Arranging powerlifting and martial arts workouts for optimal recovery
I am following Johnny Candito's Linear Program for powerlifters. Essentially, the program goes as follows:
Mon: heavy lower day (competition style squats and deadlifts)
Tue: heavy upper day (competition style bench press, back and shoulder assistance work)
Wed: pause
Thu: technique lower day (pause squats, leg assistance work)
Fri: technique upper day (spoto press, upper body assistance work)
Sat: pause
Sun: pause
Candito doesn't give any advice on what to do on the non-lifting days. I assume some cardio/mobility excercises would fit those days well. However, my "cardio" routine consists of bi-weekly 90 minute muay thai sessions. Those sessions can get very taxing on the CNS and have the potential to screw up my powerlifting performance.
As you can imagine, mondays and tuesdays are where progress (i.e. PRs) is driven on the LP. Right now I wonder how I should assign the two boxing sessions to the three non-lifting days in order to impede my powerlifting progress as little as possible.
Keeping sunday free would ensure that I am maximally rested for the heavy days on monday and tuesday. Having a day off on wednesday, seems to make sense, too, because I assume this is where most of my body's adaption to the preceding heavy workouts happens. I don't see any particular benefit in choosing to pause on saturday.
Other options include the rearrangement of the Candido training days (eg. 2 days pause between heavy and technique days) or having two days off and doing a muay thai session on technique days, but I'd like to get a rather strong scientific reasoning for doing so.
TL;DR: How should I arrange my six-workouts-regimen (4x powerlifting, 2x muay thai) in order to achieve optimal recovery and progress in the powerlifting program?
For the sake of this question, assume that I can have muay thai sessions of equal intensity and duration on any day of the week.
(1)1 Comments
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Option 1
Mon: Muay Thai
Tue: Heavy Lower
Wed: Rest
Thur: Muay Thai
Fri: Heavy Upper
Sat: Tech Lower
Sun: Tech Upper
If you notice that your Tuesday/Friday workout suffers even with 24 h of rest, you can switch it up a bit.
Option 2
Mon: Muay Thai
Tue: Tech Lower
Wed: Tech Upper
Thur: Muay Thai
Fri: Rest
Sat: Heavy Lower
Sun: Heavy Upper
Honestly, this is pretty heavy schedule to keep consistently for months.
If you find Muay Thai too taxing and negatively affecting your lifts - you need to sacrifice something.
What is your primary goal? Power living or Muay Thai?
If you care more for your power lifting performance - find some other form of cardio that is less taxing.
If you really like Muay Thai and don't want to give it up, then your lifts will take a toll eventually.
Also, do you really need to do assistance work, if you are doing Muay Thai? That training generally involves a lot of squats, jumps, pushups, kicks, punches, burpees.
If you could remove extra assistance work and combine tech work into one workout, you could do something like this:
Option 3
Mon: Muay Thai
Tue: Tech Lower + Upper
Wed: Muay Thai
Thur: Rest
Fri: Heavy Lower
Sat: Heavy Upper
Sun: Rest
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