Hello there (non native speaker, sorry for any obvious grammar mistakes)
I’d like some advice and comments about my program.
I’m 30 yo male, 1m76 (5 feet 9 inch), 99 kg (218 lbs), 25% BF (dexa measured). BF will be tracked by dexa scan every 3 months. I’m followed by a sport dietitian for food and sport physical therapist for form check. I have no issues sleeping and no high stress exposure.
My current goal is to get leaner (goal is to get 90kg@18% BF) whilst building strength, focusing on squat and push press (big delay on shoulders). I use trap bar deadlift for the main pull mvt, and push press for the main pressing mvt, as I don’t intend to compete and I like those exercices better.
Here is my program on 4 weeks, 3 workouts/week. Weights are in kg. On rest days, I may perform some medium intensity conditioning (e.g biking) : Program_V1 - Google Sheets
I made something based on increasing relative intensity (RI) every week, with an AMAP set at week 4 to set a new 1 RM, compute with this website : https://www.rpecalculator.com/
But I feel the RI range is too taxing combined with the volume, especially on squat. For instance, I felt my 3x3@145kg (319 lbs) squat yesterday way to heavy (RPE9.5), had to drop down to 137.5kg after the 1st set. But on the other hand, I managed to get 8 reps RPE9 on the AMAP set on squat @132.5kg (291 lbs) the last training block.
What would you suggest ?
I already ran a 1st 4 weeks block with lighter weights, this is my 2nd.
Did you do your Week 4, AMRAP “test” and then immediately begin the next Block of training?
If you busted your ass for a month, finished with an extra hard week, and jumped into an even heavier month of training, you may just be a little fatigued now.
Yeah that’s what I did, hence my seek for advice/comments/tweaks to bring to my program. I’m a noob at programming. Up to now, I only carried out “simple” straightforward stuff like Greyskull LP (which gave good results before stalling).
It’s the first time I try something based on relative intensity, but I found the idea made sense to me.
Maybe adding a deload after week 4 each time might be a solution.
Or removing the AMAP on week 4, and rescheduling my program starting with lower RI on week 1 (for instance 80%) up to a heavy week on week 4 (let’s say 90/92% RI), with still light+ and heavy- days for squat (8’s or 6’s and 4’s or 3’s). And then increasing the weight by 5 lbs for the next block, and deloading every 2 or 3 blocks.
It seems like you’ve looked at enough pre-written programs to at least know “How” they do things. You’ve heard of stuff like deloading, and waving intensity up and then back down, progressing slow, etc.
And by messing around with your own training plan you’re leaning “Why” coaches use these strategies in their plans. So whatever happens, you’ll get Something out of writing your own stuff.
So according to you, the main frame of my program is OK, I “only” need to tweak some things (removing AMAP and adding 5 to 10 lbs each block depending on the exercice, re-scaling my RI ramp up to make it smoother, planning a deload every other block) to find the sweet spot that suits me best in term of progression and recovery.
That’s quite reassuring to read this. Sometimes, I feel some people try to sell methods as the absolute truth, while keeping secret why it should work.
Yeah, exactly. Your basic scheme is “OK.” Full body, 3 days per week, 3-4 moves, about 20 lifts (average) per move, per day. That setup has been around for a long time.
But like you said, you need to find that “Sweet Spot” so you can recover and progress. Different guys have come up with all kinds of ways to personalize the basic full body plan. From simple to pretty complex. Your stuff doesn’t look much crazier than some of these.
(non native speaker, sorry for any obvious grammar mistakes)