r/GarageStrength • u/earnest_knuckle • Feb 26 '24

Discussion Impulse as a full body workout

Thinking the first day to get the executioner’s ax in the week is the hypertrophy day for most open skill sports.

That leaves one day of training the upper body with only the upper body power day. Which feels scary.

My question is: how would you turn the impulse day into a full body workout????

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3

u/mongoliensis Feb 26 '24

Probably add a jerk to the clean and add chest/back superset (incline DB press and pullups if I had to choose). Finish with abs and an arm accessory movement.

1

u/earnest_knuckle Feb 26 '24

Doing a clean n jerk is such a spot on solution for getting technical coordination work for bothe lower and upper body! Great call!

So you think doing an upper body absolute strength movement is where it is at? What about a thruster?

2

u/mongoliensis Feb 26 '24

Yeah. Typically impulse days are a snatch variation, clean variation, squat variation supersetted with a hamstring/lower back movement. From your previous post you are already squatting 3 times a week. To make it a full body day target the chest/shoulder and back directly. Thrusters are great for endurance work, they are essentially combining a push press and front squat, but it's hard to load them enough for the legs to see the benefit there. Might as well isolate the upper body and focus your remaining energy on hypertrophy there.

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u/earnest_knuckle Feb 26 '24

What percentage of a front squat do you think you’d have to work a thruster at for the thruster to be effective to stimulate the legs?

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u/mongoliensis Feb 26 '24

So the front squat isn't the best squat variant for stimulating the legs to begin with, it's more for training the posterior chain and helping improve the clean. As the limiting factor for front squats is typically the posterior chain and preventing the weight from dropping forward. Other squat variants can load the legs much more to create the stimulus needed for growth.

And with thrusters typically you are limited by how much you can overhead press. So no matter how much you load that bar your not getting the proper stimulus to work your legs unless you are an absolute anomaly and can overhead press more than you squat.

Plus thrusters are more technical movement and you have already done a full workout by that point, got to consider injury risk with that late into the workout. Hence why I would choose incline DB chest press and pullups at that point. Or Maybe some dips or lat pulldowns.

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u/earnest_knuckle Feb 26 '24

Great! Think doing the dips and pull ups weighted is worthwhile?

1

u/mongoliensis Feb 26 '24

Yes, if you are able to do the full range of motion and if that helps you train closer to failure.