In yesterday’s post I gave you my own take on work capacity.   To give a bit more detail to this topic Dan Cleather talks about training three components of strength that have different volume and intensity demands.

He calls them:

1.  The Intensity bit

2.  Grease the Groove (GTG)

3.  Just Get it Done (JGID)

I think we all recognise these elements no matter what you call them.  I call them Main Power/Strength lifts, Secondary strength lifts and muscle conditioning components.  Like Dan I train the three components concurrently and these form the basis of every weights session.

I wrote a Blog about this concept of changing the emphasis of a session previously. See it here.

Here is a caveat with the ‘Intensity bit’:  

Remember that the high intensity bit of the session doesn’t necessarily need to be high intensity in all cases- with a development athlete you could be working on developing tripple extension technique, so this aspect is as much about quality as it is about intensity.  Make sure that the work is done at a high quality.  

Also the GTG component of the session could take on a more strength focus or a more work capacity focus depending on how you work it.  If you use barbell complexes for example, but for 2-6 reps with no rest between each exercise then it becomes more metabolic.  But if you give them complete rest but work at a lower percentage of your maximum it can be a good strength developer but with a bit of volume