Training Four Days in a Row?

Written on December 10, 2008 at 8:59 am, by Eric Cressey

I know, it’s heresy! You can’t lift weights on four consecutive days unless you’re a juiced up professional bodybuilder – or just some teenager who doesn’t know a thing about weight-training. I beg to differ.

You can also do it (not necessarily by choice) if you’re Eric Cressey and are flying to Houston Thursday night and not getting back until Sunday afternoon – and you know you’re not going to have a chance to train while there. Knowing that this was the case, I took this past Sunday off altogether, and planned to train MoTuWeTh. Here’s how I set it up:

Monday was a speed bench day with some chain push-ups and loads of horizontal pulling and shoulder health stuff (especially considering I made over 500 throws that day while I helped eight separate pitchers through their throwing programs).

Tuesday (last night) was some easy sprint work, and then front squats vs. two chains per side. I kept it light (205) and fast for the first six sets. For my last two sets, I changed the bar weight to 265 (325 at the top) for two reps. I added in some mat flips (like a tire flip), forward sled pushing, and then some Pallof Press isometric holds. As you can tell, there wasn’t much eccentric stress (aside from the front squats), so I intentionally avoided soreness (feel fine Wednesday morning as I type this).

Wednesday (tonight), I’ll bench (floor press, actually) heavier, use dumbbells for my pressing assistance work, do more vertical pulling, and incorporate plenty of scapular stability and direct rotator cuff work. This session should be me up quite a bit more than Monday’s.

Thursday (tomorrow) morning, I’ll deadlift heavier, do weighted glute-hams, hit some heavier single-leg work, and drag the sled at the end. I should be pretty dead by the end of the session and potentially sore for a few days – until I get back to train again on Sunday night.

Basically, the point of this post is to show you that if you manipulate training stress within the sessions, you can have a lot of flexibility in your training schedule. All our pro baseball guys train Mo-Sa, for example, because we can incorporate mini-deloads within the week.

This is especially important when you’ve got lifting, medicine ball, movement training, mobility, flexibility, and throwing programs all competing for an athlete’s time and energy.

I actually wrote about this in a fair amount of detail in 4 Ways to Stay on Track.

One Response to “Training Four Days in a Row?”

1. JC Says:
   December 11th, 2008 at 8:57 am

   Great post. We did this all the time during off season football training in high school.