Hard to Kill Programming Methodology: Part 11 - Phosphagen System

The Hard to Kill Programming Methodology at Garage Gym Athlete is all about blending longevity and performance, ensuring you can perform at your best while building a foundation for long-term health. As we conclude our Energy System Training series, we focus on the final piece of the puzzle—the A-Lactic Energy System (also known as the Phosphagen or Creatine Phosphate System).

If you want to increase explosive power, sprint faster, lift heavier, and develop peak athletic performance, training this system is crucial. But it also comes with unique challenges—mainly long recovery times and minimal fatigue, which can make it feel like you're not doing much. However, mastering this energy system is key to unlocking your full potential.

What is the A-Lactic Energy System?

The A-Lactic Energy System is responsible for short, explosive bursts of power—sprinting, jumping, Olympic lifting, or a one-rep max lift.

✅ Duration: 5-10 seconds of max effort
✅ Fuel Source: Stored phosphocreatine (ATP-PC) in muscles
✅ Oxygen Required? ❌ No oxygen needed (anaerobic)
✅ Fatigue? Minimal, but quickly depleted
✅ Recovery Time: Significant (1:12 to 1:20 work-to-rest ratio)

Because this system doesn't rely on oxygen or stored macronutrients, it burns out quickly but also recovers fully with proper rest.

Why Train the A-Lactic System?

Training this system improves:

✔ Explosive Strength – More power in sprints, jumps, and heavy lifts
✔ Speed & Acceleration – Faster takeoffs, better sprint performance
✔ Lifting Performance – Improved 1-rep max and heavy lift output
✔ Athletic Ability – Vital for power-based sports like football, basketball, MMA
✔ Muscle Recovery Efficiency – Your body replenishes ATP-PC faster, allowing for quicker repeat efforts

How to Train the A-Lactic System

Unlike other energy systems, A-Lactic training doesn't rely on heart rate zones. Instead, the focus is on intensity and full recovery between efforts.

🏋️ Work Duration:

• 5-10 seconds of all-out effort
• Focus on speed, strength, and power output

🛑 Rest Duration:

• 1:12 to 1:20 work-to-rest ratio
• Example: 10 seconds of max effort → 120-200 seconds (2-3 minutes) of rest
• Rest is crucial for full ATP-PC replenishment

⚡ Intensity Level:

• 100% maximal effort – No pacing, go all out
• Quality over quantity—don’t sacrifice intensity

Best A-Lactic Workouts

🚀 Sprint Intervals (Classic Power Training)

• 10-second all-out sprint
• Rest 2-3 minutes
• Repeat for 6-10 rounds

🏋️ Heavy Lifting (Strength Training Alternative)

• 3-5 reps of heavy squats, deadlifts, cleans
• Rest 2-3 minutes between sets
• Already lifting? You may not need extra A-Lactic training

🚴 Assault Bike or Airdyne Sprints

• 5-10 seconds max sprint
• Rest 2-3 minutes
• 6-8 rounds

🔥 Kettlebell Swings or Snatches

• 8-12 explosive swings/snatches
• Rest 2-3 minutes
• 5-8 rounds

📈 Plyometrics (Jump Training)

• 5-10 seconds of explosive box jumps, broad jumps, or depth jumps
• Rest 2-3 minutes
• 6-8 rounds

Common Mistakes in A-Lactic Training

🚫 Not Resting Long Enough – If your rest periods are too short, your output decreases and you lose the training effect.

🚫 Not Going Hard Enough – This system only works if you go all out. Holding back means you aren’t fully tapping into ATP-PC stores.

🚫 Overtraining – More isn’t better. You only need one to two sessions per week to see results.

🚫 Skipping It Entirely – Many athletes focus on strength and endurance but neglect explosive power. This is key for speed, agility, and top-tier performance.

Do You Really Need A-Lactic Training?

Most people already train the A-Lactic system through strength training. If your workouts involve heavy lifting (3-5 reps with full rest), you may not need additional sprint work.

However, if you want to:

✅ Sprint faster
✅ Improve explosive power
✅ Recover faster between max efforts

Then dedicated A-Lactic training will take your fitness to the next level.

At Garage Gym Athlete, we train this system once per month in targeted intervals while prioritizing strength work for year-round gains.

Train Smarter, Get Stronger

A-Lactic training isn’t about sweating—it’s about raw power and recovery. If you want to be explosive, fast, and powerful, you need to train this system correctly.

🔥 Want an expert-designed training plan that balances strength, endurance, and energy systems?

Join Garage Gym Athlete today for a free trial of the Hard to Kill Programming Methodology—the perfect blend of performance and longevity.

👉 Sign up now at GarageGymAthlete.com.

Remember: If you don’t kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred:  Ladies and gentlemen, we are nearing the end of this is episode 11 and a 13 part series talking about our programming methodology, the hard to kill programming methodology, where we are really blending longevity and performance, what we all want, ultimately, or what you want. Hopefully, if you're listening to this podcast.

So today I get to round out energy systems, uh, you know, over the last two episodes. And I, I love talking about energy systems. I've been talking about them for years. I've been studying them for years, uh, training them for years. They're just a lot of fun. Like just the ideas behind it. I just think, uh, you know, it's so cool to be able to, to train them and to improve and to see the improvement in these things.

Uh, it, it is a lot of fun and we've been stair stepping down and, uh, you know, in time, so we started with the oxidative system. Uh, you know, which is more of the aerobic base, longer, uh, you know, one to one work to rest, all that kind of stuff. Then we stepped down this last episode. I talked about the glycolytic, how that's kind of an optional training system for most people, but I highly encourage you to train it just to be ready for anything and everything.

You can go back to that episode if you want to know more about glycolytic training and how to kind of, how to kind of put it into your training. And then we're going to round it out with the final energy system, stair stepping all the way down in time, which is going to be the phosphagen ATP, ATP, uh, phosphate creatine system.

Like I'm, I'm just naming all the names that you could hear. Like there are, there are lots of different things that you could call it. We call it the gain energy system and it is an a lactic energy system. Like I said, phosphagen, uh, Uh, creatine phosphate system. Like you'll hear all these kinds of different terms when you hear about this specific energy system.

So this one is very unique. There are really two different ways to train it. I'm going to talk about each and how you might not actually have to train it. At all, depending on what your current training is, even though it's important energy system. So what this system does is it fuels very short, very short explosive efforts.

So when you were thinking about things like a sprint, a jump or heavy lifts, it depletes rapidly. So within five to 10 seconds, and you need a very good chunk of recovery time for full replenishment of phosphocreatine. So that's what this is. It's just think about like, okay, if I'm doing something really powerful.

This could be a 50 to a hundred meter sprint, something like that. That's why you see, like my kids always ask me when, like we watch the Olympics or we watch sprinters. You know, everyone's always interested in like the a hundred meter. You'll watch these athletes run 100 meters and. They finish, they are not breathing hard, it did not look hard, they've been training their whole lives for that.

And it's not just because they're in such amazing shape, it's because of the actual activity itself. These people are right within this perfect range of the alactic training system, meaning they're not having to dig into the glycolytic, they're not having to dive into the oxidative, they do not need oxygen, they barely need any kind of, um, Stored macronutrients in your body, there's no like energy source required.

It's all without oxygen, phosphocreatine that's stored up in your muscles, uh, ready to be used for anything at any time, but it burns out super fast. So anyway, these athletes, they, they burn through it. And again, they are in phenomenal shape. I'm not going to take that away from them, but at the same time, you, when you see somebody, uh, run an 800 meter or a mile in the Olympics.

They're pretty freaking tired after it's because they're utilizing a different energy system. You're not, when you're in this sprinting energy system, you're just utilizing, you know, without oxygen. It's kind of like when you do a heavy, like one max, one rep max lift, uh, that takes you, you know, five seconds to fully do the lift.

You're not like. Super winded after one rep, you might have to be after several reps, but one reps, not the case. So this one is really important for really just being explosive. And it does take a ridiculous amount of time. And this is to recover. And this is one of the most annoying ones to train. If you sit down to do it with interval training.

So the work duration for something like this is 5 to 10 seconds of maximal effort. I mean, these are all out explosive bursts of 5 to 10 seconds, not very long, but the rest duration is a long time. Like the recommendations range quite a bit from the scientific literature. It's anywhere from 1 to 12 to 1 to 20, depending on the exact work bout and recovery needs of the athlete.

But if you think about that, like we could be doing a 10 second burst followed by. 180 seconds of rest. And that would be a one to 18. So it'd be at the upper end of this, or you can end up resting. Uh, two minutes you could do, you know, at the, at the lower end of that, you could do 10 second bursts and then rest for two minutes.

And what's crazy about this one is in all the other scenarios of energy system training, when we talked about the oxidative system. You're going to feel it. You're going to feel like, okay, I need that rest period to recover and do this again. When I talk about that sustainability and repeatability, you're absolutely going to feel that in the glycolytic system, you're going to go hard for 90 seconds.

You're going to, maybe we'll feel like you want to puke a little bit. And then you're like, yes, give me all the rest as much rest as I'm allowed. You know, let me have that rest. This is the only energy system where you're not going to feel that way at all. You're not going to feel that way like one tiny bit, and that's why people get annoyed training it, because they don't feel like they're doing anything.

They don't feel like they're, you know, they're not breathing hard, they're not sweating, like it's just, it, they're just, they don't feel it, right? And you kind of want to in a workout, but this is training something different. This is training a specific energy system for maximal effort. And so, What's cool about these is you do kind of feel the more it's trained.

You feel like a complete badass when you're doing a lactic activity. So when you only are sprinting 5 to 10 seconds and you have very adequate recovery rest periods, you're like, wow, I'm not getting tired. You feel like a badass. Like you just feel like you're this super conditioned athlete. And then, you know, That's how everyone feels in the first 10 seconds of any exercise.

And then you're like, Oh, well, I'm starting to breathe hard. I'm starting to get tired. But that never happens if you stick to the appropriate work to rest ratios for this one. And the big benefits of this is just being able to put out more maximal effort. So being able to run, sprint, jump, uh, lift all of these things.

And you really need to, um, wait that entire rest period. Now here's. My best tips and tricks for training this. And then I'll talk about like the two different ways that you can actually do it is you want to start on the high end of the recovery window. So. If you're doing 10 seconds and you want to go like, like I mentioned, like 180 seconds of rest, so three minutes, that'd be a one to 18, uh, you know, one minute or one, one to 18 work to rest ratio.

So if you do that, you can start to back it down as you do more sets. So let's say you're doing five to 10 of these total for the day. And just think about how much time that's actually going to take. But like, let's say you want to back it down every single one, back it down until you start to feel a little bit of the fatigue.

Okay, so I, we want that full recovery, but if you're like, okay, I'm gonna do 1 to 18 and you rest that 3 minutes and you are just completely 100 percent ready to go. Then maybe back it down to 1 Just back it down a little bit to where the next time you do an interval, you're, you only feel about 90 to 95 percent recovered and then stick there.

And the reason I say that is because this is how you're going to force your body to, like, near complete, to get to this near complete phosphocreatine resynthesis, and to train your body to do it faster. And, and that's my full theory, that's what I, you know, I think that you can train your body to do basically anything, but I think that's where you want to be, in my opinion, in my experience, because if you only ever rest well beyond what is actually required, You are training this energy system, but I'd say you're not getting better at the recovery aspect of it.

And I don't feel like this is as true for the other two energy systems, but this one, I feel like if you can back it down just a little bit, you don't want to go like outside the range. You don't want to go down to like a one to five. That's not even in the work to rest ratios I mentioned, but just backing it down a little bit until you can, you can start to train this, uh, So anyway, how can you ultimately train this one?

Well, sticking to those wor Work to rest ratios of knowing that the work is going to be anywhere between 5 to 10 seconds, really no need for anything shorter, no need for anything longer. And you can rest anywhere from 1 to 12 work to rest up to 1 to 20 work to rest ratios. Now, the best ways to train this typically are going to be some sort of sprinting.

So you can do this on any apparatus. You could do this on a treadmill, uh, given that. You know, typically the self propelled treadmills are the best for this kind of stuff. You can do this on a track, you can run, you can row, you can do a skier, you can do bike, airdyne. Really, it's super targeted when you have these machines, but I really like to do it with something like an airdyne or a full out sprint because it's just maximal power.

Now, another way that you can train this that isn't even like in this conditioning interval. Um, mindset is just lift. If you are lifting on a regular basis, you could almost probably skip this energy system being trained because you're training it so much already. Assuming that you're lifting your sets are five to 10 seconds in duration.

Now it depends on what you're doing, but if you're doing like sets of three sets of four or something like that, moderate loads, you've gone through any of the strength continuum episodes I've talked about. If you're doing any of those things, you are already training the system. And so. If you want to further train it, you could hop on an air dine and like really target it.

But if you're like, I don't have time to do everything. Well, if you're already doing some strength training, then you're probably fine. And I say probably because look at your training and say, Hey, am I lifting about 5 to 10 seconds? You think about it. You're resting probably three minutes for a lot of these things.

Two to three minutes, depending on where you're at. And that's. That's basically strength training. That's what you're training here. And that's how most people are going to train this energy system. A lot of people don't target specifically. And we do, we kind of do it both ways, strength training, and we'll also target target it in like an interval session.

But again, sometimes the limiting factor on these and why you don't want to train it. Um, Additionally is because of the time factor. It's like there is a certain level of like, I don't want to have to do this all the time because I'm doing 10 seconds and I'm sitting around for three minutes. And if you only have like 45 minutes to train, it eats up so much time to really train this properly.

Um, so you can do this in your current lifting sessions and just call it good. Or you can every once in a while, like we do once a month, train it just to target it and, and try and improve it to the best of our ability. So our max effort increases, we're getting faster and we're able to recover more quickly.

So that's it for this one. This rounds out the energy systems. We have two more episodes left and I'm really excited to finish this one up. But if you are part of our training and you're doing all these things already, we really appreciate you. Thank you for being a part of the community. And then for anyone who wants to have this programmed out for them, you can go to garagegymathlete.

com, sign up for a free trial, and we would love to have you. Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.