And I actually see a bit of a benefit to that for myself. I have more motivation to train if there’s something new there to push myself on. But I have to be smart about it and keep some kind of logic about it in terms of long term goals. This year I commited to running 531 of some form for squat and bench for the whole year. Next year I’m planning to be even more organised and focussed and play with some proper block periodisation. Keeps me motivated with “new” and focussed training goals, but built in such a way that they move towards a bigger picture.
Although my current plan probably involves a noticeable bulk over the course of the Transformation challenge, so I don’t foresee a great outcome for myself.
I won’t be participating this year. I don’t intend to make any changes to my body comp. I guess I’ll cut some fluff if I feel the need but nothing like last year.
I’ll “participate” in the same way as I did last year: train exactly as planned, but but pictures up as and when needed. I now take progress shots roughly weekly anyway after seeing a slideshow in @jackolee log (I think?) So that’s pretty easy for me.
The Transformation challenge is in about its 5th year now and is run by Chris Collucci and voted for by members. I believe @Frank_C nearly won last year. The program ADD challenge was started by J last year to try and inspire us all to stop spinning our wheels.
My other limit is that I only train 2 days a week most weeks and am unlikely to train more than that consistently without sacrificing unsustainable amounts of sleep. This may change, but I won’t count on it.
Lastly, I’ve mentally divided my year up so I have 6 months of big, base building work, 3 months of focus on conditioning while transitioning to higher intensities, then 3 months of pure strength to finish the year. The layout fits nicely into a few events I have planned, and how I anticipate life outside the gym over the next year.
Nope, but I may well do, trying to do as much reading as possible before I commit to stuff. If I insist on doing my own thing, it might as well be as well researched as possible. Is it in the paid section?
This is what th3pwnisher recommended to tlgains. I’m guessing you got that from him too. Tlgains is doing this and so am I if my schedule permits down the line.
There’s no way I could keep eating like that after 26 weeks of it, so I’d go with something with an intensification focus. Deep Water advanced would do nicely (could even run it back to back) or classic 5/3/1 FSL with PR sets. Would also be a fine time for conjugate so you could relearn how to strain with all the max effort work while tailoring supplemental and assistance work.
I wouldn’t offer SGSS simply because I’ve never used the program and couldn’t vouch for it.
Depending on what you eat during the deload, by my count it’s 12-18 weeks of Deep Water eating, and another 6-7 on top of that with a very high protein diet.
That’s just the way I wrote it out the first time, I mean obviously a person could run it and eat a more balanced macro-split if they cared to.
But, as you’ve pointed out earlier, the Deep Water sessions run long.
Personally, I’m thinking about just tweaking what I’m already doing and then dogmatically keep doing that until I stop making decent progress.
This is where I get myself into trouble. A little tweak here and a little tweak there and I end up with sessions like mine last night: totally lacking in focus and clarity.
I’m not sure if I can commit to a year, but I could probably commit to half. But I’m all about doing what I enjoy so I’d just run SGSS twice. I might be able to do that all year… We’ll see.
Pretty that’s enough iodine to kill me.