Just a Friendly Request for Advice

Bigger Stronger Leaner Christian Thibaudeau Coaching
1

Hi all,

I have a pretty unique situation on my hands, and have been drooling over the info on Layers, and just generally getting excited to start DESTROYING in the weight room for the next few months.

My situation:
I am in Bangkok for one academic year. So, up until the end of May, with one month off from mid December to mid January.
I have access to a gym on campus but it’s fairly limited. Good weekend warrior equipment like a Smith machine, cable station etc but not even one squat rack or free barbell that I am aware of. Basically…“bro” equipment hahaha.

HOWEVER: I signed up for a gym near my apartment that has a fully equipped powerlifting room, and some okay weight room stuff like an array of leg machines and some cables. No dumbells.

My schedule this semester will give me easy access to each gym 3 times per week. Obviously they are both useful, but for fairly different things. I wish to take full advantage of both as much as makes sense, especially the powerlifting equipment, extra especially with all this Layers stuff just sitting here for the taking in these forums!

I’m sitting here trying to devise a monster program that takes advantage of both facilities without doing some stupid overlaps. My weekly schedule is:

Monday: Off campus
Tuesday: On Campus
Wednesday: On campus
Thursday: Off campus
Friday: On campus
Saturday: Off campus
Sunday: Off campus

That offers up 6 days I could train, whether or not that is smart. I’m on a student Visa, so I couldn’t get a job if I wanted to. Let’s call this my job.

Basic goals:
I haven’t seen an accurate scale since I got here so I guess I’m currently about 162 lbs, somewhere around 10% BF (self calipered so who really knows?) I left school in May teetering on 170.

Aiming for 180 lbs at end of academic year. Crazy? Maybe. I’ve been able to add 7lbs of muscle a semester fairly consistently in the past, and I like a challenge. Plus food is crazy cheap here. I can hit 4000cal for maybe $7 a day.

Also a DL of 405 would be cool. Current PR is 365. No gear whatsoever and I would use that stipulation for this goal as well.

I thought I’d just throw this out there and see if anyone slaps me upside the head with some brilliant ideas, while I continue reading amazing ideas from people lots smarter than me about all this.

Thank you so much for whatever knowledge gets put forth in this thread. I started a log under that forum too. “An Overseas Experiment.”

Cheers

2

For reference so you now what I’m working with:

3

Okay, I think my best option will be to select exercises that can be done at the campus facility for those days. I’m sure it will be difficult to find something that really hammers me but I will do my best with the equipment I have there. Certainly I can do some kind of pressing there, even if my only choice is the Smith machine, and perhaps a chin up day, then one more…

Answers or no in this thread, thanks for all the info that’s in this forum to get me going the right direction.

4

Hey hey,

So here’s what I’ve come up with. It’s hard to strike the right balance of no overlap, getting proper spacing between particular movements and placing certain movements on the days where I will be on or off campus.

I had it really dialed in, but it turns out the off-campus gym is closed Monday and that really jacked it all up. Right now I think this is workable, and my only real concern is the rowing day interfering with the high pull day. I would gladly just trade those but I’m at the wrong end of town to use the right equipment on those days.

Monday -

Tuesday - DECLINE PRESSING

Wednesday - ROW

Thursday - SGHP

Friday - INCLINE PRESSING

Saturday - DEADLIFT

Sunday - SQUAT

2 days of pressing because, well, look at the photos in my log and tell me what needs to Grow!

I suppose deads and squatting back to back poses an issue, but those are inarguably my strong points so I feel like I can handle it. Any bright ideas out there for a better scheme? Maybe 2 days of SGHP and one monster lower body day on Sunday? No matter what I change there’s always some conflict I run into.

…and then reading over this post, there’s the fact that I have FOUR consecutive upper body days. Pain in the ass.

5

ANYWAY…

"You know what? Fuck the campus gym whether it’s inconvenient or not. They are slacking on getting me card access anyway.

Monday -

Tuesday - SGHP + lats

Wednesday - DECLINE PRESS

Thursday -

Friday - SGHP + biceps

Saturday - INCLINE PRESS

Sunday - SQUAT or DL

BOOM. DONE. See you tomorrow high pulls. Life is easy when you make decisions."

Straight from the log. Again though, thanks for all the info just laying around here for the taking. It was just a matter of reading pretty much all of it to make up my mind on what had to be done. So, I’ll have a few extra 15 minute walks every week. No big deal.

6

looking at your physique, you are the opposite to most people… all leg, no upper body! -of course i don’t mean ‘no’ upper body, but very much out of proportion.

i would just follow the initial layers as they were intended…

lower body movement (same each week)
incline press
SGHP
decline press
SGHP
OFF/accessory.

in both the splits you laid out, you had rows or deadlifts back to back with SGHP’s -you should try and avoid that. also in the first split you have squats and deadlifts back to back (???) i know you say its ok because its your strong point, but imo thats exactly why its NOT ok; your moving heavy weight from your already developed deadlift (and i presume squats) which is an awesome feat, but soooooo taxing on the CNS… this is why CT initially outlined the above plan, where you only squat OR deadlift once a week…

if you want to train legs more frequently, i would suggest looking at his 10 day micro cycles, where lower/press/pull are worked more evenly.

good luck to you sir, the layer system will serve you with great results in size and strength like everybody else!

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Thanks man, that must have been the one bit of info I was not able to dig up. I’m NOT trying to cobble together some random crap like I know better than a professional coach! Since I’m forgoing the campus gym I can pretty much run the movements in any order.

Anyway I did take out rows in what I thought to be the most sensible version. Maybe it will look more like this though:

Mon - off
Tue - SQ or DL
Wed - Incline (I guess that makes sense to go before decline since it’s harder)
Thu - off
Fri - SGHP
Sat - Decline
Sun - SGHP

In a way this seems pretty much the same as what I posted above. Actually I got that one from this:
"But many people I (CT) work with are actually doing only 5 weekly training sessions:

Bench incline tilt 
High pull 
REST 
Bench decline tilt 
Front squat or TBDL 
REST 
High pull

In fact the guy with the greatest gains overall so far is doing it like that. " If you look at the one I proposed with Friday as the start, it’s damn near the same.

If it really really messes things up to have a 7 day cycle let me know. I get into the semester and need less and less to think about outside class, so I try to assign a movement to a day of the week for the sake of simplicity. Less thinking, more lifting, it has worked wonders for me in the past.

Yeah this is analysis paralysis. Time to GTFO the keyboard and go lift.

8

Just letting anyone who cares know that these workouts are feeling great and I currently have some sore tittays, which is hard for me to achieve.

Time to grow some muscle-boobs. And possibly a neck like a tree with 2x a week high pulls.