Greasing the groove from the start...

Sounds interesting, right? Get your head out of the gutter.

This simple theory, popularised by Pavel Tsatsouline (author of “The Naked Warrior”, amongst other things) is a simple theory with profound results.

The theory is this: if you want to get good at something, do it as often as possible while as fresh as possible.

Application

For the advanced guys, you’ll notice that most of the focus for the daily workouts has centred around the clean and jerk and the snatch. Why? Because frequent, technical practice improves those lifts. Not just once a week, but three, four and sometimes even more per week.

[This was pretty much how the Bulgarians trained in the 80's - at least every day they would work to a technically perfect heavy clean and jerk and snatch. Over time the movement, no matter how heavy, was second nature.]

For you newbies, you’ll notice that there’s a squat or a squatting derivative every session. This is because it’s probably the most functional thing to do in a gym and we want you to be brilliant at it! Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes easy and sometimes just a warm up. But they’re there!

[Against conventional wisdom, which tells us that we shouldn't train a body part more than once a week for risk of overtraining, lifters and serious enthusiasts have been going against the grain for years. They're the ones with results, and funnily enough the healthier knees!]

Outside Of Your Program

Sometimes there’s just not enough time to grease the groove with just your program. Bodyweight work is an example. If you want to improve your push ups, you’ve got to do them often. Try this:

- Establish how many reps with good form you can do in one go. Let’s say it’s ten reps.

- Every day, do three sets of half your maximum (in this case, five reps). Space them out through the day (one set in the morning, noon and night).

- In week two, add one more rep to each set (six reps)

- Week three, add an extra set (now up to four sets of six per day)

- Week four, add an extra rep (four sets of seven reps)

- Take a couple of days break from push ups, and then retest.

Caveats

It’s very hard to use this for more than one or two exercises at a time. This means that if you’re working on your Olympic lifting, don’t try to build up your deadlift too (maintenance with very low volume is okay though). If you’re working on dips, don’t try and grease the groove with handstand push ups and regular push ups as well. Common sense goes a long way…

Any questions on introducing this to your program don’t hesitate to ask us wonderful, intelligent, amazingly good looking trainers!