EMOM Training
Hey, Athletes! EMOM Training
IN THIS 15-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
- Jerred talks about EMOMs
- He gives a brief overview and his history with EMOM training
- Then he breaks down a study on EMOM training
- And A LOT MORE!!
Diving Deeper…
If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here is a link to the study for you:
Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week
Don't forget to watch today's podcast!
EMOM Training
Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!
To becoming better!
- Jerred
Podcast Transcript
Jerred: Alright, today we're talking all things EMOM, so you can utilize this amazing every minute on the minute method in your fitness journey. This is the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast, and we're here to build autonomous athletes and put phenomenal programming into every garage, basement, and spare bedroom out there.
I'm Jerre Moon, and I'm with Joe Courtney. We are strengthened by you. And conditioning coaches who have turned over 20, 000 people into garage gym athletes over the last decade. And we're here to reduce the information overload that exists in the health and fitness industry today. We're going to do that by covering relevant science and give actionable takeaways, not only from the data, but from our years of experience.
So let's dive in.
All right. Welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast today. I'm going to be talking about EMOM training because it's something that we've utilized. For a very long time at Garage Gym Athlete, if you have been around Garage Gym Athlete actually doing our training for the last couple of years, you've definitely seen EMOMs in there.
But one of the coolest things I think about EMOM training, so every minute on the minute training, and I'll explain it a little bit more in a minute if you don't know what it is, but over a decade ago, Over a decade, I created the One Man, One Barbell program, and the secret sauce, if you will, behind that program is EMOM protocols.
And the whole reason I developed One Man, One Barbell is because I've always been into concurrent training, combining strength, endurance, overall fitness, longevity, health, those kind of things. I needed a strength program that wasn't like a power lifters program, something that I could get done in 30 or 40 minutes and still do something else.
And what I landed on over a decade ago was the use of EMOM protocols in the strength training. And then after I started practicing with myself, I started practicing on athletes I was training at the time, groups of 5, groups of 10. It worked out phenomenal. Then we took it to the internet. And thousands and thousands of people have used the One Man One Barbell program with phenomenal results.
And I'm not here to sell you on the One Man One Barbell program. But what I'm saying is I don't need a scientific study to tell you how awesome EMOM training is. Because I've been doing EMOM training, I've been prescribing EMOM training for well over a decade and I know how effective it is. So if you're not utilizing EMOM training, It's definitely something that you're going to want to get into.
To be honest, I look at almost all my training these days as some sort of EMOM training. So let's talk about the elephant in the room. If you are brand new, you're not familiar. What the hell is EMOM training? EMOM is every minute on the minute. Okay. So pretty simple here. If I wanted to do a 10 minute EMOM, 10 minute, 10 rep EMOM pushups, then I would do 10 pushups right away.
Okay. And then if I took 10 seconds to do those push ups, I now have 50 seconds to rest before the next minute clicks over and I need to do another 10 push ups. And again, it If it took me 30 seconds to do 10 push ups, then I have 30 seconds to rest before I get to the next one. You see how that works?
It's every minute on the minute. It's not rocket science here, but it's awesome for training. And, to be honest, how we utilize it, and a lot of people in the fitness industry, isn't just every minute on the minute. Sometimes we do every 30 seconds, every 45 seconds. On the second, sometimes we do every three minutes on the minute.
Sometimes we do every two minutes on the minute. There are a lot of different variations of this, but all of that is encompassed in this EMOM style of training. And what we see here is a study that recently came out in March, 2024, it's called muscular performance analysis and cross modalities comparison between AMRAP, EMOM, and RFT configuration.
So AMRAP as many rounds as possible. EMOM, we already talked about that in RFT. Rounds for time. And really this is CrossFit study. Now, I don't love CrossFit and that has to do with how that programming methodology has developed. It's taken some turns crisscross and some like good directions and bad directions over the years.
But ultimately this study is looking at CrossFit prescriptions. And one thing that CrossFit did popularize was EMOM training. And I think it's awesome for that, that alone. And so when we get into EMOM training, the goal. is to maintain a consistent work to rest ratio allowing for brief intense efforts followed by short recovery periods and the one of the things that they were looking at in this study is mpv so mean propulsive velocity I don't want to take too much of a sidestep here velocity the reason it's important in this study or just anything in general if you've read a lot of different studies on strength training one of the best ways that they measure Recovery in athletes, so intraset recovery or even recovery day to day and thus performance in the athlete because if you're fully recovered, you can perform at your best.
One of the ways they do that is they check velocity. So if I was lifting, if I was back squatting 300 pounds just for three reps and each rep was taking me, let's say, a second. What I can do is I can monitor my velocity. And the second I start to get slower, that starts to tick up the sets that I'm doing, aren't as dynamic.
They aren't as powerful anymore. So it's not really as effective because I'm not recovering well enough to get the full power benefit of the strength training, and this is where a lot of people miss in strength training. They forget that to be strong, you have to be powerful. It's not always about just lifting a load.
It's about lifting a load with speed. And the more you can do that, the more powerful you're going to get, the more athletic you can actually be. And so speed is very important to athleticism. Power is very important to strength development. I'm just letting you know a sidestep, now I'll get back into the EMOM discussion, but I just want to let you know, why are we talking about velocity?
Why is it important to strength training or even measured? Okay, so according to the study, EMOM showed higher mean propulsive velocity compared to AMRAP. So that indicates less fatigue and more consistent performance, right? So EMOM was associated with the lowest heart rate values due to structured rest periods, meaning you're actually recovering.
And I can almost toss out this whole, the RFT and AMRAP, because what they really took away from this AMRAP and RFT portions, it's not phenomenal for strength. What AMRAP and RFT are really good for is if you're just trying to do high intensity, if you're like, Hey, I need a high intensity workout today.
Do rounds for time, do as many rounds as possible. That's what CrossFit is. Again, that's why I sidestepped it because it's okay. We're just doing like absurd high intensity every single day of our lives. Again, some people program differently, but those are the things I don't like. So I don't need to discuss AMRAP and RFT.
I could have told you before they even did the study that's not going to be conducive to strength training or really even fitness in general, unless you are just trying to target that highest intensity level. So overall let's talk about just EMOM. So again, What we're looking at is the least intra set velocity loss in EMOM suggests sustained performance throughout the workout.
That's like a quote from the study. So that means we were not losing as much velocity when we do EMOM training. That's why you can still develop power. Okay. So the built in rest periods in EMOM help manage fatigue, allowing you to maintain intensity without burning out. So this structured approach. Also promotes better recovery between sets.
And it's essential for muscle strength, muscle gains, power development, athletic development, everything. So what I love about EMOM training is how easy it is to structure and program. So like for beginners, again, you could just do exactly what I was talking about earlier. You can start with a simple setup.
You can do 10 pushups, 10 pushup EMOM for 10 minutes, and you could adjust the reps. It's just a great way to structure your strength training. And again, you could do this every 45 seconds, every 30 seconds, every two minutes, every three minutes, whatever it is, EMOM training is very versatile. Now, more advanced athletes is where you're going to be doing it with a barbell movement.
And that's how we programmed it in one man, one barbell. So you might be doing four reps at 60 percent of your one rep max every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. And I'll just let you know that's how one man, one barbell works. We have. Week one is a 10 minute EMOM. Week two is a 12 minute EMOM.
Week three is a 15 minute EMOM before you go to de load and then you rework and do another cycle. It's only four week waves. And that is where a lot of the strength is built is like we have working sets. So that's not all, it's not only EMOM. There's a little bit more to it than that, but not much. And so when you're doing these EMOM sets, the one thing I want you to think about is choosing loads.
Where you can maintain that velocity. So if we're talking about actual prescription, I can already tell you the percentages that aren't from this study, just from my years of experience. You're going to want to be in the 50 to 54 percent range with barbell movements at about a four to six rep range for EMOM stuff.
That's the magic. That's the sauce. If you want to do EMOM training, just start thinking about it. That's about where you want to be in your head. And if you, once things start to get a little bit more challenging, you want to go up, you can go up to probably 65, 68, possibly 72 percent of a one rep max. But now you need to be down to two reps, three reps max every minute on the minute.
And you're going to see a lot of progress. So what I'm trying to do is add context with Actual percentages and prescriptions for how you would be able to do this. And you can do, I wouldn't exceed like the most we do is 15 minutes. I wouldn't exceed that. So when you're doing concurrent training and you're like, Hey, how can I add some really awesome strength training into my life?
The EMOM training is what's going to do it because you're able to not only see that dynamic nature of the strength training and essentially check off the boxes for what's most important in strength training, There's a huge conditioning element to EMOM training, especially if you're new to it or haven't done it.
And those of you who've done EMOM training, you know what I'm talking about. Like when I do, if I do one man, one barbell and I haven't done it in a while, man, the recovery between sets, like it's only 10 minutes, but that those 10 minutes, the 10 minute EMOM, the first week, like that can be brutal. That could be so taxing.
And you're getting a lot of benefit from that. You're actually getting a benefit, not only in the strength that you're Like I was saying, strength training, athletic development, power development, all those kinds of things. You're also getting an actual conditioning element and that's what we've been doing, not EMOM necessarily, but the, an interval weight training in our current cycle, it's almost like an EMOM, like it's not, we don't structure it by saying, do this every three minutes on the minute we have built in rest.
But if you were to look at your program overall, what you're probably doing in interval weight training. It's something like a four minute EMOM or every four minutes on a minute, you're doing some sort of exercise, right? You do the lift, you do the conditioning, and then you you rest and you keep going.
And so when you look at it this way, you're getting those recovery periods. And what we know about interval weight training also greatly reduces overall fitness, VO2 max improvements. Overall, EMOM training is truly where it's at. And that's it. EMOM training is awesome. I'm not going to beat a dead horse here and just run round and round in circles about EMOM training.
It's very simple to implement. If you're not familiar with EMOM training, hopefully you are now at least a little bit more familiar with how it works and just utilize it. In any, like in any format, I like to use it a lot of the times, not only when I'm programming for garage gym athlete, but when I'm traveling or I'm short on time, like emoms, just take your brain out of it.
You could do pushup You could do, you could just do emoms with basically anything you can play with different protocols, as far as 45 seconds, 30 seconds, three minutes, all those kinds of things, all the things that I talked about. But EMOM training is very effective, I would say, for concurrent training in general.
If you were doing anything else, I don't know if EMOM training is as effective. If you just want to be strong, you just want to be a powerlifter, I don't know if EMOM training is the best. It still has the efficacy there, because of everything I've talked about, but I'm not saying it's the best thing that you could possibly do if you just want to be the best powerlifter in the world.
And likewise, if you're trying to be the best endurance athlete or the best CrossFit athlete, it's not this EMOM protocol is magic and it's going to do everything to make you the best endurance athlete. But where I think it excels is truly what we care about, where we spend all of our time, and that is concurrent training.
Because you can get this massive bang for your buck. In a very short amount of time. And then you can still go do other things, even if you want to do those other things on the same day, because we've already debunked the interference effect, it's not that big of a deal when it comes to concurrent training, but I don't want to keep opening up more cans of worms, I want to shut this one down and just give you the takeaway for go try EMOM training.
Hopefully I've talked about enough protocols and things that you can utilize. I've done 40 minute EMOMs. We've done that at Garage Gym Athlete, 50 minute EMOMs, you can do 10 minute EMOMs. It is a phenomenal way to gain strength, to gain fitness, and to be involved in concurrent training. So seeing everything improve all at the same time.
So go give it a try. Go check out the study, check out the show notes if you need to, but that's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort will kill you.
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