[quote]mahwah wrote:
Well, fuck me.
That would’ve been good to know.
[/quote]
My thoughts exactly. Maybe someone else will benefit from this knowledge.
I was in touch with Mark Philippi and he said that Week 5 was a misprint, and on top of that they spelled his name wrong as well.
I was planning on squatting 5x5 on Sundays and pulling on Wednesdays, but I am thinking of dropping sunday to 5x3 squats and some sled drags/core work since I can already see that the coming weeks are going to get MUCH harder with the volume of pulling I will be doing. What do you think?
[quote]Stronghold wrote:
I was planning on squatting 5x5 on Sundays and pulling on Wednesdays, but I am thinking of dropping sunday to 5x3 squats and some sled drags/core work since I can already see that the coming weeks are going to get MUCH harder with the volume of pulling I will be doing. What do you think?[/quote]
I think 5x5 Squats were the death of me. I would definitely drop the volume back to 3 sets of 5 or even 3x3.
I’d also stress not to go overboard on the accessory work in your back circuit. I think the trick is to make it challenging, without taking every set to the edge of failure.
[quote]Modi wrote:
I think 5x5 Squats were the death of me. I would definitely drop the volume back to 3 sets of 5 or even 3x3.
I’d also stress not to go overboard on the accessory work in your back circuit. I think the trick is to make it challenging, without taking every set to the edge of failure.[/quote]
I misread the program before leaving for the gym and instead of 90s rest between each set in the circuit, I went from set to set with only as much rest as I needed to get to the next station…so my gm’s were with 95 lbs and I could hardly hold onto the 135 lb bb row.
I may up the rest periods to something like 30-45s this next week and raise the weights a little, but those light weights absolutely murdered me after 9 sets of deadlift.
Im going to cut my squat workout down to bare bones and be mindful of the volume I use during the rest of the week.
[quote]Stronghold wrote:
I misread the program before leaving for the gym and instead of 90s rest between each set in the circuit, I went from set to set with only as much rest as I needed to get to the next station…so my gm’s were with 95 lbs and I could hardly hold onto the 135 lb bb row.
I may up the rest periods to something like 30-45s this next week and raise the weights a little, but those light weights absolutely murdered me after 9 sets of deadlift.
Im going to cut my squat workout down to bare bones and be mindful of the volume I use during the rest of the week.[/quote]
I’d take the full 90sec between sets. There is enough volume there to induce plenty of fatigue. No need to make it worse by cutting the rest periods in my opinion.
FWIW, my squat workouts are:
Sqt. 3 sets of 10
GHR 4 sets 8-10
Heavy Ab 3 sets of 10-15
Lunges 3 sets of 6-8
and some calf work at the end.
And I started out like you did, Stronghold, with no rest between my supersets. Let me say, it makes a huge difference on the weights you can use, especially on the G.Mornings.
And your hands will thank you.
[quote]mahwah wrote:
And I started out like you did, Stronghold, with no rest between my supersets. Let me say, it makes a huge difference on the weights you can use, especially on the G.Mornings.
And your hands will thank you. [/quote]
Haha. Weird. Thats exactly what I was thinking.
About the squats, Iv got to be careful with my knees…I can handle heavier weights, but longer sets give me hell with my left knee. Im going to give 5x3 a shot next week and see how that goes.
[quote]mahwah wrote:
FWIW, my squat workouts are:
Sqt. 3 sets of 10
GHR 4 sets 8-10
Heavy Ab 3 sets of 10-15
Lunges 3 sets of 6-8
and some calf work at the end.
And I started out like you did, Stronghold, with no rest between my supersets. Let me say, it makes a huge difference on the weights you can use, especially on the G.Mornings.
And your hands will thank you. [/quote]
What is this calf thing that you speak of? I thought walking around at 260+ was enough of a workout. 
06/28/08 - Upper (RE)
A) Seated Shoulder Press
barx12
95x8
135x5
185x6
195x6
205x6 (artificial PR +2 reps)
B) Close Grip Bench w/chains
135x6x2
185x5
225+1 chainx10
225+2 x8
225+3 x8
225+4 x6
225+5 x4
C) Modiplex (supersetted)
C1) DB Rear Delts
30x8x3
C2) DB Side Delts
30x8x3
C3) DB Upright Rows
30x8x3
C4) DB Front Delts
30x8x3
C5) DB Shoulder Press
30x8x3
Today was the first day of focusing on my shoulders on my Upper RE day. I’m definitely going to spend the next several months trying to bring up my overhead pressing. My only downside here is that my basement ceiling is just a hair over 7’ tall, so I can’t do any standing overhead pressing down there. I may do a few weeks of push press, and just bring the bar and some plates out into my back yard when the time comes.
205x6 was reasonably hard, but it’s really a baseline PR, since I’ve always done my overhead pressing after a bench variation.
My chains were getting lonely sitting in the corner, so I brought them out for some close grip pressing. These things really load you up when you get 3 or more on each side.
I finished with an old circuit that I used to incorporate a lot. This circuit is pretty brutal, with no rest between sets. The adjustable Oly DB handles aren’t the greatest for the Upright Rows. The ends tend to get in the way of each other. For that matter, they banged off my shins a few times during the rear delt raise, until it turned them so my thumbs were facing down instead of forward.
Today was better than yesterday, and will be a good starting point for after the deload.
[quote]Modi wrote:
mahwah wrote:
FWIW, my squat workouts are:
Sqt. 3 sets of 10
GHR 4 sets 8-10
Heavy Ab 3 sets of 10-15
Lunges 3 sets of 6-8
and some calf work at the end.
And I started out like you did, Stronghold, with no rest between my supersets. Let me say, it makes a huge difference on the weights you can use, especially on the G.Mornings.
And your hands will thank you.
What is this calf thing that you speak of? I thought walking around at 260+ was enough of a workout. ;)[/quote]
I have some work to do before I even approach 260 
[quote]Stronghold wrote:
I was planning on squatting 5x5 on Sundays and pulling on Wednesdays, but I am thinking of dropping sunday to 5x3 squats and some sled drags/core work since I can already see that the coming weeks are going to get MUCH harder with the volume of pulling I will be doing. What do you think?[/quote]
Well, with a 5x3 you’ll be able to squat at a higher workload than a 10x3, but you’ve got enough time to recoup by Wed.
Also, depending on how you pull, I would maybe throw in a little hamstring work on Sundays, after your squats. I feel like a lot of my gains up to this point in my squat and DL can be attributed to the GHRs and stronger hammys.
[quote]mahwah wrote:
Well, with a 5x3 you’ll be able to squat at a higher workload than a 10x3, but you’ve got enough time to recoup by Wed.
Also, depending on how you pull, I would maybe throw in a little hamstring work on Sundays, after your squats. I feel like a lot of my gains up to this point in my squat and DL can be attributed to the GHRs and stronger hammys.[/quote]
I am wary of doing any hamstring work outside of the pull workout since my hamstrings have a tendency to stay sore for days after I work them. I think squats and sled drags will hit them just enough to do something but not enough to hinder me come wednesday.
[quote]Stronghold wrote:
mahwah wrote:
Well, with a 5x3 you’ll be able to squat at a higher workload than a 10x3, but you’ve got enough time to recoup by Wed.
Also, depending on how you pull, I would maybe throw in a little hamstring work on Sundays, after your squats. I feel like a lot of my gains up to this point in my squat and DL can be attributed to the GHRs and stronger hammys.
I am wary of doing any hamstring work outside of the pull workout since my hamstrings have a tendency to stay sore for days after I work them. I think squats and sled drags will hit them just enough to do something but not enough to hinder me come wednesday.[/quote]
I’m planning on doing some 5x3 (russian…5 reps x 3 sets) and 3x3’s for my Squats for the duration of the Coan/Philippi cycle, and adding in some GHR’s. I think the Box Squats w/chains was just too taxing and the volume was too much. I was making nice progress on the 5x5’s, so it is really tough to hold back, but I’ll jump back into 5x5’s after week 10.
3 days should be enough to recover from some light hamstring work, but I’d agree with not going overboard on it. And afterall, it is your body, so you know how it responds best.
06/30/08 - Squat (RE)
A) Low Bar Squat
barx12
135x8
225x5
315x3
365x3
405x3
425x3
445x3 (PR +10lbs)
B) Glute Ham Raise
4,4,3,5
C) Abs on GHR
10x3
Squats felt smooth today. 445x3 is probably a PR, but since my computer is taking a sick day, I have no way to know for sure. EDIT Confirmed from old records that this was a 10lb PR!
I got my new Elitefts Glute Ham Raise over the weekend, and got it set up in my basement. I pretty much sucked at these. The biggest problem was that the pad was crushing my thighs. I may have to play around with the pad positioning a little more, or suck it up a little harder. Regardless, they were just as hard as I imagined, but certainly better than the old Natural GHR’s.
I did my abs slow on the GHR and really reached back for a nice stretch, and held the contraction at the end. Nice to have another way to train the abs.
Thanks for sharing your training log.
Starting next week, I’m going to be doing the Texas Method (like Rippetoe’s part two) as written with this cycle on Friday’s (not that it matters to you).
How did you decide on what weight to use for the accessory lifts. That’s really the only thing I’m not sure of. I don’t have a lot of experience doing SDL’s, RDL’sl, or GM’s.
07/01/08 - Upper (ME)
A) 3 Board Press
…
275x1
add 3 board…
315x3
365x3 (tie PR)
370x3 (PR +5lbs)
375x3 (PR +10lbs)
B) Incline Press
135x6
185x3225x3
250x6x3
C) JM Press
135x6x3
D) Rear Delt Light Band Pullaparts
10x3
My original plan was to go for 365x3x3, but the first set felt super easy, so I decided to go for a 5lb PR. I really didn’t even use any leg drive and these went up nicely, so I went up to 375 added the leg drive and smoked this set. I also made sure to really let the bar sink into the boards on all my reps.
Incline Bench is still coming along nicely. My old PR was a single set at 250x6, so to add two more sets and get all my reps is a good sign.
Still working on the JM Press form. These feel plenty hard as is. Once I am really comfortable with the movement, I’ll add a little weight.
Good day today.
[quote]TheDudeAbides wrote:
Thanks for sharing your training log.
Starting next week, I’m going to be doing the Texas Method (like Rippetoe’s part two) as written with this cycle on Friday’s (not that it matters to you).
How did you decide on what weight to use for the accessory lifts. That’s really the only thing I’m not sure of. I don’t have a lot of experience doing SDL’s, RDL’sl, or GM’s.[/quote]
Hey, good luck with the cycle.
As far as starting weights, I already had experience with the movements. I used roughly 80% of my true 8 rep max. I figured I’d be doing them in a fatigued state, and doing multiple sets, so I started at 80% and tried to add 5-10lbs each week.
If you look at my starting weights, RDL-315, BOR-225, GM-225, you’ll notice I took the lazy way out and just rounded to the nearest plate/quarter.
I do think I went a little overboard on the accessory stuff from the beginning. I think I probably would have been better off not adding weight every week, or starting even a little more conservatively and adding very slowly.
The reason I switched SLDL to RDL is that a true SLDL should start and stop on the floor, and since I was already getting plenty of reps from the floor, I opted for the RDL’s instead.
If you haven’t done a lot of GM’s before, start light and really focus on form. Your back will be toast by the time you get to these, so really concentrate on keeping the back arched and jamming your hips back as far as possible. I set the pins up in my rack and used them as a guide to keep my depth honest.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.
I changed up my days this week so I could have an extra day of rest before my deadlift day. I’ve also gotten 9-10 hours of sleep 3 out of the last 4 nights, and 8 hours on the other. I’ve upped my kcal by about 1000 per day, all in an effort to improve my recovery.
I hit an easy PR on my Squat (triple) on Monday, and a couple of relatively easy 3 Board PR’s (triples again) on Tuesday.
Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. Tomorrow I will try to pick back up the pieces from last Thursdays disastrous DL day where I missed 565 on two consecutive attempts, when I was supposed to double it.
Then, with the holiday and two trips next week, I am going to take a deload week. Usually on my deloads, I will try to hit two days in the gym, reduce my volume by half, and reduce my load to around 70%. I should come back fresh and ready to finish the program strong.
That’s the plan anyways…
Coan/Philippi Week 7 Repeat
07/03/08 - Deadlift
A) Deadlift
135x6
225x6
315x3
405x3
495x1
565x0
My back is fucking fried. All my other lifts feel good, and when I go for a heavy DL, I’ve got absolutely nothing. I will deload next week, and really work on recovery. I went into today knowing that I’d own 565x2 and by the time I got the bar to my knees, my mid back just gave out.
B) Pendlay Rows
225x12x3 (PR +2 reps)
C) Glute Ham Raise
6 (PR +1 rep)
5,5,5
Another suckfest on DL. Enough said.
07/07/08 - Deload Day 1
A) Squat
315x6x2
B) Lat Pulldown
100x6x2
C) Glute Ham Raise
6x2
D) Abs
some
I really felt rested after the weekend, and wanted to hit it hard today, but I know I need an easy week, so I’m going to stick with my original plan of 2 easy days, and then back at it next week.