My Experience With Twice-A-Day Training

I can summarize my experience in two words… It.  Sucked!

Alright, thanks for stopping by, be sure to check in next time as I go over…

Ok, ok, I’ll elaborate.  There was more to it than just a bunch of suckiness.

First of all, the main reason that I went to two-a-days was because I figured this may be my last chance to do some time-consuming, crazy training plan for the next 18 years.  Any day now my wife is going to be popping out twins.  Whenever I tell people that I can’t wait, they tell me how excited they are for me and that being a parent is such a great experience that can’t be described in words.  Next I tell them that I am sooo ready for this.  Then they laugh at me.  Hey, thanks a lot my people!  Verrrry encouraging!   Ha, I know what they mean – no matter how ready we think we are, we’re never truly ready… especially with 2 babies at once.  Ok, back to the training.

How To Best Set-Up Twice-A-Day Training

Strength Coach Charles Poliquin has made the following recommendations:

-Increase your training volume gradually.  He suggests starting with two 20 minute workouts.  Longer training sessions would be counterproductive, as you will not be able to put as much energy into your workouts and could overtax  your recovery ability.

-You need to take plenty of time between workouts to achieve an optimal training effect – he suggests about 4-6 hours between sessions.  According to Charles, this time spread is critical.  If you use a shorter one, you will be too fatigued; and in a longer one you will negate the nervous system activation effect of the morning workout (this is known as a super compensation effect).

-This next piece of advice is what I have read from Strength Coach Christian Thibaudeau (although I *think* Poliquin believes in the same set-up):  make the morning session your high intensity session (high weights closer to your 1 rep-max) and the afternoon session higher reps and/or use high intensity techniques (i.e. drop sets, post-fatigue method, etc).

The Program

Day 1: Chest and Back - A.M.  Heavy (basically I never went over 8 reps and the majority of my sets were 6 reps and under)

P.M. Higher Reps and High Intensity techniques.  The majority of my sets were 10 reps and up and I used the “post-fatigue method” one time  for each body part.  Chest example: Band Push-ups X 10 reps immediately followed up with standing cable flyes X 12 reps.  Back Example: Neutral grip (palms facing one another) pull-ups X AMRAP (as many reps as possible) immediately followed up with stiff-arm pushdowns X 12 reps.

Day 2: Legs – A.M. Heavy.  All I did here was two exercises – back squats for 4 sets of 5-7 reps and glute-ham raises for 4 sets of 5-7  reps.

P.M. Higher reps but I didn’t use any high intensity techniques on leg day.  This day was hard enough as is!!!

Day 3: Off

Day 4: Shoulders and Arms – A.M. Heavy

P.M. Higher reps and high intensity techniques.  An example here is the superset I did where I went from doing rope pushdowns immediately into v-bar pushdowns.  You can use more weight with the v-bar so I did that second, but used approximately the same weight as the weight I used with the rope.  This concept is similar to a “mechanical drop set.”

 

Day 5: Off

Day 6: Repeat program starting with day 1 again (although, I gave myself the option of taking this day off as well and repeating day 1 on day 7, depending on how I was feeling).

My Thoughts

It definitely was not easy.  Like Coach Poliquin noted, “Twice-A-Day training is not raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.”  However, I did like the fact that the workouts were shorter.  I’d say that each sessions took me about 20-25 minutes to complete, not counting warm-up (foam rolling, mobility work, etc) and cool down.  My schedule is conducive to two brief sessions in one day separated by 4-6 hours as I usually have a couple breaks in my day between training clients.  For most people with “regular” jobs however, this would be pretty tough to pull off.

The hardest thing for me was leg day.  You know when you rack the bar on your last set of squats, right?  What, you don’t know that feeling Mr. Hugearmsandchestbutlegsasskinnyasachicken?  Well then, time for you to man-up and work your like every now and then.  What was I saying?  Oh yeah, that great feeling when you rack the bar and you know you don’t have to do another squat, deadlift, or lunge again for at least a few more day!  That’s the best!!!  Well, imagine racking the bar and thinking; “Damn, I have to come back and do this again in about 4 hours?!? ”  Those were some loooong days!

Overall, I’m glad it is over but I am glad I tried it.  Next, I’m onto a bunch of “random” workouts, which is rare for me.  But I don’t want to get into too much planning, as the twins are about to take over my life!  Wish me luck!