How many days a week do you lift?

[Antihero43]

EVERYDAY! for about 1.5-2 hours each time.

im not an expert at lifting, but ive been told to give your body some rest. at least 2 days a week.

yeah, it takes your muscles about two days to recover, but if you vary your routine doing say arms one day, legs another, back or stomach the next day you should be fine. It's great to see people so motivated.

To do your back and chest you must often use your arms. Many professional body builders when building lean muscle, not bulk mind you, they dont even add in extra arm workouts because they dont need to. The workout for the arms and everything was done when they did back and chest. So be carful when you break up your workout into different days, you may be overworking some muscles and that can be detrimental to strength training.

[slowest5.50]

At our High School our upperclass men and women have access to a weight class that meets everyday. This is controled by an instructor who follows BSF program (Bigger, Stronger, Faster). I don't really care for it much but at least they are doing something. My other kids I take them in the weight room early in the season and do some basic Chest, Shoulders, Back, and leg exercises.
I put more energy on the gymnastic and stomach/hip flexor strength. I don't care how much you can bench or squat. Can you climb a rope upside down and use a high bar? We do hurdle stuff too.

[FlyerChick4]

I lift 3 times a week, do sprint workouts 2 times a week and gymnastics 2 times a week. But the lifting I do is something my coach tailored to work exactly the muscles he wants stronger for our pole vaulting. So we don't do all the "conventional" lifts. We do a lot of abs and shoulder work for swing ups and stuff and we still lift with our other muscles but not as much. As for gymnastics, I would just have to say every pole vaulter should try and find a gym to work out in cuz it helped my pole vaulting so much and has any other person i have talked to.

[bvpv07]

When people say gymnastics, what do they mean? (no, not "what does gymnastics mean?" but "what type of workouts are you doing?")

Are you taking beginner classes? Tumbling classes? Just going somewhere with the equipment and doing some stuff on the bars, rings, floors, etc. (I can't imagine beam, but maybe? )?

[FlyerChick4]

I go to what is called open gym, and i do a lot of bar work, condition, tumble a little, climb the rope, use the rings. but mainly i go to use the bars

[scubastevesgirly]

The guys here at my school I have to lift with cause thats the only time I can lift but they intimidate me so I dont like lifting around them.. but track hasnt started yet but still I'll try

don't be intimidated by the guys...just do your thing

I had to lift in the weight room with mainly football players when i was in highschool...you get used to it.

[Carolina21]

To preface this,
This applies more to the College/Elite athlete. I agree for most younger vaulters your best bet is to run, run, run, and vault, vault, vault. However, I still wanted to add something for anyone interested:

After reading post after post, I think lots of people are missing the most valuable and crucial point of weight lifting, and that is injury prevention. For example, is slow squatting going to help anyone vault higher? Maybe a few people but for most of us that slow lifting motion has no direct help for our speed and we all know speed = higher vaults. But what I believe, at least in my case and for many coaches/athletes I have trained with is that squating strength has allowed me to build a huge strength base so that when it comes time to do all the intense speed work required to get faster I never pull a hamstring or quad, etc, and I never had any major muscular injuries my entire college career. I watch our sprinters every year and it is almost like clockwork, the ones who are consistent in the weight room don't have those nagging injuries that ruin seasons, and the ones I never see in the weight room can't understand why they are always hurt when the spikes go on and speed and intensity increases in the season. Can you vault high without lifting? Of course. Can you run fast without lifting? You bet, but in most cases it is only a matter of time before you will get hurt. How many vaulters do you know who had a great season when they were battling injuries? Probably not many.
Power Cleans, snatch, etc. are great for building explosiveness and I highly recommend them, but anyone who negates the supplemental and large muscle lifts, squat, bench, dead lifts, hamstring curls, and on and on.... I fear is missing something far more important. To be able to do all the great speed work at the level that is neccessary to truely gain from it requires strength conditioning. There are going to be exceptions to every rule, like people who jump high that never lift but I think they were able to jump high not neccessarily because they didn't lift but rather able to in spite of it.
These are just my thoughts but have others found this to be true? I find it hard to believe I was simply an exception and had a healthly college career because I am naturally not injury prone. I would be interested in any statistical data or studies about this subject.

Lastly, I think the most important thing to remember is training for the vault, espcially at a high level is very diffcult. To find a balance between getting the speed work, conditioning, strength, technique, rest, etc., is as hard a balancing act as I have ever attempted. Our sport is difficult in that you really have to be near 100% on days you want to vault in practice to truely work on many parts of the vault, especially on meet size poles, and at the same time to jump at this high level you have to train, and train pretty darn hard. So to anyone out there who spends more than 50% of you time on any one aspect you are probably not maximizing your ability. Find your weaknesses give them attention but don't forget all the aspects that go into a vault.

[LancerVaulter07]

3 days on - 1 day off....i lift more for size/strength tho for football....
day 1: chest n biceps
day 2: back n shoulders
day 3: triceps n legs
*i also train abs on days 1 n 3 (hence - every other day) and im always doing pushups and pullups when im around the house...

[ec1vaulter]

I agree with Carolina21... It is a combination between gaining overall strength AND injury prevention. Your body has to be prepared to handing the intensity of the in-season training.

I have my athletes lift for 6 weeks, then take 1 week off. During the summer and preseason they will lift 6 days a week on a 3 day rotation (Chest,Shoulder,Back on M/TH... Bi,Tri on TU/F... Legs on W/SA... OFF on SU). Starting at the beginning of the indoor season we back off to three days a week (Chest,Shoulder,Back on TU... Bi,Tri on TH... Legs on SU). The last 4 weeks of the outdoor season they will be in the weight room for light resistance work twice a week. During each day of the regular lifting they have only 6 lifts (varying in reps depending on the time of year). This makes a very short time period (usually 45-60 minutes) each day in the weight room... this will shrink to 30-45 minutes during the outdoor season.

The primary thing it does is build a strong body through the off-season lifting to ready an athlete for the daily grind their body must handle during the in-season practices. Some of my athletes do get big, but they are the athletes who did no strength training in HS. Most get much stronger without gaining much mass. One thing that I stress is to change the exercises during each cycle so that they do not do one lift all year long and become too focused on the strength for one lift (i.e. Bench Press)

Regardless of how much lifting is done you have to ensure that you are doing what is necessary to accomplish your specific goal. If you want to vault 18', then lifting 15 hours a week out of 18 hours of training is not the most intelligent thing to do. I would suggest that, in preseason, strength and speed endurance/base training should be top priorities (lifting comprises about 25%-30% of weekly training). During the regular season technique and speed developement are top priority... strength training only compliments this focus (lifting comprises 10%-15% of weekly training).

For high school I would recommend a slightly different approach since the level and season are far different. First thing is that your body is less mature and should be stressed less... high school should be a step towards better competition later in life. Lifting 3 days a week for 30-60 minutes can be done from the beginning of summer training all the way until track season begins. At this point back off to 3 days a week for 15-30 minutes. The last 2-3 weeks of the season take off and focus entirely on technique.

In either case, lifting is heavier in the beginning to focus on lower potential of injuries later on and developing a well-rounded athlete.

[Marengo139]

in the offseason i lift 4 times a week and so speed training 2 times a week at the end of the speed training i do ab workouts

In season i lift 3 times a week and speed train 3 times a week Works good for me

[spiezy]

EVERYDAY! for about 1.5-2 hours each time.

yes, im like you, only i lift everyday for about 3 to 3 and a half hours.
btw, im new.. my name is scott