Review: Tactical Barbell II: Conditioning by K. Black

This is the follow-up to Tactical Barbell. Whereas the first book was a guide to strength training for tactical athletes (e.g., soldiers, police officers, MMA fighters), this second book is a guide to conditioning. In particular, how to effectively build endurance in an environment where you’re also spending time on strength training (as per the first book), can’t always get perfect recovery (sleep & diet), can’t afford for you training to interfere with your day job, and so on.

Just like the first book, this one has no fluff or filler content. You get right into the content, which includes the following key insights:

The two main conditioning domains

This book breaks conditioning down into two main categories¹:

1. Endurance. Your ability to perform over a long period of time.
2. High Intensity Conditioning (HIC). Your ability to perform at a higher level, but for a shorter period of time.

You develop these (and the subcategories within them) using different training methods, which produce different types of training adaptations (e.g., endurance training increases heart volume while HIC increases heart strength). More on each of these next.

Endurance

Endurance primarily consists of:

1. Long steady state (LSS) aerobic training. Example: 10KM run.
2. Strength/muscular endurance. Example: throwing many punches in a row.

High Intensity Conditioning (HIC)

HIC primarily consists of:

1. Anaerobic lactic + anaerobic alactic training. Example: 100M sprint.
2. Aerobic training (non-endurance). Example: 400M repeats with full recovery.
3. General conditioning / work capacity. This is your ability to put all your energy systems together. Example: a circuit workout that involves sprinting, loading sandbags, etc.
4. Power / power-endurance / speed / speed-endurance. Example: throwing a heavy punch.

Protocols

The book recommends the following overall approach:

1. Base-building. You spend the first 8 weeks developing your aerobic base. This means primarily doing a lot of long steady state aerobic training and a bit of strength/muscular endurance. It’s essential to do this first, as without a solid aerobic base, you will be severely limited in terms of overall performance and recovery.
2. Pick a continuation protocol (green or black). The book provides two main “protocols” to use, green and black, which you then do for the vast majority of your training going forward. More on these two protocols below.
3. Occasionally, return to base-building. Now and then, you may do another 8-week block of base-building to boost your aerobic base.

Let’s now look at the two main continuation protocols in the book, green and black.

Green protocol

• This protocol is optimized for athletes who need a very high level of endurance.
• It includes 2-3 endurance sessions per week. The rest of the week is left over for strength routines (from Tactical Barbell) and a bit of HIC.

Black protocol

• This protocol is optimized for athletes who prioritize strength or HIC more.
• It includes 2-3 HIC sessions per week, plus one endurance session every other week. The rest of the week is left over for strength routines (from Tactical Barbell).

Training vault

The book also includes a “training vault” which has dozens of example workouts for each type of conditioning (endurance and HIC). I’ve seen so many workouts online (including Crossfit’s massive “training vault”) that I was initially skeptical this would add much value, but I found quite a few gems in here. Here are just a few examples:

• Strength-endurance circuits: these are quite different than the typical Crossfit “metcon,” and in a good way that, I believe, would do a better job specifically at improving strength-endurance.
• 600M resets: there’s nothing special about the workout itself (you’re just doing max-effort 600M laps), but the part I found valuable was the hard requirement to rest 3-5 minutes between rounds to ensure you recover fully, as this changes the adaptation of the workout entirely (to one that helps improve heart contractile strength).
• Triples: for those that get easily bored with long steady state workouts (e.g., a long run), this workout lets you get your endurance (aerobic) training with more variety by combining jump rope, running, and rowing.

For each workout, there are also beginner, advanced, and alternative versions, so you have lots of ways to scale and adapt these workouts to a variety of situations.

Weaknesses of the book

It’s a solid book overall, but there are a handful of weaknesses:

• Mental model of fitness. The book briefly discusses the various types of adaptations required for conditioning (e.g., heart volume, heart strength, vascularity), but it’s not enough to build a strong mental model of how all these adaptations interact, and what to focus on when. For example, how important is heart volume vs heart strength? What ratio of endurance to HIC work should I do? How do endurance and HIC differ in their impact on recovery? To an extent, the green and black protocols defined in this book give you pre-defined answers to these questions, but without a good mental model, it’s hard to change or customize the protocols without accidentally messing something up.

• Self-published? Just like the previous book, this one seems to be self-published, so the editing, typography, and cover design are all subpar.

Overall

This book is a terrific companion to Tactical Barbell. When you put both books together, you can get a very solid way to develop both strength and conditioning for the long term.

Footnotes

Rating

4 out of 5