Why use a 7 day week?

[tweakxc03]

I've read that some people use this concept in programming when they are training for a specific sport. I'm sticking with SS right now to establish a foundation, but this is just out of my own curiosity... (This is without my having read practical programming, so bear with me). This is only with regard to more intermediate/advanced/specified training programs.

Why don't more people consider expanding their training cycle past just the 7 day window? If guys are trying to train both conditioning and strength, strength endurance, "power" endurance, or flat out aerobic endurance, then why not expand the training "cycle" to say 10 days?

That way, you could do something like:

Lift: Monday, Thursday, Sunday
Skills/Conditioning/Cardio: Tuesday, Friday, Monday
Rest: Wednesday, Saturday, Tuesday of the next week.

Depending on the type of conditioning you are doing and how it impacts your recovery ability, seems like expanding past a week can help break up the workouts mentally. If it's more than a 7 day cycle, you have the freedom to add in rest days or different cardio/conditioning workouts depending on what your goals are.

The only reason I'm really familiar with this is that it's quite popular in some elite running circles (I ran college XC).

[Tiburon]

You can do any cycle you want, as long as you recover between workouts.

Hell, a novice might be able to lift every 18 hours, if they have access to a 24/7 gym and don't have to get up to walk the dog and catch the bus. Wife probably wouldn't like it though.

[tweakxc03]

really... SS seems to be pretty adamant about not working out 2 consecutive days.

My upper body is out of balance with my lower body. My lats/biceps recover very quickly compared to my shoulders and legs.

I've added some chins into the mix after deadlifts to get some extra lat work in. Doesn't seem to have any impact on recovery so far.

[matclone]

Why don't more people consider expanding their training cycle past just the 7 day window?

Probably cause the rest of most people's lives (and not just training) are geared toward a seven day cycle. Secondarily, probably because alternate training cycles are more complicated.


The only reason I'm really familiar with this is that it's quite popular in some elite running circles (I ran college XC).

The primary audience for Starting Strength is not elite athletes, and neither (I suspect) are most of this forum's participants.


really... SS seems to be pretty adamant about not working out 2 consecutive days.

Only for novices.

[tweakxc03]

I agree. I was just throwing the idea out there as a topic for discussion... I guess if you have the time for it and the foundation is there, why not?

Even at the college level, I don't call myself elite... I just happened to know some guys who were much, much faster than me.

Thanks

[matclone]

Also, a couple of principles I've taken from my experience with training in general:

Consistency leads to success.

Part of the sucess of a training schedule or program, comes from being able to understand and follow it.

(My partially failed attempts to follow Jeff Galloway's running program several years ago was key moment for me in drawing these conclusions)

That being said, if one has the desire and finds reasons to use a 10-day cycle, why not?

[gzt]

I've read that some people use this concept in programming when they are training for a specific sport. I'm sticking with SS right now to establish a foundation, but this is just out of my own curiosity... (This is without my having read practical programming, so bear with me). This is only with regard to more intermediate/advanced/specified training programs.

Why don't more people consider expanding their training cycle past just the 7 day window? If guys are trying to train both conditioning and strength, strength endurance, "power" endurance, or flat out aerobic endurance, then why not expand the training "cycle" to say 10 days?

That way, you could do something like:

Lift: Monday, Thursday, Sunday
Skills/Conditioning/Cardio: Tuesday, Friday, Monday
Rest: Wednesday, Saturday, Tuesday of the next week.

Depending on the type of conditioning you are doing and how it impacts your recovery ability, seems like expanding past a week can help break up the workouts mentally. If it's more than a 7 day cycle, you have the freedom to add in rest days or different cardio/conditioning workouts depending on what your goals are.

The only reason I'm really familiar with this is that it's quite popular in some elite running circles (I ran college XC).
Have you read Practical Programming for Strength Training? It doesn't go too much into this specific topic because it's mostly written to focus on the "strength" part of "strength and conditioning", but the exact application to any specific situation is left as an exercise for the reader. Anyway, what is described in "Starting Strength" is directed at novice trainees in the first few months of their training careers. Since, ideally, a training career lasts longer than a few months, this is only the beginning. Yes, things change as you get more advanced. It's in the book. It's a pretty good book.

[tweakxc03]

Haven't gotten to Practical Programming yet, but I will as I near the end of my SS program.

I read about fitness and training as a hobby of mine, so I was just throwing this out there as a topic for discussion.

[Charles Staley]

I've been arguing for the idea of metric time for years

100 yrs = Century. OK we already do this, it makes sense. Then:
10 months = 1 year
10 weeks = 1 month
1 days = 1 week
10 hrs = 1 day
10 mins = 1 hr
10 secs = 1 min


I've read that some people use this concept in programming when they are training for a specific sport. I'm sticking with SS right now to establish a foundation, but this is just out of my own curiosity... (This is without my having read practical programming, so bear with me). This is only with regard to more intermediate/advanced/specified training programs.

Why don't more people consider expanding their training cycle past just the 7 day window? If guys are trying to train both conditioning and strength, strength endurance, "power" endurance, or flat out aerobic endurance, then why not expand the training "cycle" to say 10 days?

That way, you could do something like:

Lift: Monday, Thursday, Sunday
Skills/Conditioning/Cardio: Tuesday, Friday, Monday
Rest: Wednesday, Saturday, Tuesday of the next week.

Depending on the type of conditioning you are doing and how it impacts your recovery ability, seems like expanding past a week can help break up the workouts mentally. If it's more than a 7 day cycle, you have the freedom to add in rest days or different cardio/conditioning workouts depending on what your goals are.

The only reason I'm really familiar with this is that it's quite popular in some elite running circles (I ran college XC).

[gregandbeaker]

I was doing two days between each strength training working for awhile as I was brand new to it and *really* sore, but it became a hassle after a while as I work a standard M-F gig and having my workouts landing on different days made scheduling a hassle. It actually became more likely that I would miss a day doing it that way. Having a rigid schedule helps me plan my life out a little better.

[Scrofula]

Keeping the same names and changing all the values would cause a lot of confusion. It could work for weeks and months, but I'd rather keep the second the way it is, and use hectoseconds, kiloseconds etc. Or we could use the day as the standard unit, and divide it into decidays, centidays, millidays etc.

[DaveR]

I don't use a 7-day week. I use a 10 day schedule, and to keep myself straight, refer to it as my "training week." Mathematically, 4 of my "training weeks" = 5 calendar weeks. Works for me.

[Briks42]

I've been arguing for the idea of metric time for years

100 yrs = Century. OK we already do this, it makes sense. Then:
10 months = 1 year
10 weeks = 1 month
1 days = 1 week
10 hrs = 1 day
10 mins = 1 hr
10 secs = 1 min

Is this serious?

You realize that a year is 365 days because thats how long it takes to go around the sun right?

And that a day is 24 hours because thats how long it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis?

They werent just arbitrarily made up numbers.

[Jamie J. Skibicki]

"And that a day is 24 hours because thats how long it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis?"

This is completely arbitrary. You can redefine this to be any number of hours.

THe year is not arbitrary though and due to it being factored by two primes (5 and 73), doesn't give us many options. I like 13 28 day months and a 5 day holiday.

[Briks42]

"And that a day is 24 hours because thats how long it takes for the earth to rotate on its axis?"

This is completely arbitrary. You can redefine this to be any number of hours.

THe year is not arbitrary though and due to it being factored by two primes (5 and 73), doesn't give us many options. I like 13 28 day months and a 5 day holiday.


Well, yeah I guess in a way the day is arbitrary but you couldn't take it down to 10 hours. You could only take each day up to 48 or 72. If there were 10 hour days, some would be all dark, some all light, and some in between. 1 rotation was used because it give us one light and one dark period per "day". That works best for sleep patterns.

I don't think he was actually serious with with metric time thing though.

[matclone]

Shall we call this the Skibicki calendar? Yeah, Pope Gregory has had his day. Maybe time to retire.

[tweakxc03]

Well, yeah I guess in a way the day is arbitrary but you couldn't take it down to 10 hours. You could only take each day up to 48 or 72. If there were 10 hour days, some would be all dark, some all light, and some in between. 1 rotation was used because it give us one light and one dark period per "day". That works best for sleep patterns.

I don't think he was actually serious with with metric time thing though.
i think this charles guy might be retarded... or a member of "The World is Flat Society"... one of the two.

[Briks42]

Nah, he knows his shit when it comes to training. Thats why I think he was kidding about this.

[PVC]

Well, yeah I guess in a way the day is arbitrary but you couldn't take it down to 10 hours. You could only take each day up to 48 or 72. If there were 10 hour days, some would be all dark, some all light, and some in between. 1 rotation was used because it give us one light and one dark period per "day". That works best for sleep patterns.

I don't think he was actually serious with with metric time thing though

He was probably kidding, but I don't think you properly understand the metric time idea.

The idea is that we REDEFINE what an "hour" is. For our current calendar, one hour is "1/24 the time it takes for the Earth to rotate around its axis". You seem to think that in changing to metric time we would use this same definition of an hour, but call a block of 10 of these hours a "day". This is not the idea.

An hour would be redefined as "1/10 the time it takes for the Earth to rotate around its axis"... i.e., a 10-hour day in the metric system would be the same length as a 24-hour day in our current system, but time would be defined and measured differently.

Does this make sense?

1 day is still one rotation of the earth. We would just divide up the smaller details in a more organized way.

[Briks42]

He was probably kidding, but I don't think you properly understand the metric time idea.

The idea is that we REDEFINE what an "hour" is. For our current calendar, one hour is "1/24 the time it takes for the Earth to rotate around its axis". You seem to think that in changing to metric time we would use this same definition of an hour, but call a block of 10 of these hours a "day". This is not the idea.

An hour would be redefined as "1/10 the time it takes for the Earth to rotate around its axis"... i.e., a 10-hour day in the metric system would be the same length as a 24-hour day in our current system, but time would be defined and measured differently.

Does this make sense?

A day would still be defined as one complete rotation of the Earth on its axis, but an hour would be redefined as one-tenth of that time.

But then how could you get from a day to a year. A year would still need to be 365 days for the seasons to remain the same, not 100?

[Briks42]

You have to start with a year and work backwards. A year is the amount of time it takes the earth to go around the sun. In that "year", the earth also rotates on its own axis 365 times, so that is called a "day". If you want to split the day up into 10 increments instead of 24, thats fine. But Years and Days are pretty much set. (Unless you wanted a day to be 48 hours, or 74 hours, etc., which makes less sense for sleep patterns and still doesnt get you to a "metric" system anyway)

[PVC]

But then how could you get from a day to a year. A year would still need to be 365 days for the seasons to remain the same, not 100?

Yes, very true, and therein lies the rub. We could divide a day up into nice neat multiples of 10 because it stands alone, but there are 365 days in one revolution around the sun and there's no way around it.

[tweakxc03]

then those crazy commies would really be stuck.

[Brenden]

Yes, very true, and therein lies the rub. We could divide a day up into nice neat multiples of 10 because it stands alone, but there are 365 days in one revolution around the sun and there's no way around it.

An easy fix is to change the speed of revolution. Get enough rockets on one side of the planet (would require some coordination as the planet is rotating), and speed the sucker up until it's 100 days per revolution.

That will solve all our problems.

[tweakxc03]

or... superman.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I've been arguing for the idea of metric time for years

100 yrs = Century. OK we already do this, it makes sense. Then:
10 months = 1 year
10 weeks = 1 month
1 days = 1 week
10 hrs = 1 day
10 mins = 1 hr
10 secs = 1 min

Staley and I have kicking this idea around for a couple of years. It would require some changes, true enough, like calenders, clocks, etc., but it would make a lot of things easier.

And we have the money. Money can make lots of things happen.

[George Noble]

Were you planning to block out the sun too? You guys aren't really thin enough to be like Mr. Burns.

[hbriem]

Why not start with the really easy stuff like changing to metric, before changing to metric time?

[matclone]

I'm still looking for names, cause we'd have to have names. If we switched over, how would we distinguish between the new and the old? Before time (BT) and after time (AT)?

[Charles Staley]

Because time is so personal, so constant, getting used to metric using time would accelerate metric conversion for other unit of measurement


Why not start with the really easy stuff like changing to metric, before changing to metric time?