I’ve been playing around with various conditioning types and weights splits in my bulk for the last 4 months, and I just wanted to highlight that as a site we spend half our lives arguing about the best split, diet, rep ranges etc and sometimes the bottom line is that you just need to put the effort in and results will come.
For example, April 2011:
171 lbs, 14% BF = 147 lbs lean mass.
Bulked until October 2011:
186 lbs, 17% BF = 156.2 lbs lean mass.
Cut until 1st January 2012:
180 lbs, 14% BF = 155 lbs lean mass.
So that’s a gain of 8 lbs lean mass in 8-9 months. Nothing mind-blowing, but when you consider that 50% of my workouts were sprint sessions, I’m pretty impressed. My routine:
Day 1 - Sprints (6 x 100m and 8 x 50m) or (10 x 75m and 5 x 50m) i.e. 1000m total sprinted.
Day 2 - Total body weights (usually upper body dominated with one large lower body lift), i.e. OHP, BOR, Bench, Squat, Biceps/triceps.
Day 3 - Rest.
In terms of strength changes, using 3 upper body examples, I progressed from 16s x 10-10-10 to 24s x 10-10-10 in OHP, 24s x 8-8-8 to 30s x 11-11-11 in bench and 24 x 12-12-12 to 36 x 12-12-12 in BOR, in the bulk. IN the cut afterwards, I’ve not lost an ounce of strength and in fact there have been minor increases.
So basically, keep working hard, eating your protein, sleeping well and keeping positive and no matter what you’re doing (unless you’re doing blindfolded biceps calls whilst balancing on the swiss ball with your bollocks) you’ll make progress.