Depending on your skill level or height of lifting maturity you will soon enough reach a plateau. Your body is so damn good at adapting to specific stimulus's and environments therefore to keep it progressing we need a lot of variation to keep it growing. When people hear variation and change in workouts first thing they think is having to completely overhaul their current training making a whole new routine with completely different lifts. This is totally NOT the case!!! Slight variations can mean the world to your lifts and how your body benefits from them.
First of you have three main factors your body can progress from POWER (SPEED STRENGTH), TENSILE STRENGTH (ABSOLUTE STRENGTH), AND NEUROLOGICAL PATTERNING (HIGH VOLUME PERFECT REPS).
For most Crossfitters you have Front squat, Back squat, and Overhead squat
For most powerlifters you have High bar back squat, Low bar, safety bar, cambered bar etc
and for bodybuilders a mix of them all
No matter what your training tools are (exercises programmed in) its important to build off of the THREE factors
Power (speed strength) getting in and out of your squats quickly will help develop your stretch shortening cycle or plyometric ability of your body to stretch and fire quickly with great intensity.
Tensile strength (absolute strength) the amount of load you can put under your muscles in a tensile fashion. For example tempo squats or pause reps keeping the tension in the muscle rather them placing any other movement rolls on the body like momentum, bounce etc.
Neurological patterning (perfect reps) no matter what when working on power moments or tensile strength schemes under high load there will be some degree of variation in your bodies firing. Some imbalances will take place like one glute that fires better than the other or might have a slight shift in body position. This is where you would taper back in intensity and work in higher volume but for perfect reps making sure everything is working properly and methodically working in sequence. This will help make sure your nervous system is working in proper order and sequence teaching it the patterns that it needs so when you go back into higher intensity where more chaos will occur it will have slightly better programming to keep your body in perfect order.
In my opinion there is no right or wrong way to actually set up your rotations as long as you have them exist. Every ones body adapts at different rates as well so you could stay in a power phase for 3-4 weeks and some maybe even as short as 2. Staying conscience of your lifts is important and better than any set program. If you think your intensity is going up and your positioning if failing scale back and get a few weeks of your PATTERNING IN if your power is strong but your body crumples have way through cycle through some tempo TENSILE STRENGTH cycles to gain more absolute strength.
The best coaches are the most adaptable and aware coaches, but you as an individual athlete can be the most awake because its your body and ultimately know what your feel in your training so be conscious be truthful to your self and vary your lifts to wipe out major plateaus.
-Stay Strong
