Having nothing better to do, with me being sick and all, leaves some room for introspection. Here are two things I’ve noticed in the last 4 months.
Firstly, I really enjoy hitting the gym often. Even though I trained before the start of my transformation, I wasn’t doing it frequently. Back then, it was more like three times a week, and I missed training sessions and excuses for that. At the start of my diet I followed the Best Damn Workout (The Best Damn Workout Plan For Natural Lifters) and I never missed a session. I like training frequency, but simultaneously I lose focus more often than not if a workout exceeds 80 minutes. 40-60 minutes is better for me. Training four times a week seems to be as low as I can go, I have to train more than 50% of the days, otherwise, I get caught out of the habit.
Secondly, I love big lifts. Best damn was great, I could build up my recovery rate, and diet really hard without it impacting my performance too negatively (I really wish I had started my log back then, woe is me the things that I got away with - like no carbs during a workout! Or just 30g intraworkout), but I find it a lot more fun to go hard and heavy on the compound lifts and felt out of place doing rear delt lateral raises seeing as I’m so weak.
Looking at my future plans, it’s really easy to see that what I’ve written above is truly what I’m drawn to. As I’ve mentioned earlier, after my diet I want to get on Built for Battle, with the intent of running the 12-week variant, but I’ll wait and see how it feels after the first 3 weeks. After that program, I do not have anything in particular planned but I do have plenty of ideas. I’ve left what comes after intentionally unplanned to leave room for some spontaneity and responding to where I am at then rather than where I think I’ll be. With that said, after 9-12 weeks of a caloric surplus it is likely I’ll want to run a mini-cut after that.
Why Built for Battle? This is just a combination of the two things that I just mentioned, I like to train often (5 days a week) and most of the workouts are nothing but big, compound lifts. I see a lot of appeal in doing my main lifts as often as possible for the skill aspect, I still consider myself “weak” and I hope that there is room to progress by doing the lifts with a high frequency to further the neurological adaptations.
So, what comes after, given these two qualities that I enjoy? Well, I have several programs in my crosshairs: “40 day program” (The 40-Day Program), “Simple, Guaranteed, Strength and Size”, and “Look Like a Bodybuilder Perform Like An Athlete” (7 days a week for me is definitely reaching, which I learned during ALAS, so when that time comes I want to have some extra spare time. Maybe next summer vacation)
Although, ultimately, I’ll want to find or design something that is a bit more balanced (contains some conditioning, has more room to address my weaknesses) and will continue to work for me using some minor tweaks regardless of what phase I’m in. But that is further down the line I think. Maybe 5/3/1.
But, maybe someone more experienced than myself can weigh on the merits of such programming for a veritable weakling like myself (just shy of a 2xBW DL, just at a 1xBW BP, a really bad squat, and a shitty OHP)
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To put it into perspective though I am, historically, very much of an all-or-nothing guy. Hence, I view it as a precursor for something that could be derailing.