Training for the Arnold Pump and Run – all ye need to know
The Arnold Pump and Run is less than a month away and, if you haven’t taken your training seriously, you may be here right now reading this post. I don’t have anything to tell you that will save your pump and run training but I might be able to add a rep or two.
Huge gains are rarely going to be made in the running portion of the event. Unless you’ve done very little running up to this point, your time in the 5k is probably already set. In other words, what you could run today will be what you will probably run on race day. However, you can do something that might make a bit of a difference in the bench press portion of the competition. One or two extra reps does count for 30-60 seconds off your final time. If you haven’t established your max reps with your target weight then you should do that now so we have some sort of a touchstone for later.
For years, I have focused on training for endurance for the pump portion of the pump and run. I achieved decent results but have never maxed out with 30 reps. My endurance training is outlined in previous posts and it basically consisted of high reps and many sets of my target weight. One workout that I vividly recall was the 8 x 8 x 8 at target weight. It was 8 sets of 8 reps at the target weight in 8 minutes. That’s 8 minutes total for the entire workout. It sounds impressive but improvements weren’t that dramatic.
This year, I’ve scrapped most of the endurance stuff and have been focusing on strength gains. A typical bench workout for me is
8 x 205
6 x 225
4 x 245
3 x 265
2 x 275
1 x 285
4 x 245
Here’s a chart containing this type of pyramid workout. The idea here is to build strength and increase one rep max. I still do some endurance workouts but building strength does wonders for building endurance.
Not convinced? Check out this article on Weight Training for Fat Loss and scroll down to Conditioning Work Is Not Strength Work. The author gives a great example of two guys competing to see how many times they can squat 400 pounds. One guy maxes at 600 pounds and never does more than three reps (heavy weights and low reps). The other guy maxes out with 450 pounds but trains with lighter weights and many reps. The second guy has done 15 reps of 400 before. The first guy (who maxes at 600 pounds) has greater potential to do more reps at 400 pounds because he has a much higher one rep max. He may initially not have the endurance but endurance is easy to gain if you already have the strength foundation.
“The lighter any given resistance (compared to your maximum ability), the easier it will be to improve your endurance with that resistance.”
What does this mean for you pump and runners? Train for strength gains! If your target weight is 160 lbs. and your max bench is 220, then your target weight is 72% of your max. This means you’re going to have a hard time getting many reps of that target weight. Boost your max bench to 320 and now your target weight is 50% of your max (I suspect that when you can get your target weight to 50% of your max that you will approach the 30 rep mark). Now it’s starting to sound more likely that you can get many reps of your target weight as it is only half of your one rep max.
I know that you’re not going to significantly raise your one rep max in a few weeks but you may be able to raise it 10-20 pounds. Doing so may get you that extra rep or two of your target weight that means 30-60 seconds off your net time.
Stay tuned for more pump and run training tips!