Wednesday
Squat FBT
5/3/1 Narrow grip bench (super set DB rows)
Weighted chins 3 x 10
Dumbbell side bends 3 x 10
Friday
Squat FBT
5/3/1 Press (super set chins)
5/3/1 For Powerlifting Deadlift
Hanging leg raises 3 x 10
…Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I tend to do some light stuff such as goblet squats etc.
I am leaning towards either:
(A)pulling the ab work out of my lifting days and doing ab circuits on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, while doing GHR at the end of every M/W/F workout. Or
(B)leaving my routine as it is and simply doing ghr and some other bodyweight stuff on my off days.
Any opinions from people who have used GHR over a period of time?
I’ve used the Elite GHR for about six months. As such I am not particularly experienced with it, but when I started I did sets with a light band assist for 5 sets of 5 after the main movements of the day. I would recommend doing this to start even if you can bang out reps without assist as the hamstrings frequently arent conditioned for this sort of intense stimulation, and as such can pull easily.
When this becomes easy, move to three sets of 5, and then 5 sets of 5 after each workout. When you can do this easily after the main movements, move them as part of your warmup, cycling between 5x5 reps,6x5,7x5, and then a light deload of 3x5.
I would not recommend doing them as a circuit until you can do them comfortably as part of your warmup (I use a light bodyweight circuit of pushups and TRX rows with the GHRS now), and by all means keep the abs. If you’re pushing the big lifts do as much ab work as you can.
Thanks for the detailed reply and great programming suggestions. That’s exactly what I was after.
How have you felt GHRs have contributed to your squat and deadlift, as a medium-term user of the movement?
Oh and I was definitely not meaning I would drop ab work entirely! I was just considering doing all the ab stuff on my “off” days in order to avoid lengthening my workouts by doing both them and GHRs every training day.
I am an advanced beginner- to intermediate (315 squat, 405 dead), so I don’t know a great deal, but I would say that they have helped me to have a stronger lockout on the deadlift, and more control on the squat. I able to quickly descend, and reverse from the hole in the squat, with power and control, which I think has come from stronger hips, hamstrings and calves.
They can definitely lengthen your workout- the way I get around this is to include them as part of a circuit. So generally I do them with any prehab type stuff at the end of the workout. In the beginning though, just try to keep the rest periods fairly short if you are concerned about time.
You definitely should keep it on your workout days though, if you do it only the off days I think you’d be still recovering a little bit by the time your workout happens. By all means do some extra light ab work on your off days though, as this would help condition your abs for an increased workload. Your lifts might go down for a short period, but you will quickly adapt.