I designed a 9x a week routine. The structure is basically:
MWF: Lower Body one workout. Monday starts with Box Squats, W is Deadlift variation, F Zercher squats, with standard westside exercises as assistance.
STuTh I do two workouts for the upper body.
Roughly: Sun: Bench Variation ME then bench and Row Variations
Tu AM: Shoulders and Biceps. PM: Triceps and Rear Delt
Th AM: Bench Throws, then Shoulders and Upper Back. PM: Triceps and Biceps
I also throw in grip work in the PM workouts
90% of the work is done at 2-5 reps, with ramping sets, at least 5 sets.
So far two weeks in:
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It’s a fun program. It allows me a lot of variation in exercises and I prefer doing the heavy work more than grinding out high volume sets
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So far no symptoms of overtraining. The PM workouts aren’t a drag at all.
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There’s some variation in strength gains. Some exercises I’m going up, some are stagnant.
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I still have trouble predicting the “Max Force Point”. I could accelerate the weight at, say 80, then at 90 every rep is a grind. I guess this will come with time and experience?
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Sleep makes a difference. If I get only 6 hours of sleep the previous night it can take me longer to get into the “zone”
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So far it looks like I gained 3 lbs, which is in line with my target (an ambitious 20 lbs of mass in 12 weeks)
I changed F to start with Bulgarian Split Squats as my lower back was not loving me. Deadlift day is still kind of rough at times.
Otherwise with upper-body things are going great. PRs all over the place. 155x3 for weighted dips last night. I’m doing 5/3/1 for Military Press and got +5 lbs and +2 reps the other day.
I’m slowly getting a better intuition as to when to stop ramping. Either way I’m experiencing no symptoms of overtraining. The FINiBARs and Anaconda are key though, the other day I forgot to bring FINiBARs and definitely felt sluggish even though I replaced them with SWF and SR
Sounds like Poliquin’s Superaccumulation program meets ramping.
Maybe I missed it in your post but do you have planned deloads/off time, or are you just going to stick to the “autoregulation” and go down that path when you get there?
nice, my first thought also was overtraining, but then you said “90% of the work is done at 2-5 reps, with ramping sets, at least 5 sets.” so it seems like a lot of heavy work, but its been 2 weeks and your feeling good, so thats only encouragement to the rest of us,
nice work and good luck
4 weeks in. Still seeing weekly improvements on the majority of the exercises. Up to 190 with my abs visible. Still no symptoms of overtraining.
Approximately how much gym time is this, all told?
A fuckton, honestly. I could not do this under normal circumstances, but had some lucky breaks in my life that are allowing this to happen.
Each workout is an hour to an hour and a half, then there’s pre-workout nutrition, showering, transportation (walking), so round it to 2 hours and it’s an 18 hr per week commitment, with 9-13 of that actual gym time. It’s like having a part-time job.
So it’s a big commitment, but it’s about fucking time for me to get to 200 lean and bench 315 and if I hit that it’ll be worth it
End of week 6. Up to 193-194, coming from 184-185. Did gain a bit of fat though.
Fridays are always rough (my one day off is Saturday), but today felt especially run down. So definitely feeling a bit of overtraining. But now I’m going to be up in the mountains for a few days, and probably take one or two days off extra to recover. Subsequently, I’ve got 5.5 weeks until I plan to do my first powerlifting meet.