Part I- The program should fit your life and profession.
Key Takeaway
For Tactical Populations and First Responders it is important to understand that the strength and conditioning program you follow needs to fit where you are at in your life and career. Busy schedules, life stressors, shift work, and unpredictable hours make training quite challenging for these professions. For long term progress you will need to remain flexible with your training schedule and understand when it is time to push the intensity or dial it back.
This isn’t a profession that should be following programming pushed by people who are on heavy amounts of performance enhancing drugs. The programming those individuals follow will be very different from a cop working nights who is just taking creatine and protein supplements. Reality has a vote.
General Schedule
I will provide an example of an optimal training split to support the performance of the police, fire, tactical, and other related fields. I wouldn’t think of these as “minimums” but more so what is going to be feasible for the average individual in these professions. Intensity, volume, and exercises used will vary based off the experience of the individual.
Strength Training
I would argue 2-3 dedicated strength days a week is usually enough for positive adaptations for these populations. This doesn’t mean you won’t do anything else during the week that won’t include weight training or movement under load.
This just means 2-3 days where you’re going to have main movement compound movement where you will work up to a heavy set of anywhere between 4-7 reps. These can be total body sessions or dedicated upper/lower splits.
Keep in mind this doesn’t always mean barbell bench press, squat, and deadlift. This can be any variation of these movement patterns. If barbell squats bother your back as you get older, there is nothing stopping you from doing heavy goblet squats while wearing a weight vest. If you’re not a powerlifter you don’t need the traditional barbell lifts. They are just tools.
Conditioning
Dedicated conditioning sessions should be 2-3 times a week. Depending on the phase and where it is structured in the training week this can be dedicated aerobic work (Heart rate 120-150bpm for sustained time periods) or typical higher intensity methods. This will all depend on the goal of the training block and the fitness level of the individual.
These sessions can also be strongmen or strongwomen inspired medleys, sled workouts, rucking, kettlebell complexes/circuits, track workouts, etc. It all just depends on the goals.
Recovery
There needs to be at least a couple days of lower intensity work during the week or an off day. This can be one of the “easy” aerobic conditioning days from above or complete rest. Yes, I am aware that if you do the math above I said 2-3 days of strength and conditioning and now I am saying 2 days of recovery.
Which of course depending on how you read this means I am advocating for an 8 day training week. With that obviously being impossible, what I am saying is that depending on how you balance the week, you’ll have about 4-5 good training days in a week and then the other 2 you’ll need to prioritize recovery. How you set the week up is dependent on your situation.
Closing
Keep in mind, shift work can really wear someone down overtime. This is where making a program fit your life is so important. If you work two 12-hour night shifts in a row, and you know that the second day is when you usually feel the most fatigue, then maybe regardless of what is written in a program you just prioritize sleep or low intensity aerobic work.
Small adjustments like this over time can lead to much more sustainable progress as opposed to just forcing yourself into the gym for a hard training session.
This isn’t a lack of toughness or grit it is acknowledging how your schedule impacts your performance. On this day it is more important to prioritize your recovery so you can perform on the job as opposed to forcing yourself into a mediocre training session.
Next article will provide an example of the training week, and then will focus on the breakdown of each session. Later we will provide examples of strength, conditioning, and recovery sessions just like we use in our programming.
Questions? Reach out.
