Yearlong: Phase VII
By Cameron McGarr, C.S.C.S.
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If you’ve been a faithful follower of our Yearlong Workout Program, we’ll take a wild guess and say you’re probably bigger, stronger, leaner, and in better overall shape than you’ve been in years—or ever. Best of all, you’ve still got another third of a year to go on our plan. And while there will be plenty more chances to add muscle and reveal abs in the weeks ahead, we thought we’d give you something most fitness magazines overlook: athletic-performance prep.
Once you’ve built an infrastructure of muscle and strength in the gym, it’s only natural to want to use it in sports. To feed that desire, we’ve tailored the Phase VII workouts to enhance power, speed, and sport-specific strength so you can play fall sports (whether at school or with your buddies) with the kind of ferocity and skill that will make you a winner. You’ll improve your reaction time and ability to move athletically with exercises such as hops and bounds, which directly translate into performance on the field, on the court, or in the rink. In four weeks, you’ll be fast and powerful in every plane of motion, so you’ll be able to react explosively from any position. Of course, we don’t want you losing an ounce of muscle mass, so these routines have plenty of the lifts you need to stay pumped.
Another key to successful sports training is frequency. The more you practice a task, the better your skills become. That’s why you only have two workouts in this phase, which you’ll alternate between for a maximum of four training sessions per week. This ensures that your body will have plenty of exposure to the stimuli we’ve provided and that the skills you’re sharpening will become second nature.
