘strength endurance, anatomical adaptation, work capacity, strength foundation, strength base, robustness [insert other name] phase FIRST to prepare you for the higher intensity work to follow.

 

 

For me the type of base I need to develop is a movement competency base so for me the reason I might focus more on higher volume training as a base is because it enables me to get more practice (more reps) in a particular skill.

 

For those people who believe that you need to build a volume base FIRST I  have been trying to think of other reasons why you might need to develop volume first as a base and came up with the following:

 

Phase potentiation.   Some training modalities serve to potentiate/ enhance the gains made in the subsequent phase.  Could developing the slow twitch muscle fibre characteristics enhance one’s ability to develop greater force production during more demanding tasks such as maximal lifting in later phases? Or help recovery to be faster between sets in later phases because of more efficient energy pathways?

 

According to Michael Ranfone (see full article here) a deficit in the aerobic system can negatively affect immediate (alactic) and intermediate (lactic) energy system brackets, especially for athletes seeking to increase their proficiency in short duration, high intensity type activities. 

This occurs because all three energy systems “turn on” at the same time, and as each one maxes out, it taps into the next higher bracket for assistance until full recovery can be accomplished. Since the aerobic system serves as the base for substrate recovery and repeated bouts of high output, if inadequacies exist, fatigue will occur faster due to an over reliance on the less-equipped energy brackets to handle restoration, and power output will be compromised.

 

Skill acquisition– lower intensity higher volume work enables high levels of repetition to enhance skill acquisition.  This is my strongest case for doing more volume earlier in a training cycle.

 

Tissue integrity– lower intensity higher volume work prepares the connective tissues for the later training phases. Take the squat for example; in the squat the lower back might fatigue and in return the hips will rise faster than the chest. The lever becomes longer, the stress becomes greater, and the already fatigued muscle tires faster. And soon we are seeing squat-mornings. So perhaps some work capacity training of the supporting local muscle system is necessary to create stability strength before going onto maximal strength training to tax the gross muscle system.

 

 

I have just done a google search on work capacity and have looked for evidence of coaches who are referring to the need to do work capacity first in order to prepare for more high intensity training.  Here are some quotes.  I have put the full link so you can read the comments in context.