Well first thing… I feel like your have the wrong attitude. I know saying that you always want to go all-out sounds hardcore and instinctively sounds like the right thing to do. But in reality the only thing that matters is progressing.
If training so hard that your eyes bleed at every session hurts your capacity to perform in some sessions, you are not making a good investment,
I’ll give you an example…
Two years ago I did the following lower body session:
It was a complex of 3 exercises done with very short rest between all 3:
A1. Back squat with slow eccentric. I had 365 on the barbell, 50lbs of chains per side and weight releasers (adds weight during the eccentric, then fall off of the bar prior to the concentric portion) with 60lbs on each side. So I would do the eccentric in 5 seconds with 555lbs during the eccentric and up to 465 on the concentric (at the top). I would do a single rep like that.
A2. Jump squat using 135lbs for 10 reps, jumping up as high as possible
A3. Depth jumps for 5 reps
I would rest 3 minutes… I did 10 sets like that.
Felt like a great workout… was whipped at the end.
Well for 14 days I couldn’t go down lower than a quarter squat, even without weights and it took me 21 days to be able to squat with a challenging weight!
Was that a productive workout? After the session I would have said HELL YEAH! But in reality it was one of the worst workouts I did as it basically ruined 3 weeks of lower body sessions.
That is an extreme example but you catch the drift: it is important to train really hard, but killing yourself by going all out should never be an objective: stimulating progress is.
It is a MISTAKE to pride yourself on how hard you are working. The ONLY thing you should take pride in is how much RESULTS you are getting.
You mention that you trained all-out 5 days a week but basically got no results. That should tell you something!
Now, two programs that would fit what you are looking for at the 915 and Power Look programs. Both are based on 4 hard training days a week and both are aimed at making you stronger and bigger.
What I’m afraid off however is that these programs use a specific progression model on the main lifts and you MUST respect that model for the program to work. And for the main lift you actually should NOT go all out, most of the weeks. Otherwise you will hit the wall before the end of the program.
If you absolutely have the need to go to your limit then I would suggest the layer system approach. In which you focus on one lift per session and train it using several different methods, or layers.
For example:
LAYER 1: Ramp up to your 2RM (maximum weight you can lift for 2 reps)
LAYER 2: Perform 2-3 cluster sets of 4-6 reps with 90% of your 2RM… a cluster set is a set in which you rest 10-15 seconds between every repetition (re-rack the weight)
LAYER 3: Perform 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps with 70% of your 2RM using a slow eccentric/lowering (5 seconds)
LAYER 4: Perform 1 set of maximum reps with 60% of your 2RM
You could use these lifts:
DAY 1. Overhead press
DAY 2. Squat
DAY 3: OFF
DAY 4: Bench press
DAY 5: OFF
DAY 6: Deadlift (this is brutal so keep the sets for layer 2 and 3 at 1 or maybe 2)
DAY 7: OFF
You can do SOME assistance/isolation work after the main lift but keep the volume VERY low. Om DAY 1 you can do some delts work, DAY 2 some quads work, DAY 4 some pecs and triceps work. DAY 6 some back and biceps work
