How To Modify OlyBuilding Day 2: Jerks and Push
We recently put out the ultimate program for weightlifters who want to put on slabs of muscle without losing out on their performance. OlyBuilding is here to help you pack on muscle, and you might just find your performance going through the roof while you’re at it.
This program is also a choose-your-own-adventure of sorts. You can follow the detailed program as written, or if you want to take things into your own hands, we’ll walk you through that as well. Whether due to equipment availability, interest, or just having more fun with your workouts, this article is here to help you make the best modifications to suit your goals.
For day 2, the main focuses are the jerk and upper body pushing strength and hypertrophy.
Modifying The Jerk Portion
Jerks are implemented using on-the-minute training, so the easiest thing to modify if you are not looking to breathe heavily is to remove the clock, and just get the reps in. You could also try these as doubles or triples, and bump the percentages down as needed, just aim to stay close to the total amount of reps.
Another modification that can be made is to change the actual variation of the jerk that is performed for a cycle, adjusting the percentages down as needed. Here are a couple of common variations you could modify to:
Push or Power Jerk: Use this if it fits your jerk style better, or if you need to work on a vertical drive.
Pause In The Dip Jerk: Use this if you need to work on timing or a vertical dip and drive
Pause In The Catch Jerk: Use this if you need to work on balance in your receiving position, or if you have issues with press-outs caused by losing connection with the bar.
Behind The Neck Jerk: Use this variation if you want to overload the jerk, or if you want something that may feel a little easier on the shoulders and wrists, or if you just need to work on footwork and/or timing, but don’t want to worry about moving the bar around your head.
Tempo Jerk: Use this variation if you need to practice the timing of the dip and drive, particularly the dip. If you rush, give these a try!
Modifying The Pressing Portion
This portion of this has a TON of variance here, so buckle up. First off, the program has you taking a heavy press double or single. This could be modified in any way you want such as:
Push Press
DB or BB Strict Press, seated or standing
DB or BB Bench Press, pause, tempo, regular, wide/close/neutral grip, etc.
DB or BB Incline Bench Press, pause, tempo, regular, wide/close/neutral grip, etc.
Choose whichever one you like, BUT stick with it for the entire 8-week cycle. Jumping around in the middle isn’t great for strength progress.
The press portion then has a high volume strict press, which can be modified to the push press if you want to be more olympic weightlifting specific, or you can swap it out for any of the pressing exercises listed above, as well as machine variations of each.
Next, we move into a chest isolation exercise, the cable chest press, which can be modified to any of the isolation exercises already listed, as well as a chest fly, either cable, machine, or db. Keep in mind that whatever exercise you choose here should likely be the opposite of the volume work you did. I.E. if you did high volume DB bench, then cable chest press may be redundant, so try a shoulder press variation or vice versa.
And finally, we finish the workout with high-volume katana tricep extensions. This exercise is great because of how efficient this exercise is with taking your triceps to failure. You could swap this for any tricep variation such as tricep push-downs, skull crushers, or cable kickbacks.
This workout doesn’t include any front or side delt work, but if you wanted to include it, this would be the day to do it. Add in some high-volume front or side delt raises on cables or dumbbells and you’ll be toasted by the end of the workout!
Hopefully, you found this useful for those of you who have picked up the program! If you haven’t picked up the 8-Week OlyBuilding Program yet, click the link below to get access today!