Alternate EMOMS (#36)

Alternate EMOM Strength & Conditioning

The roots of modern strength and conditioning can be deeply traced to the Soviet Union. It’s one thing to take an elite performer and polish them into an athlete but another to develop athetes from young age into olympic champions. The soviets had it down to a system for producing athletes from the ground up.

Pavel Tsatsouline was one coach who brought eastern methods of training to the western world. How we trained in the United States in the 70s and 80s was much different than what our Soviet counterparts did. Athlete training was still largely shrouded by ancient wives tales and distance running was the extent of most “strength and conditioning” athletes did at this time.

“Lifting will make you slow”

“You only need to play your sport”

(none of these things are true)

Strength is Practice

Just like pitching a baseball or making a basket, getting strong takes skill. Motor patterns take time to develop. Your body needs to know where to position itself globally but also by each joint to maximally produce force. The nervous system also needs to be trained to strain and produce high force output.

“If you’re training for strength, you want to try and avoid the burn altogether. The burn is your enemy.” - Pavel Tsatsouline

While bodybuilders in the west chased a nasty pump, the good ole boys in the Soviet Union did a lot of training far from failure and before the onset of fatigue. There is also a way to work strength and improve your conditioning with a similar style of training (low reps, high sets, full to nearly full recovery). The alternate EMOM can provide both strength and conditioning to round off your training program.

Minimalist Training For Maximalist Results

The workout is simple, pick 2 movements: one for strength and one for conditioning. The kettlebell is one of my favorite tools for this method. The reps for these workouts need to be adjusted based on your fitness level. Between sets your heart rate should drop back to at least 60%~ or to a point where you can talk in short sentences. If your heart rate is higher than 60% before starting the next EMOM: decrease weight / make the exercise easier or decrease reps.

The workout

Alternating EMOM perform the chin-ups the first minute then swings the next. Repeat until all rounds are complete.

20 Minute Alternate EMOM

A1. Chin-up x 5

B1. Kettlebell Swing x 10

“The Kettlebell is an Ancient Russian Weapon Against Weakness” - Pavel Tsatsouline

The point of this style of training isn’t to leave you panting and heaving, wondering when the taste of blood and stabbing in your lungs will leave you. Again, strength is practice. Fatigue degrades skill, you need to rest. Another benefit of this training style is strength and power endurance can be improved. Although fatigue is accumulating, you’re still adequately recovered to produce force maximally. This type of training will transfer better to the field of play than simply blasting biceps for sets of 10 all the time.

Bodybuilding pump style training can still be effective for hypertrophy training and has it’s place in most programs and long-term athletic development. However, not every tool is right for the job. Don’t wash windows with a hammer.

Get your conditioning game up with bells & bodyweight training