I am hoping you can help me out to reach my goal. For the last few years I have been training a bodybuilding style split and whilst I do enjoy it I am bored of endless accessory exercises. Before this style I used to train the usual stronglifts and made good progress before getting injured and unable to go heavy. However I am injury free now and diving back into strength training and I want to keep it as simple as possible using the big lifts squat, bench, deadlift, ohp, bb row and pull ups. Just looking for help on how to program this kind of split with reps sets etc. I can train 4 days a week if needed. My goal is to build some real strength and size and to have something I can run for a long period of time. Any help with this would be really appreciated
I’m not sure how much you’ve been doing the main lifts you describe, but I think a 4 day program (2 upper/2 lower) would be ideal. Keep it simple to start, no band work, no 1RM. Just one day high intensity (3-5 RM) one day low intensity (10-12 reps for sets to work on form) on main movements while rotating assistance. When your progress stalls on the 3-5 RM you can revisit and look at some other programs, but given you said you haven’t gone heavy in years I think this should suffice for quite some time.
Lots of options out there. CT has a program called Simple Guaranteed Strength and Size on his ThibArmy site. It uses double progression. I really enjoyed it and had great results. The key is planning ahead instead of just winging it.
I’m applying part of the progression to my training now. I just alternate between increasing volume and load each session.
And so on. After 3-4 weeks you can shift to sets of 5, and then 3, and then reset everything and go back to 8s. SGSS has three week phases. You do 8s for weeks 1-3, 5s for weeks 4-6, 3s for weeks 7-9 and then a little peaking (realization phase) weeks 10-12 using a pyramid of 5/4/3/2/1. I think most people ought to start over after week 9.