Consistency and Repetition

Programming at York County Barbell is based around athletic goals. These goals are specifically geared towards the sport of weightlifting or strength and conditioning for overall athletic development. One of the cornerstones to a successful program is consistency and repetition. If an athlete sees a specific variation of an exercise once in a cycle that might be “fun” for the athlete but does that allow for them to build off of an initial performance/standard to see improvements? No.

We look at repetition as standard practice. We want to make sure an athlete works in blocks of time such as 4,6, or 8 week blocks. Yes an 8 week block may seem like a lot but if an athlete or group of athletes are seeing improvement over a longer stretch of time and there is no real deadline for this group then there would be no real harm in running a longer cycle. However, the norm for us is 4 week blocks. I’ve listed an example of week 1 and week 4 of a 4 week block below as a side by side comparison.

Yes, there is variance however the bones of the 4 week structure are still in place. What do I mean by variance? Well from week 1 to week 4 you may notice differences in percentages across movements. You may also notice the snatch high pull to target changed to snatch high pull. Percentage adjustment allows for specific adaptation to happen from week to week. The variance in movements accounts for applying a similar stimulus but having the athlete understand the movement without an additional implement that wouldn’t be used in the movement anyway.

Consistency and repetition will allow for growth in a shorter period of time especially when it comes to the competition lifts(snatch and clean and jerk). The more you do of specific variations the better you will get and in theory the more weight you’ll be able to move with more efficiency.