Natty on Pennies

Training Training Logs
1884

Well, the short answer would be that at some point it becomes necessary.

Linear progression can only take you so far, and generally it only works when an individual is in a state where they are very responsive to training: beginners, coming back from a layoff, using gear. At some point you’ll realize you can’t just do 3x5 with ever increasing weights.

That ramp/backoff setup looks kind of fun, to say at least. (it also looks like you’ve have been thinking about training stuff again).

The thing that caught my attention is the way you set up the backoffs. They seem to get drastically heavier from week to week.

Say you could do a single with 100kgs on bench. Your 8RM is probably 75-80kgs. Now when you take off 10% from that you’ll end up at 67.5-72.5kgs which, if you were fresh, you could probably rep for 12-16 reps doing only five reps there sounds kind of odd. Once you get to the max triple though, it’ll be really tough.

Now a lot here depends on the way the reps are performed - of you do your 8RM with a really strong rep style for you, say touch and go, and went for either a harder rep style (so pauses, slower tempos, what not) or low rest periods you could make it more challenging. On the other hand, you could try to lift with maximal speed in order to recruit more muscle mass.

You could also vary the variaation you’re using with the top set. I’ve seem great success with clients doing stuff like

Wk 1-3 Feet up bench 8RM
Wk 4-6 CG Bench 6RM
Wk 7-9 Tng Bench 4RM
Wk 10-12 Comp Bench 2RM

After the top set they would come down 8-10% in weight and do 1-3 back off sets

On a separate day they would do “speed work” (not westside style speed work, heavier stuff, less sets. I’d call it acceleration work) with either tng bench (on weeks 4-6 and 10-12) or comp bench (on weeks 1-3 and 7-9)

My opinion is really a biased one, so let’s just get that out of the way. Personally I’ve always enjoyed working with high intensity, low-ish per session volume and a rather high frequency. Only time I could see myself doing each exercise and it’s variations on a single day would be at the end of a long diet, because that way there is less time being spent on switching from exercise to exercise and warming up. As you get fatigued you’ll also need less weight for the stuff later in the workout. If it’s isolation for thing you’ve already hit, no big deal. (Apparently studies showing that for hypertrophy there isn’t much of a difference with different frequencies when weekly volume is equal, so you could pick any split you like)

For strength, however, I feel that the higher frequency program would be superior just because strength is a skill and it has to be practiced. Sure, some people get along with only hitting lifts on one day a week, but generally it seems that doing a lift, or a variation of it more frequently brings the numbers up faster.

In the end, personal preference plays a big role

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1885

I suppose linear periodization includes the double progression model? And that I should milk that for as much as I can first.

I agree!

Reading stuff, trying to put it into context. Before I read programs and other material to determine what to do next. Now I’m juxtaposing things, and trying to understand stuff more.

The idea isn’t mine, it’s from an elitefts article titled Four-Day and Three-Day Training Split but I agree with your observation about the back-off sets.

You know what, I don’t know why he does this but it’s something I’ve seen CT do. I don’t have any data for how often he does this, rather than cycle in a variation for “the other” main as it were. For a concrete example,

But then shouldn’t you be training the same variation (obviously this argument has no bearing on the just do all variations in the same day scenario)? Arguably in a different rep range, or, if anything very minor change. I. e. the following schemas are ranked by their ability to improve strength from a motor pattern perspective,

  1. Back Squat 3-5 reps on one day, and 6-8 or 8-10 another.
  2. Low bar one day, high bar the other (maybe 3-5/4-6 respectively)
  3. Back Squat one day, front squat another day
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1886

Linear progression would mean only adding weight to the bar, while keeping the sets and reps constant. Double and triple progressions are usually seen as the logical follow up for linear progression. By all means, you want to grab the “easy gains” first, before going on to more complex stuff

That’s great. Always be learning

Westside seems to have had a big influence over EliteFTS stuff, so I’d always take it with a grain of salt when we’re talking about non-enchanted lifters. But as said, with some tinkering it could work

It’s probably just a thing he likes to do. Also, as stated in the last post, it cuts down on warm-up time. If you’re overall achy and beat up for one reason or another (or just really strong), just warming up for a whole body session may take up a significant amount of time compared to doing mostly similar movements and some isolation on a given day.

That’s also why advanced DC trainees move from a 2 way split to a 3 way: they’re so strong that warming up takes a really long time.

But this is all just speculating, I don’t think I’ve seen CT explain this anywhere in particular.

You could be, if you really wanted to drive a certain lift up and could handle the fatigue from doing it. From a fatigue management stand point doing either a harder lift (say front squat if we’re talking about squatting) or a harder variation (pause squat for example) makes your overall weekly fatigue more tolerable, allowing you to do more overall volume.

You can also work on your weak points by switching the variation. For example, I get great benefit from paused squats if I’m driving my squat up, because I have a tendency to good morning my squats. Pause squats really make me focus on keeping my technique solid, and in the long run I feel like it will add weight to the bar.

Similarly, if we’re going for both strenght and size, we can use the variation lift to target a muscle group we want to grow. For me, front squats are a much greater quad exercise than back squats, so I like to cycle them in. Granted, the actual carryover is less than a pause squat or a tempo squat would have, but there is still some

Yeah, so, as started above:

Option 1 could work:

  • Short term, so peaking for example
  • For a beginner
  • If you managed the volume well (not going overboard, that is. You could definitely do a hard set or two of the same lift twice a week)
  • Or if you just have a crazy capability to handle fatigue/don’t train that hard

Option two is pretty much what most powerlifting programs use. So competition squat on one day, a d a close variation (bar placement, tempo, pause, pins etc.) on another. Offseason programs usually have stuff like leg press, front squat or hack squat somewhwre in there as well

Option three is the powerbuilding option, and also something you could see in a Offseason program for a powerlifter. (If they squatted highbar and really upright it could be seen even leading up to competition). It’s not quite as strength oriented as option two for a guy with long legs at least, because usually that leads to front squat and back squat looking quite different. Usually these people also have a hard time growing their quads with back squatting and see more benefit in that department by doing front squats, so really it’s a question of what you want. Personally, I’d alter: do a cycle or two of either low or high bar and front squats, and then a cycle or two of low bar and high bar/pause/tempo/pin squats. (And of course you can and should do stuff apart from these two squat variations) Both of these cycles will add strength and size to your body, the rate may just differ a bit.

I think I had something more to say, but I’ve forgotten and it’s 3AM, so it’s time to sleep. If it was something important I’m pretty sure either I’ll remember it tomorrow or you’ll notice something is missing.

The reason I’m still awake is that I’ve been working on setting up the business and training clients as much as I can, while I still can. Quite long days but as I only got four of them left, I think I’ll manage.

1887

It’d be interested to see the approaches lined out somewhere, it’d make for a pretty massive tree structure to go through. Would make for a beautiful interactive map.

<3

Yeah, maybe. I can’t see anything else that seems wonky other than what you pointed out. I’d argue a better way to have written it would be to take off as much weight as needed to get 4-6 reps on four sets.

Yeah, maybe. I’d have to do some digging to see if it’s a recurring theme. If anything it also saves time as you don’t need to set-up for a significantly different kind of lift. On squat day, the bar stays in the rack, on deadlift day it stays on the floor. Going from squats to deads is easy, just drop it, but the other direction steals some time. Not a lot. But a little. Although sometimes you can grab 2 barbells no problem.

That’s an interesting thing with programming for people in a group with different heights and strength levels. For instance, in my “team” we need at least double of whatever resource we are claiming usually due to height differences (i.e. two benches to have the hooks be set up properly). So, if I schedule something that requires two barbells, then that might mean 4 barbell, maybe 6 depending on what we are doing exactly.

I think if we ask he’d just point out he doesn’t always do this so what is there to explain really :slight_smile:

Right, this is something I’ve been thinking about since yesterday actually. I realised my front squat is 30 kilos below where it should be (it’s just 60% of my back-squat as opposed to 85% which is apparently considered a better ratio between the lifts). And so, I’ve been thinking about how to best drive it up. Courting an idea of doing 4x8@70% at the end of every lifting session, which is a tip from a CT article I can’t find right now and another is adding in those harder variations, i.e.

Day 1: Front squat
Day 2: Two three-second pauses during the eccentric
Day 3: 5-8 second eccentric

I think it’s my favourite option. Seems most balanced from an overuse perspective. I’ve kind of started viewing exercise selection through the lens of having a varied diet. If I was competing in strength I’d have a different approach.

Sleep tight!

Best of luck my friend!

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1888

That would take A massive amount of time. It’s be cool though

How much of difference is there between all of you? I’ve always bee able to work out with people that are considerably shorter than me, but then again, I’ve never had a crew with me in the gym

That’s a lot of barbells

Fair point, I’d just like to hear why he first started doing this

Don’t fret too much over ratios: to my understanding they have been calculated off of elite level weightlifter’s stats, and usually those guys are short and squat high-bar, so them having percentages like 85% on front-to back squat ratio makes sense. Those lifts are really similar for them. Personally, my front squat has usually hanged around 75% of my back squat, given that I’m training both. But I’m not an elitr level olympic lifter.

Also, because of stuff like limb length differences, it is impossible to say that everyone should have a certain strength level on a lift compared to another lift. Science doesn’t support the claim of movement ratios either, at least to my knowledge.

On paper this looks like fun, after two weeks you’ll want to die.

But in all seriousness, the fastest way ti get a Lift up is to train that lift and close variations of it frequently and in the rep range you want to get stronger at

For most of the year it’s my favourite as well. Sometimes I like to go with option two either with powerlifting variations or something else. (A year ago I ran a front squat/incline bench/deadlift focused program. It was great)

Thanks man!

1889

If I ever ask, I’ll @ you in the thread.

I’ll try not to, but still, 75% is better than 60% :wink: It at least indicates it something worth working on, maybe not until it’s at 85% but I’d gladly take being able to put 75% of my back squat on the bar and front squatting it.

Haha, yeah… also I’d never be on time for work.

Why didn’t you pair the bench with the front squat instead? I’d imagine you can bench more than you can incline, and so the deadlift would have suffered more from doing benching in the same session rather than incline pressing.

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1890

Sounds good

It was a upper/lower split, probably one of my favourite programs I’ve ran thus far. It went as follows (from memory, you could search it up if you wanted to)

D1
Low incline bench 2x3/2/1 waves
Close grip bench 3x3 (heavy), 3x3 (“acceleration training”)
Bent over row 3-4x6
Bicep curl w/straight bar 2x6-10
Lateral raises 2x6-10

D2
Deadlift/Deficit deads (alternating between weeks) 2x3/2/1 waves
Good morning from pins 3x3(heavy), 3x3(accelerating)
Heel-elevated front squat 3-4x6
Leg extension 2x6-10

D3
Paused flat bench 2x3/2/1 waves
High incline CGBench 3x3 (heavy), 3x3(acc)
Meadows row 3x6-10/side
Hammer curl 2x6-10
Rear delt fly 2x6-10 (quite sure this was there but not sure sure)

D4
Front squat 2x3/2/1 waves
Front squat from pins (eventually to pins) 3x3 (heavy , 3x3 (acc)
Leg curl 2x6-10
Hip thrust or calves, 2x6-10 regardless

D5
Pendlay row, 2x3/2/1 waves
Chin up 3x3 heavy, 3x3 acc
Very low incline DB press 3-4x6
Standing rope Skullcrusher 2x6-10

D6
Paused front squat 2x3/2/1 waves
Close stance front squat 3x3 heavy, 3x3 acc
Single leg leg curl 2x6-10/side
Calves 2x6-10

As you can see, 10 was the max numer of reps here and I did 72 sets of 1-3 reps per week. Eventually I begun rest-pausing my accessory stuff and tried things like cluster sets and what not. It was fun and worked really well for me.

Got a bit sidetracked there. Whoops.

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1891

That looks really nice! Reps are a bit lower than I think would be appropriate for someone my level but just the overall structure is really appealing. I suppose I could maybe do 7/5/3 waves. How do you discern between heavy and accelerating? Have you find a percentage that works as a good rule of thumb there? I.e., if your heavy is at 100kg, then what would you consider a weight used for acceleration work?

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1892

I like it when my programming looks neat and tidy. Usually that goes hand on hand with doing stuff for a certain reason

You could try. But beware, it is a lot of volume and you’ll need to be really on top of your recovery stuff.

I picked my weights during the first session by doing the heavy 3x3 and then taking off 10-15% or so depending on the exercise. From there I was able to just linearly add weight to both heavy and accelerating work from week to week, so the percentages varied slightly.

The accelerating work weight was picked by what I could control on the way down and then just give it some oomph and go all the way up without losing any speed or even gaining some. Getting and saying tight was one of the key principles here. With “speed work” people tend to just go down and up as fast as possible and end up flailing around with no Intensity or intent whatsoever.

1893

Me too. I think my (our? Joint effort) hybrid split looks kind of wonky still. But it’s naturally skewed from being FB/FB/UB/LB I think.

I could run it, as in I’d have the time and the inclination, but it’s not feasible for the others. Saving it though. Comparing you and me I think we are at opposite ends of this table though which is why I try to not go too low with my reps,

Image-2019-07-25-at-9.23-PM

Seems like a good starting point

Noted

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1894

Yeah, it’s the nature of hybrid splits. But you can always play around with stuff between cycles in order to see what feels right for you.

Oh yeah, that’s a factor for you as well. Maybe a bit later

Do I rmemeber correctly that you classify yourself as a early intermediate/late beginner? Never really put much though into classifying myself.

But regardless, as your goal is both strength and hypertrophy, working in the 5-9 or so rep range works really well. You could benefit a bit in the strength department by going for easy singles/doubles/triples when you either want to peak or just want to focus a bit more on strength. Just in general, train for what you want to be good at:if it is low reps, use low reps. Of course there is some carryover (more when you’re a beginner, increasingly less as you progress on your lifting career)

1895

Yeah, I mean, whenever you skew the focus in some way making sessions less pure I suppose that’s bound to happen. It’s like all the things I’m sketching on now, either where every training day is dedicated to a main lift, or a hybrid split, but with an added emphasis (training frequency) of the front squat that naturally skews the balance and symmetry a bit.

What is weird is the designs where it’s just tacked on to the end of a normal session ends up looking best. So, start with something that has a nice balance and then just do a little "+ Variation of Front Squats " and it still looks okay on paper.

I fall into that category yes, if we use for instance this as a crude guideline,

Source: What Do You Make of This Training Frequency Study? - #9 by Christian_Thibaudeau

I get 3+1+3+1+5=13pts making me an intermediate but I feel that my pull-ups are inflated from climbing and being relatively light so I’d be more inclined to count it as 3+1+3+1+3=11pts → beginner. Obviously, classifying myself as either has no real value but it helps stop me from chasing shiny things I don’t need yet which is a mistake I made for a long time.

I’m have no doubt that it will, right now I’m just really pissed about my front squat >_<. My back being fucky isn’t helping. But, we’ll see. Last session was great after having done plenty of neck extensions, so I might see a frog-leap of progress there after I get my spine fixed.

Big (lean), strong, and not broken into smithereens.

I don’t remember, did you ever compete in powerlifting?

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1896

Well, it does add symmetry to the week, kind of. And if it just there after all sessions you may subconciously dismiss it while reading the program (I guess)

That’s just an opinion thing really, strength is strength. (rather see it this way around than the old “I’m so heavy I deserve extra points” argument though)

If I think of my best ratios ever I think I get 19 or so points, I’ve got a vague idea of how much I’ve weighted when I did my best lifts but I’m not certain. At the moment I’d get like 17 points as I’m not quite up to full speed yet.

I’ve done like two reps of power clean in my life so I’m just going with one point there, I’m not so concerned with this stuff that I’d test it. (and besides, this really only tells you how proficient you are with the lifts in question, combined they do offer quite good estimate of your overall strength levels though.)

Could be. Volume/stress management is key when we’re talking about aches and pains. Movement helps a great deal, but you don’t want to overdo it (nor underdo it)

Those goals go very well hand in hand. Being both big and lean is one hell of a thing to do.

No, I haven’t competed in powerlifting. After the program I wrote about in the last post I did do a unsuccessful mock meet, but building into that I deadlifted 270kg (if I remember correctly) and benched 2x155kg at about 98-100kgs. During the summer I benched 160kg, squatted 180kg or 185 kgand deadlifted around 260kgs at about 94 or so kgs.

Got a bit carried out there, didn’t manage my loading properly and hurt my back slightly during a squat warm-up, which is always kind of surprising. It took some time to heal back up. Being the genious I am, I signed up for a strongman com four weeks into rehab, just slammed on ridiculous amount of weight (it went well for a week) and hurt it again. Lesson learned, manage your load correctly.

And as mentioned, during my diet it felt a bit off during the last 4 or so weeks, but by actually managing the loading I stayed mostly pain free and could train productively. Now it’s pretty much fine. With back issues you’ve got to keep in mind that these things come and go, and you can always train around them. For any of these tweaks I didn’t need to see a physio or get imaging done, because I realized where I went wrong, and as 90% or so of back pain is “non-spesific” going in to see a physio would really just be a shot in the dark. Also only about 2-5% of back pain is disc-related, and wear and tear is a normal part of life, finding that I had these (if I had these) wouldn’t really tell me anything apart from the fact that I had them. It wouldn’t tell me where they came from or if they were the source of the pain. So, I just put my head down and got to work. Doing stuff that felt fine for the back (like 10 rep sets of beltless high bar squats) wasn’t fun but it got the job done. Why didn’t I post about this? I didn’t feel like it was that big of a deal. I just wanted to get over with it without too much hassle, which I did.

Kind of a rant there, whoops.

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1897

I don’t know the proper words for this, and our variants in Swedish are quite colloquial and not very clinical but I saw my physio today again and he fixed some rotation I had in my spine and some discs that didn’t want to move properly (causing other discs to provide more ROM). Maybe get checked out…

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1898

I don’t really feel the need to do that. At the moment I have no pain, can train rather comfortably (got some lack of confidence with certain exercises from time to time but for the most part I’m good) and just in general I’m moving into the right direction.

I’ve just got to be smart about progress, which isn’t exactly natural for me. And, even if there was a disc-related problem (or really a problem at all, which there isn’t at the moment, in my mind), those things tend to heal with time.

1899

What’s up?

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1900

I’m tempted to start by saying “nothing much” as I feel like I’m only studying and setting up a business at the same time.

But really, it’s quite a lot of work. And a whole lot of waiting. Waiting for stuff to go though in different goverment organisations, modifying stuff when they don’t, trying to book a meeting to set up an account for the firm and so on. Luckily we’ve been able to do other stuff while waiting for that such as creating training programs, filming stuff and designing a website. A lot of nights I’ve found myself working until 4AM, but Luckily it’s mostly fun stuff.

So, in short, quite a lot is happening at the time. Business should be ready to go shortly.

How about you?

1901

Ah, quantitative bias! Any time for training?

How much do you reckon you have left to do?

I’m doing alright. Everything is running at a pretty smooth cadence. Especially work. Amassed a few injuries in a very short amount of time but finding workarounds for everything so it’s not too bad. Frustrating. But okay.

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1902

Not as much as before, but enough still. Currently I’m training four days a week for 45-60 minutes per session. Usually it’s in the early morning, so I have rest of the day for school and business stuff

Not a whole lot. Website is nearly ready, and apart from that it’s mostly waiting. Of course things like shooting and editing videos and producing content are ongoing processes, but it’s a part of the job

That’s nice to hear!

Damn, what kind of things are you going through?

1903

Any change from your previous layout?

Will you link it when it’s up?

  • Aggrevated my old finger injury. It’s cool, I know how to heal it.
  • Pulled hamstring, got a rehab protocol from my PT today
  • Vertabrae keeps locking up, but it’s on the mends.
  • Shoulder is fucky, courtesy of an overworked rhomboid.

The last post in my log just laid out the take-aways from this mornings PT session.

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