I’ve been training for about four years, primarily following Renaissance Periodization’s hypertrophy style programs. For a long time now, I’ve been on a 6-day/week split, which I really enjoy. I’ve never followed a dedicated strength program or focused specifically on my big compound lifts.
I’m now at a point where my main goal isn’t to get much bigger—at most, I’d like to bring up my arms a bit while maintaining an athletic frame. (I’m 5’10", 23 years old, and around 10-12% body fat.)
My new primary goals are:
To get as strong as possible.
To still include hypertrophy work for specific body parts I want to improve. And overall total body development.
To support and maintain high testosterone levels.
What would be the ideal training approach to build maximum strength while still allowing for targeted muscle growth?
Then a six day a week training regimen might not be the best idea.
You might want to think about a 3-day split to focus on compounds/strength and then add a fourth day for the body parts you want to bring up.
You can easily taylor the RP plans to do this.
I’d like something like conjugate if I wanted to build maximal strength and have room to play around with hypertrophy work in a single cycle. Westside Barbell for Skinny Bastards, in particular, would really answer the mail there. If multiple cycles are permitted, I like Tactical Barbell’s “Operator-Mass-Specificity” approach. 5/3/1 can also do this, but people screw up that program so much despite it being so simple.
It feels weird to me that it seems to be the “optimal and natural” community that errs towards as many training days as possible - that seems backwards
Oh my goodness yes! But part of that is how steroids are magical in the eyes of natural, because a trainee on steroids simultaneously CAN recover better than a natural trainee so of COURSE they train 6 days a week but because steroids are cheating of COURSE they only need to train 3 days a week to get huge. It’s Schrödinger’s steroids.
But another part is that a lot of “science based” trainees find themselves handcuffed into this approach. They operate off the premise that 2x a week stimulus is optimal for a muscle group, and that muscle groups need 72 hours of rest, and that a certain amount of sets are the optimal number of sets and a certain number of exercises are the optimal number of exercises, and eventually the ONLY training system that “works” is a 6 day a week PPL split.
In the past, they called this “Power Building” and more recently “A Lift Specific Plan.”
Basically, training the comp lifts to get stronger. Then hitting the important bodyparts for your physique like lats, quads, shoulders and arms with bodybuilding style lifts.
Like the other guys mentioned, many (nearly all?) of these plans are based on training 3-4 times per week, because you’re lifting heavier weights, and need a little more time to recover between sessions.
Here are some guidelines from Christian Thibadeau.
I’m comfortable with a frequency of 3-4 days per week. I would greatly appreciate your guidance on programming specifics, including how the strategy might differ for bulking, maintaining, and cutting phases.
How does the recovery feel at 5 days/weeks? I get the gist that 4 days per week is most optimal, especially for having growth/maintenance of testosterone levels
And how is the strength progression been for you on the program?
That way, everything is in balance, and you’re doing the correct amounts of Main, Supplemental and Assistance work. And pushing them with the right amount of focus.
And if you run into problems, you can refer to the coach or program to figure out what you’re messing up. And how to fix it.
Also, if you’re trying to get as strong as possible, and you’re worried about hormones, strength training while in a defecit should be avoided.
