Data Tracking For Olympic Weightlifting Part 5 of 5: Tracking Average Intensity
Welcome back to the Data Tracking For Weightlifting Series, where I’m breaking down the in’s and outs tracking data, what to track, and why. If you’re just now finding this article, I’d recommend starting on part one! In this article we’ll be talking about my personal favorite metric to track: Average Intensity.
Building on our last two articles where we cover Reps and Tonnage, we’ll use both of those numbers to find our average intensity. Something to know first is that “Intensity” when discusses in the context of weightlifting programming is simply the weigh used for the exercise. If you squat 100kg, then the intensity for that rep is 100kg.
To calculate Average Intensity, all you need to do is take the tonnage of an exercise and divide it by the reps. You can calculate the average intensity of a workout, a week of training, or a group of weeks of training. Here are some examples:
10 Reps of Front Squat at 100kg, which makes the average intensity 100kg.
5x3 Power Snatch at 75kg equals an average intensity of 75kg
1x4 at 85k, 1x4 at 90kg, 1x4 at 95kg, 1x4 at 100kg, and 2x4 clean at 105kg equals an average intensity of 96.67kg.
5x5 back squat at 120kg on tuesday and 1x5 back squat on at 145kg on saturday equals an weekly average intensity of 124.17kg.
The biggest reasons to track average intensity is to ensure that
You do not make too drastic of an increase from week to week
You can better understand the optimal average intensity per lift that your athlete responds well to. Some athletes may require a higher average intensity in cleans than jerks, but if you only program clean and jerks, you may be limiting their clean ability.
You can also use average intensity to determine another data point called K-Value (we will discuss in a future article) which will allow you to essentially work backwards from your goal total to design the proper training program for your next cycle.