Variety training

Last Summer when I attended Level II in St. Paul Pavel talked about Variety training. This was towards the end of the 3 days, we all were beat up pretty good, it almost felt like Level I all over again. He asked if anyone was working on trying to hit a PR in their press. Of course I rose my hand right away. Little did I know, I was about to get my ass kicked.

He placed several different sized bells in a row, I would say about 6 or 7 bells and one of them included the Bulldog (40k).  He then preceeded to ask me to do many different movements, moving all around to each bell. TGU, Press, swings, clean and press, front squats, etc. Was I nervous??  Hell yeah. I had Pavel next to me, Kenneth Jay and Jeff O'Conner behind me and all my peers in front of me.  There was no plan or set number of reps, it was basically what he felt like giving me at the time, or what I could handle. For example, 16k TGU then to 32k clean and preses for a set of 5 r/l.

Bottom line, I loved it. I have always used variety in my training and I think everyone else should as well. There is never a day where I go into the gym or park, write down a program and follow it.  I may feel one way before I train and another way once I get to the location. I may see a hill that I want to run, which I didn't incorporate into my program. BTW- that day I did press the 40k, because I was not thinking about it. I was running through other movements and was asked to clean and press the 40k and that's what I did. 

So throw in a variety day every week, it will keep you training fresh and you may hit your PR without even thinking about it.