Animal Mother and others I promised I would fill you in on some programming stuff:
Ok, so as I have mentioned before, I have been designing my own programs for the better part of my training life now and have learned some basic things that have helped me along the way. If you are thinking about writing your own program hopefully this will help you out some. And if not, save yourself the next ten minutes of your life and skip this whole thing and continue to allow others to do all of your thinking for you.
The first couple of things that I always decide before writing down any exercises are the following:
-What is my focus for this stage of my training? Am I trying to get stronger? Leaner? Add muscle mass? Rehab an injury? Etc, This will automatically give you some sort of direction as to exercise selection and rep ranges.
-What did I just finish up doing with my last program? And where am I headed in the next year? This is huge in your macro cyclical planning for the year. If you just finished up maxing out for the last month or so (as I did) your body is probably going to need a little break for extremely heavy weights for a while. Personally, once I finish up a program like I just did, I will usually jump back to something with higher reps and lighter weight as a way for my body to deload and give me a chance to work more on my form, so that, hopefully by the next maxing cycle, I will be moving more weight than I previously was.
-How often are you able/willing to get in the gym? How about GPP? Will you have recovery issues stopping you from your weekend ping pong tournaments?
-What are your weak areas that need to be brought up? For me right now that is my deadlift. Previously it was my squat. Do you have injuries that need to be attended to? How about form issues? You get the point.
Once I have figured out these things I will sit down and list all of the Lower body push/pull, upper body push/pull, Olympic lifts, ballistic movements, etc that I want to use for this cycle of programming. I personally stick very close to the same exercises (because my body responds better to basic barbell movements) and just might make small changes such as my grip type or width.
After that I just start plugging things in.
If you are doing bodypart splits, a monkey with a funny hat could make up your program for you. TBT takes a little more thought simply because of the cyclical nature of it and not being fried if you need to do back to back days and such.
For TBT I like giant sets because it gets the training done fairly quickly and if you are using opposing antagonistic muscle groups in the same plane of movement than recovery from exercise to exercise is rarely a problem once your body gets used to training like this.
On any given day I will always have a lower body exercise, an upper body push and an upper body pull. I will also usually throw in Ab/oblique stuff as well, and often some sort of ballistic movement. On the upper body movements I will ALWAYS do my pulling PRIOR to my pushing. I have said it before, but this helped my shoulder health so much it was incredible.
For the most part, my usual training day template goes something like this:
-Insert/extract: Is more random than you would believe. I think of junk that is hard and that I really do not want to do than commit to it.
-Strength: I will either do two separate giant sets that usually look like this:
1a. Lower body
1b. Ballistic Movement
1c. Ab/Oblique
2a. Upper body Pull
2b. Upper body push (In the same plane of movement)
2c. Ab/Oblique
Or I will do one giant set and some accessory work, which looks like this:
1a.Lower body
1b. Upper Body Pull
1c. Upper body Push
1d. Ab/Oblique
3 Accessory movements in a giant set that I feel need some extra work, such as external rotations, shrugs, and arms could also go here.
-For all of my giant sets I go as heavy as I can, as long as I can keep 2 reps in me. So if I am supposed to get 7 reps, I will make the weight so that I would have just barely finished my 9. I keep my intensity high for all of these sets. I do not rest at all between exercises and usually take a minute or so rest between the entire giant set.
I have stated it before, but if you set up your training as I explained above you will get quite a bit of time for muscle recovery between actual working sets of that exercise due to the way it is set up. Your body just has to get used to the overall workload and comprehensive exhaustion it will be experiencing.
The days where I just have 1 giant set and accessory work, the accessory stuff is not something that I just blow off. I keep my same mentality of keeping 2 reps in me for all sets, but obviously since the exercises chosen for the accessory stuff are more isolation exercises as opposed to bigger compound movements, it is naturally a good bit easier on you.
I hope this helps our some!
This is what I am moving to now that my maxing stuff is done for a while:
I am keeping the weights very light in order to deload some, take care of my back/wrist/vag, and get back to working my form. I find now that making gains for me now is no longer as much about getting stronger as much as doing the movements more efficiently.
Of course a lot of this could change as I am going through it and se how my body feels/reacts to it, but this is the basic template, and I am planning to staying around the 4 reps of 8 range.
Training A:
Insert:
Strength: Giant Sets 4x8
1a. Squats:
1b. Rev Grip BB Row:
1c. Flat BB Bench:
1d. Ab:
2a. DB Rows:
2b. Weighted Dips:
2c. Ab:
Extract:
Training B:
Insert:
Strength: Giant Sets 4x8
1a. Weighted Pulls:
1b. Military:
1c. Cable wood chops:
2a. Upright rows:
2b. DB Lateral Raise/DB Rear Delt
2c. Face pulls/Band Pull Aparts
Extract:
Training C:
Insert:
Strength: 4x8
1a. Deads:
1b. DB Swings:
1c. Ab:
2a. SLDL:
2b. DB Incline bench:
2c. Ab:
Extract:
Training D:
Insert:
Strength: 4x8
1a. Front Squats:
1b. Good Mornings:
1c. Full Contact twists:
2a. BB Shrugs
2b. BW Pull-ups
2c. Drag BB Curls
Extract:
Replies:
PH: You know man, I am actually considering contacting them over there to see if I could get some sessions with those guys. Like go out to EFTS and see if they could help me out, I am still throwing around the idea of either doing a PL comp or a strongman comp, and going to talk to those guys would be a great way to get some good input.
As far as the tumor goes, yea there are some things that are happening, but I do not really want to throw them out too much on line here because you never know who is reading. But it is what caused the kidney stuff to happen, which seems to be more under control now, but not terrific. Thanks for asking though man, and thanks for the kind words.
Ironwarrior: well I think it depends on what you are tyring to do and how your body reacts. When I go to failure I can definitely tell the difference in my performance. But then again I do not sleep much and do the TBT stuff. If you can get away with it I honestly would not worry too much. But if your body reacts more like mine I would say do some maxing out really soon to get an idea of where you are, then kind of start the cycle of building back up to trying again in October. Then again I have never really peaked for a PL comp so I am probably not the best guy to answer this.
If anyone else can help him out, please fill in for my ignorance here! And thanks for the kind words brother!
The dude: Man, it is totally cool, I did not really realize that you were joking until later. Sorry for the over reaction. Anyway, I could not let you punk me in front of all the other kids on the playground like that could I?? Were cool brother!
MIM: Ha Thanks for that! But honestly I am not down at all really, just know that I should have done better.
Anyway, do you know someone who is never sate and has a huge hunger for greatness in all that they do? Yea, times that guy by like ten and you will have some idea of the pressure I put on myself for no reason at all. You should ask Stclair20 and Dirty South what happens when I have an off day on the shooting range. When I am not happy the world feels wrath!
Who knew a 30 year old could be so mature!?!
It is like that line from Troy where dreamy Brad Pitt says, āI want the same things all men want. I just want them more.ā
You did make me happier though!
Adam F: thanks man! And I swear to you, I have the strength for 700 right now, I just need to figure out how to get my frame to want to pick it up. 635 does not even feel that heavy, it just refuses to move when I get it out of alignment with the middle of my feet/center of gravity. It is probably a blessing that is keeping me from seriously messing myself up again! Thanks again brother!
****This is all the time I have for replies right now. But I promise to respond to the rest of them just as soon as i am back in the countryā¦
But please everyone know that I am not feeling down or sorry for myself at all! I am happy that i did as well as I did on the PR stuff, I am just disappointed how far off my original set goals that i wasā¦
I just want all of you to know that I am not feeling like a victim here, I think what I posted the other day came across different than I meant it toā¦
I went for a SLD run today for about a half an hour. Although I had to stop and walk a couple of times to loosen up the cramps in my lower back, it was good to be doing it againā¦
I really appreciate all of the replies and advice! like I said I will reply to them just as soon as I am back in country and have some more time! Keep any pointer and comments coming!
Thanks a lot everyone!
