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Learnings from Mass and Strength Holiday

Last week a client and myself completed Strength and Mass Holiday. This is a program designed by famous German Strength Coach Wolfgang Unsoeld. The goal of the program is for the trainee to put on weight and strength quickly. The program is 10 sessions across five days. It is not for the faint hearted. If you need to put on some kilos of muscle and increase strength though then this could be your answer however.

I have completed intensive blocks of lifting before similar to this but this is the most comprehensively I have followed the nutrition protocol (as did my client) with a given program. The nutrition protocol is more food than most people are used to eating.

We started Monday morning as the plan suggested and finished Friday afternoon. The sessions were maximum of 60 minutes but with a lot of volume, especially considering all sets had long eccentrics to increase time under tension of the muscle.

Most days we both felt good, with the only exception Wednesday. During the second session I felt completely flogged and wasn’t too sure how I would bounce back for the next morning let alone get through the session on hand.

LEARNING

• Doing something that questions your mental and physical strength sometimes is a good thing. When you do it with another person it’s an even better experience.
• When you have a decent training age squats don’t tax you nearly as much as deadlifts. We did 58 sets pretty heavy sets across the week and there was very little muscle soreness from them.
• Eating enough for people that want to put on muscle aggressively should be just as hard as training. Eating 7 eggs or a bowl of rissoles at 430am was tough – but part of the process.
• When you are strength training effectively and progressively there is such a massive adaptation that the body wants to go through. If you don’t feed it there will be no positive effect.
• Being on a clock and aiming to keep our sessions under the hour meant more focused training and less time fluffing.

OUR RESULTS

We kept our data very simple. We both weighed in Monday Morning pre training and weighed in again 7 days later at the same time. My client’s weight started at 80.1kg and finished at 81.9kg. My weight started at 95.8kg and finished at 97.7kg. We both gained close to 2kg. Unfortunately we did not complete any skinfolds or scans to get a more accurate picture of fat versus lean mass. I will definitely do this next time. We are both very happy with the result on the scales and I know I definitely feel just as lean if not leaner than before.

From here I plan to go back to moderate volume and intensity training over the next month or so with my lifting and capitalise on some good strength gains. I will be opening up a few spots in the future to complete the program at The Wild Movement for motivated individuals. Keep an eye out for this.

Thanks for reading and I would love to hear any questions you have or you can check out the Ebook from Wolfgang Here.

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What is The Wild Movement

What is the WILD MOVEMENT ?

The Wild Movement is a holistic training space owned by myself – Luke Sharp and my partner Lauren Brown.

The name comes from our conversations across the years of how training has gone so far away from how we were designed to live and move that it is almost ironic. The fact that we have to go to a gym to try and get some of the benefits of movement that we would have got in everyday life only a hundred years ago is sad to me. We live in boxes, drive in a box to a box gym that has superficial lighting, machines and mirrors and then go to work and sit in our box and communicate via email on the box. We then go home via our box and watch the box while we eat out of a box. To us that just doesn’t sound like a prosperous life. Lauren and I have tried to live authentically how we want (not society) for the past five years since we met. The name The Wild Movement is about getting back to our origins of how we were desgined to live and move.

In our gym you won’t find any mirrors. You will find a feeling of nature, fun and peace. We have tried to make the space as organic and natural as possible. Training in this space reflects that.

I am a big believer in strength. A stronger person will die older. They will run faster, jump higher, have more protection against injuries and have more muscle mass to fat mass. Training at The Wild Movement reflects this. We use the barbell for the big lifts that carry over into so many massive benefits. We use our bodies through full ranges of movement that society has forgotten about. We develop physical skills to break through limiting beliefs. We push hard but also recover hard. We are about yin and yang. Where you take from one side you must give back to the other.

Our space is open for anyone that wants to create long lasting positive change in their life. This is not for people that want a quick fix but people that are open to being their best version of themselves physically and mentally. Health is wealth. I Look forward to seeing you soon.

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