The key to your goals with becoming as strong as you can is keeping your Body and its muscles constantly guessing as to what you decide to do to keep yourself in a state of constant flux, thereby working all muscle groups. That needs to coincide with the appropriate rest and recovery time in-between work days. I recommend Supersets to speed your workout times and to achieve anaerobic rate, thereby increasing your blood/ oxygen flow and depending on if you work reps or weight increases, your size/ definition.
I’m in a fairly barebones gym. I have a squat rack, a barbell with weights, an adjustable bench, some dumbbells, and a GHD.
What are you doing the Farmers with then, the dumbbells?
I think a good combo for one of the days would be DB Incline Bench, then turn around and do DB Incline Chest Supported Row. That would be a bit easier on the low back than the Barbell Rows, and Jim Wendler signs off on that combo on a couple programs.
I like the Weighted Chin/BTN Press combo on the other day.
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I have Farmer’s Walk handles. Forgot to mention.
Very much appreciate the kind words @throwawayfitness . And @BrandonCrawford has already given some outstanding feedback. For my own take:
On your Day A, you’re absolutely smashing your squatting muscles, by squatting as a main lift AND in the supplemental cluster. Meanwhile, on Day B, you’re doing the same thing with your hip hinge: deadlifting AND RDLing.
What makes more sense to me, training 3x a week, is to spread those lifts out so that you’re squatting AND hip hinging EVERY time you train. If squat is the main lift, RDL (or SLDL if you’re old school) for the supplemental lift. On the deadlift main day, front squat for the supplemental lift.
You’re exceeding the parameters of Grey Man by having 7 supplemental exercises. I’d honestly scrap the barbell rows if I was going to do farmer’s walks. I’m not the biggest fan of barbell rows in general, so that’s most likely my bias showing, but barbell rows are about picking up something heavy off the floor, and so are farmer’s.
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If I scrap the Barbell Rows, should I move the weighted NG pull-ups to the A day to get them twice a week?
You rotate A-B-A/B-A-B with Grey Man.
Oh, I thought it was ABA repeating. Got it.
Do you prefer dumbbell rows (or kroc specifically I guess) to barbell rows?
Not to barbell rows (implying a replacement for them), but I prefer DB rows for rowing. Never cared for Kroc rows: just couldn’t ever make it work.
Okay. Do you think weighted NG Pullups are a good choice for overall back development or would DB rows be more suitable.
No reason to pick only one. You will run the program for many cycles, and when you move on to specificity you will have even more exercises.
However, if I was already doing deadlifts, RDLs and farmer’s walks, I don’t really see what rows would give me there, whereas chins would provide something unique. If I wanted more rowing volume, I would use a rower for my conditioning
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Alright, I’ll do the pull ups then. Thank you for your help!
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@GarryIndiana it’d be interesting if you kept a log here.
None of those hit what rows do. There is no scapular retraction.
I’d just do some band pull aparts if that’s really a concern, which is completely acceptable assistance work for Tactical Barbell. I wouldn’t seek to address it with a row on top of all that other stuff.
Or, again: more work on the rower for conditioning.