STS 2.0 Muscle & Recovery

STS 2.0 is a fitness program created by Cathe Friedrich. It is a follow up to her original STS program. But do not think for a minute you are getting a rehash of the original program. They are vastly different. But before we get to that, I want to mention that this program comes with a digital users guide. Within this guide Cathe gives an overview of the program and each workout, 3 rotations using this program only (8 weeks, 10 weeks and 12 weeks) as well as 2 more rotations that mix this program with 2 of her other programs (Xtrain and Ripped with HIIT), and 2 rotations that give you some cardio (in one the cardio is all low impact and in the other the cardio is high impact). It also contains workout cards you can print out to keep track of the weight you lift during each workout. There is more in the guide but those are the highlights. Here is a trailer for the STS 2.0 program (which highlights the fact you can stream or download these workouts, as well as order DVDs). **Update–I have created my own STS 2.0 8 Week Rotation.**

Like the original STS, STS 2.0 consists of 3 phases but, as already mentioned, these phases do not resemble the original STS in any way. In addition, the original STS was entirely strength focused with one excellent 15 minute stretch and some advanced core workouts. STS 2.0 has the strength focus as well as the core workouts (which are more intermediate level) but it also has a plethora of recovery level workouts: mobility, yoga, stretch and foam rolling. For STS 2.0, phase one focuses on total body strength workouts. Phase 2 is upper and lower body muscle splits, and Phase 3 is individual muscle splits. In all of the phases the rep range is 8-10. That is the average. There will be some exercises with more reps but the average rep range throughout the program is 8-10 reps. The thing that separates this from other workouts is the rest time between exercises/sets. When you give your muscles longer to rest, you are able to come to the next set/exercise stronger. Phase 2 and 3, Cathe gives you one minute of rest between most of the exercises. Phase one is different since each workout focuses on a different techniques: giant sets, supersets and trisets. You still get long rests (2 minutes in Phase One) but the rests are not between every exercise/set.

One thing about STS 2.0 that is similar to the original STS is that it is equipment heavy. In fact, this one may be even more equipment heavy than the original! The set up time is significant in comparison to other workouts by both Cathe and other trainers. I don’t consider that a bad thing, just something to be aware of. However, just like in the original STS you have a lot of options. If you don’t have a barbell there are dumbbell options. If you don’t have dip bars or a turbo tower there are resistance band options. If you don’t have wall anchors for your bands, she gives you other options for anchoring your resistance bands. If you have all the equipment as well as wall anchors (like I do), even better. Cathe suggests each time you return to the workouts use a different piece of equipment to hit your muscles in a different way. I did not do this religiously but I did change things up from time to time.

This post will (sort of) document my progress through the 12 week program. I will break my summary, review and thoughts down in phases. The first 2 phases are 3 weeks each and the final phase is 6 weeks. I am following the rotation but not to the letter. I am making my own changes to suit my way of working out. There are several reasons for this. Many of the recovery workouts are very short–in the 20 minute or less range. I am not a 20 minute workout kind of gal; not unless I am stacking workouts. So that is what I did. I did honor the recovery idea. I did my best to make sure each week I did a mobility, a stretch or yoga, a core and a foam rolling workout. She also asks that you keep your cardio to 30 minutes or less and 3 days or less a week. I honored that as well. A few weeks after the program was released, Cathe addressed doing cardio while doing this program in one of her blog posts. Here is her explanation of why she recommends short or no cardio during STS 2.0. I did the strength workouts when she designated doing them but I scheduled the recovery workouts in a way that worked best for me. The core workouts are not included in the rotations and that is because Cathe wants you to fit them in wherever you can. She suggests one core workout a week, whenever you want to do it. And that’s it! Each Phase summary will go into more detail. At the very end of this review I will give my thoughts on the program as a whole. If you want to jump straight to that, click here: Final Thoughts. Also, at the very end I will list each workout in the program. The titles will be linked to their review. Click here to go straight to that list.

Phase 1:

This phase consists of total body workouts. There are 3: Giant Sets, Super Sets and Tri Sets. Having just completed the first week of all 3 strength workouts, all I can say is WOW. I was afraid to return to DVD workouts and Cathe workouts specifically. Cathe was my “go to” trainer for many years and I have moved away from her, focusing primarily on Caroline Girvan for my strength training and streaming everything. I was afraid I wouldn’t like Cathe’s workouts anymore. Well, I was wrong. I very much enjoyed these workouts. They are superb total body strength workouts that challenge you in different ways. It is easier to to lift heavier in Super Sets because the muscles get more rest. The most challenging of the 3 strength workouts was Tri Sets. That one is also the hardest one to consistently lift heavy in. The second week I knew what to expect in each workout and was able to approach them more smoothly. And by the third week I actually felt like I could lift heavier for a few of the exercises. I didn’t but I will take that knowledge into Phase 2.

I mentally struggled with all of the recovery days but I honored the system and I do think I benefited from it. I workout for approximately an hour every day regardless of the level of the workout. So I did a lot of combining of workouts. Since in this phase you have 3 strength days, your other 4 days are recovery days. Here is how my recovery days played out. On one recovery day I combined a 30 minute recovery level cardio rebounder workout + one of the mobility workouts. On another recovery day I did a 20 minute cardio tabata workout (also a rebounder workout) + one of the core workouts + one of the yoga workouts. On the 3rd recovery day I did another 30 minute cardio rebounder workout followed by the Active Recovery + Stretch workout. And on the final recovery day of the week (Sunday for me), I did foam rolling + one of the yoga workouts. This was the basic structure I followed for the recovery days in Phase 1.

Though I did enjoy Phase 1, I do not think I will ever return to these workouts in this manner again. Though I like total body strength workouts, I do not like to do them exclusively. So I am obviously very much looking forward to Phases 2 & 3.

Phase 2:

This phase consists of muscle splits: upper body workouts and lower body workouts. I just completed week 4 (or week 1 of Phase 2) and I love this phase! The workouts are awesome! I can see myself using these workouts a lot. I wish there were more workouts like these out there. They are perfect! As much as I love them I know that after a time, doing the same 4 workouts will get boring, but man do I love this phase. My structure for this phase was a little fluid. I did an upper body workout on Monday, a lower body workout on Tuesday, an upper body workout on Thursday and a lower body workout on Saturday. That never changed. But the other days were more fluid. However, every week I did 2 cardio rebounding workouts that were 30 minutes or less, 1-2 abdominal/core workouts, 1-2 foam roller workouts, one or both of the mobility workouts and at least one of the yoga or the total body stretch workouts (sometimes 2). I also did several add on extended flexibility sessions–again, I fit all of this into a single week, every week. I moved away from STS 2.0’s foam rolling workouts and did foam rolling workouts by other trainers. And though I did stick with STS 2.0’s yoga and stretching workouts as well as the abdominal/core workouts, I also did extended stretches by other trainers and some of Cathe’s other core workouts. In fact, I decided to start revisiting some of my older Cathe DVDs that had bonus core workouts and bonus extended stretches. I will continue to do that into Phase 3.

I am in the last week of Phase 2 and one thing I noted this week is a reduction in my cardio endurance. I did my first cardio of the week (I do 2 short cardio workouts each week) and it was a 30 minute HIIT rebounder workout. I was struggling cardiovascularly in the last 3rd of the workout. Now, of course HIIT is supposed to be intense and you are supposed to be burning out at the end of each interval. The workout was clearly doing what it was intended to do. But I do a lot of rebounder HIIT workouts so I can tell when my fitness level has declined and this morning the decline was obvious. It is making me rethink my initial plans for cardio in Phase 3.

I just finished Phase 2 and I loved it. I definitely feel stronger and more muscular. I am apprehensive about Phase 3 though. I am not sure how I feel about getting even less cardio and though I like muscle splits I am picky about how I do them. I don’t like devoting an entire workout to smaller muscle groups like the biceps and triceps. We’ll see how it plays out.

Phase 3:

I just finished my first week of Phase 3 and I like it a lot more than I thought I would. I had some severe soreness from the chest and lower body workouts but no soreness after the biceps, back or shoulder workouts. Which surprised me. I expected to be sore from every single workout. I did not do the triceps workout the first week. There are a 6 muscle split workouts in this phase. The way the rotation Cathe created plays out, you do 5 strength workouts a week but it rotates through them in a way I don’t care for since you have some weeks where you totally skip over a large muscle group (legs or back or chest). I am also doing 5 strength workouts a week but I do chest, back, legs and shoulders every week. That 5th strength day I will alternate between biceps and triceps. This is because I follow the philosophy I first came across when reading Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove’s New Rules of Lifting books. They explain that when performing exercises that work the large muscle groups (chest, back, quads, hamstrings, glutes), you are using (and therefore working) the smaller muscle groups in the way they were designed to work–to assist those larger muscles in pushing or pulling movements. Your body is designed to use its big and small muscle groups together, therefore they should be worked and developed in a functional way. Rather than isolating biceps and triceps to make them dis-proportionally bigger than the back or chest, you work the back and the chest, and those smaller muscle groups assist and therefore grow in proportion to the chest and back. Because it truly is impossible to do a chest press or a barbell row and isolate and work only the chest or the back. By design, your arm and shoulder muscles will be assisting and therefore working, too. For this reason, I never like to give my biceps or triceps equal time as I give the larger muscle groups. Another reason I didn’t think I would like this phase is because I like to hit my largest muscle groups (specifically back and glutes) at least twice a week but, the first week at least, I didn’t mind the once a week. We’ll see how I feel as I get further into Phase 3.

After the second week I had soreness again! From the chest workout but much milder than week one, from the lower body workout–about the same severity as the first time and from the triceps workout, which I did for the first time during week 2. Also, this time I had some mild back soreness. Again, no shoulder soreness.

As for my recovery, core and cardio workouts, they are even harder to fit into this phase. I am only doing one cardio workout a week: a 20 minute rebounder tabata workout. I am doing mobility the same day as the cardio tabata. I am alternating STS 2.0 Mobility 2 + Mobility 1 premix with Perfect 30 Mobility. My other non-strength day I am doing flexibility/yoga + foam rolling. For the flexibility I have been revisiting Cathe’s other yoga workouts: Yoga Max, Yoga Relax and Perfect 30 Yoga, as well as her STS 2.0 yoga/stretch workouts. I have mostly been doing foam rolling workouts by other trainers but I threw STS 2.0 foam rolling in once and I actually liked it more than I remembered. I have been doing 1-2 core workouts each week. I always do one on bicep/tricep day and sometimes I do one after one of the other strength workouts. Though I am doing the STS 2.0 Ab/Core workouts, I am mainly revisiting Cathe’s core bonuses from other programs: Xtrain, Ripped with HIIT, Perfect 30, LITE, ICE, and Step Boss–they all contain core bonuses. And finally, I have also added extended stretches (6-12 minutes) and/or short foam rolling workouts to the end of most of the strength workouts.

In the 4th week of Phase 3 (10th week of the 12 week rotation) I had some issues. There is a lot I like about Phase 3 but the two biggest things that bother me are the fact that each large muscle group is only hit once a week–especially the lower body. That is driving me crazy. I like to hit each large muscle group twice a week and even if I don’t get the back and chest twice then at least I hit the lower body twice. The second thing that bothers me is the lack of cardio. Though I do focus on strength in all of my workout rotations, I am not aiming to become a body builder. Cardiovascular fitness is important, too, and though I do like the focus on mobility and flexibility, I feel like my cardiovascular fitness is being neglected. Overall, Phase 2 seems like the most well rounded of all the phases.

Today (Sunday 08/27/23) I completed the 12 week rotation. I definitely got stronger during this phase. And, though I am sure I would have in all of the phases had I spent more time in them, by the time I was halfway through this phase I was increasing the weights I lifted almost every time I repeated a workout. Not every exercise and not even most of the exercises. But at least one (or 2 or 3) exercise in each workout I lifted heavier every time I did it.

Final Thoughts:

I loved this program. Loved it so much I am not ready to leave it. It has been a long time since I have looked forward to working out this much. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy working out or I wouldn’t do it every day but this program, particularly Phases 2 & 3, were thoroughly enjoyable. I initially considered combining this program with the original STS but when I re-read my reviews for it they did not motivate me. If I really want to do any mixing up, I will mix it with Caroline Girvan workouts or Xtrain’s Burn Sets. There is so much I enjoyed about this program I don’t know where to start. This program forced me to rethink the way I workout. I did not devote enough time to recovery and mobility work prior to STS 2.0 and it was really hard for me to make myself do it in the beginning. But as I moved through the program, I really enjoyed the recovery days and how they made me feel. And I believe they also contributed to getting more out of the strength workouts. I feel like this program is a reflection of Cathe getting older, just like me and many of her followers are. I am 52 and I know she is in her late 50s. Our bodies change and the way we workout needs to change, too. Hence, more recovery. I had already been making a lot of changes after reading Next Level by Stacy T. Sims, PhD and this program fits perfectly into those changes.

One thing many people are interested in when they stumble across my blog when googling fitness programs is results. I don’t really talk about results for a lot of reasons. We all come to exercise with our own goals and baggage. Unfortunately, most people come to fitness with one specific goal: to lose weight. So they are usually disappointed that I do not include before and after pictures/body weight or fat/measurements. I have been working out daily and consistently for more than 20 years and my reasons for exercising, as well as the results I am looking for, have changed drastically over the years. My main focus for exercise is not to lose weight or even for aesthetic reasons. I am not saying that I didn’t exercise for those reasons in the past but I do not focus on those things any longer. The “results” I hoped for with this program were increased strength and mobility. I did not do weigh ins or measurements and I didn’t take before and after pictures. However, I know my body and I did gain muscle. I also gained some weight during Phase 3 that I believe was fat. I chalk it up to less cardio. I simply did not burn as many calories as I normally do and therefore I gained some fat. Once I realized what was happening (week 10 or week 4 of phase 3), I started paying closer attention to what I was eating and the scale (and the fat) returned to normal by the end of the 12 weeks. With that said, if your goal in a program like this is aesthetics, then you absolutely must pay attention to what you eat. There are many websites that can give you information on that type of thing, but if you are a woman, I do recommend reading Stacy T. Sims, PhD’s books. The aforementioned Next Level for peri and post-menopausal women and Roar for younger women will give lots of useful information and tips.

Finally, I think my flexibility and mobility have improved. I want to continue working out like this though I do want (need?) more cardio. I have already mapped out my next 5 weeks of workouts. I will be combining the workouts from all 3 phases rather than doing them separately. I will also be making better use of the premixes–particularly the Mish Mosh premixes, but some of the others, as well. I don’t know how long I will continue doing STS 2.0 workouts, but as long as I am enjoying them and getting stronger, I see no point in stopping.

STS 2.0 workouts:

Giant Sets Total Body

Supersets Total Body 

Tri Sets Total Body

Upper Body 1

Upper Body 2

Lower Body 1

Lower Body 2

Body Parts Legs + Body Parts Shoulders

Body Parts Back + Body Parts Biceps

Body Parts Chest + Body Parts Triceps

Foam Rolling

Active Recovery + Total Body Stretch

Mobility 1 & Mobility 2

Chair Yoga + Mat Yoga

Abs/Core Workouts