The Bodybuilding Bible

Training Bodybuilding
121

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
Its:

That issue has been gone over a whole lot on this forum. I know for myself, I wouldn’t have gotten as big as I was and the size I’m maintain now–220 pounds–on far fewer calories had I not gone through a long bulk. I bulked up too much at times, but not to the limits that X and Fatty Fat have. I can maintain 220 with about 14% bodyfat at 5’10" without even eating much or training as much and as intensely as I did. I didn’t even lose much muscle while consuming about 1,200 to 1,300 calories on the Rapid Fat loss diet with near zero starchy carbs and training twice per week.

I’m not as advanced as X - never was, never will be. However, I still disagree with him on the EXTENT of bulking. I don’t see a point in going above 15 percent bodyfat. I did go above 15 percent, but I’m not sure if I can attribute that to my gains in size and strength. Added bodyweight will help to a great degree with max strength, but I don’t know if it will lead to greater gains in muscle mass up to a point because the bodyweight is supplying leverage, stability, and cushioning during some lifts. (You know how much easier it is to overhead press when your forearms spring off a fat AND muscular arm at the bottom position? Or how much easier is to squat when you have a fat and muscular neck, upper back, calves, stomach, and hams? A lot easier.)

I think the flawed yo-yo strategy results from eating too much. A guy, in an effort to get bigger, starts eating more–albeit too much–and then sees his poundages going up and some muscle gain. Then a few weeks go by and his clothing doesn’t fit too nicely anymore and people start informing him he’s fat. Then he looks in the mirror and he notices that he IS fat! So he starts back pedaling with the food intake - TOO MUCH in that direction also! So he winds up losing some of the gains he made. It turns into a vicious cycle in which the dude is either strong but too fat, or stringy and weak. The key is to bulk up, but no go overboard. It will involve some tracking of food intake with measuring cups, scales, and food labels at first. When you get more experienced you use more instincts and “eyeballing” of portions. [/quote]

I have a few problems with this post. I think when you start throwing numbers out there (i.e. “15% bodyfat”) kids are going to read this and think that they need to start dieting as soon as they hit what they think is 15% bodyfat. The same problem happened - although I wasn’t here to see it - with that Thibs 10% article, HELL, when I first joined, that was literally the first article I read, I had no experience, no knowledge, so I believed it. LUCKILY I didn’t cut down to 10% before bulking. I was convinced otherwise by more experienced guys.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, maybe it’s not worth going above 15% bodyfat, but the problem is reading your post may cause people to under eat and/or try to eat “clean” all the time - which we generally know does not work, in fear of going past 15% bodyfat. What I’m saying is, it is a bit careless to be throwing numbers around, especially since people are gonna listen to you Brick. No-one really knows when they are 15%, or 10%, or 20%. They can only guess (unless they have a really good body fat test done - I’m not sure of the best method tbh). Also what if there is a young guy who wants to get as big as he possibly can; let’s say he’s at 16% body fat. Should he be wasting time cutting down before gaining even though these are his best gaining years and he has practically no muscle yet? What if he’s already started a little late, and hasn’t really got any time to lose if he wants to get truly huge? It’s been a while, but from what I remember reading about Prof X and Way’s training, they never really did any cutting cycles (correct me if wrong!), but when bodyfat was an issue, did “damage control” instead, and it certainly seemed to work for them!

I think what you said in the second half of your post however is spot on. That is exactly what happened to Artem (people can learn from that kid’s mistakes). However, to break through a set point (there’s a great thread on that in T-Cell), you may need to go overboard for a little while (well, that is MY experience). What is most important is making sure you are seeing gains in strength that justify the bodyweight gains. You have to bust your ass in the gym.

122

Damn, is this still not stickied? WTF?

123

Brick,
This is a great thread. Regardless of my goofball post earlier, I do have a question for you, C_C etc. What do you think of the method of taking the same volume you spoke about earlier for a given bodypart and spreading it out over the week? So lets say for quads… instead of doing squats, lunges, and legg extentions on one day, you did that on three seperate days… maybe in this case you would do squats on day 1, legg press on day 3, and lunges and extentions on day 5. Now when I say what do you think of it… i mean in a pure bodybuilding sense as you were going over the other methods. I started doing this recently for a change, with all bodyparts. Obviously there is a strength advantage on your second, and third excercies when doing it on a seperate day but not sure if its inferior for size for whatever reason…

124

[quote]DJS wrote:
Brick,
This is a great thread. Regardless of my goofball post earlier, I do have a question for you, C_C etc. What do you think of the method of taking the same volume you spoke about earlier for a given bodypart and spreading it out over the week? So lets say for quads… instead of doing squats, lunges, and legg extentions on one day, you did that on three seperate days… maybe in this case you would do squats on day 1, legg press on day 3, and lunges and extentions on day 5. Now when I say what do you think of it… i mean in a pure bodybuilding sense as you were going over the other methods. I started doing this recently for a change, with all bodyparts. Obviously there is a strength advantage on your second, and third excercies when doing it on a seperate day but not sure if its inferior for size for whatever reason…
[/quote]

That’s going to turn into a full-body workout, or an AB split in which you have to attend the gym six times per week.

No, I don’t like that at all.

125

[quote]babaganoosh wrote:

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
Its:

That issue has been gone over a whole lot on this forum. I know for myself, I wouldn’t have gotten as big as I was and the size I’m maintain now–220 pounds–on far fewer calories had I not gone through a long bulk. I bulked up too much at times, but not to the limits that X and Fatty Fat have. I can maintain 220 with about 14% bodyfat at 5’10" without even eating much or training as much and as intensely as I did. I didn’t even lose much muscle while consuming about 1,200 to 1,300 calories on the Rapid Fat loss diet with near zero starchy carbs and training twice per week.

I’m not as advanced as X - never was, never will be. However, I still disagree with him on the EXTENT of bulking. I don’t see a point in going above 15 percent bodyfat. I did go above 15 percent, but I’m not sure if I can attribute that to my gains in size and strength. Added bodyweight will help to a great degree with max strength, but I don’t know if it will lead to greater gains in muscle mass up to a point because the bodyweight is supplying leverage, stability, and cushioning during some lifts. (You know how much easier it is to overhead press when your forearms spring off a fat AND muscular arm at the bottom position? Or how much easier is to squat when you have a fat and muscular neck, upper back, calves, stomach, and hams? A lot easier.)

I think the flawed yo-yo strategy results from eating too much. A guy, in an effort to get bigger, starts eating more–albeit too much–and then sees his poundages going up and some muscle gain. Then a few weeks go by and his clothing doesn’t fit too nicely anymore and people start informing him he’s fat. Then he looks in the mirror and he notices that he IS fat! So he starts back pedaling with the food intake - TOO MUCH in that direction also! So he winds up losing some of the gains he made. It turns into a vicious cycle in which the dude is either strong but too fat, or stringy and weak. The key is to bulk up, but no go overboard. It will involve some tracking of food intake with measuring cups, scales, and food labels at first. When you get more experienced you use more instincts and “eyeballing” of portions. [/quote]

I have a few problems with this post. I think when you start throwing numbers out there (i.e. “15% bodyfat”) kids are going to read this and think that they need to start dieting as soon as they hit what they think is 15% bodyfat. The same problem happened - although I wasn’t here to see it - with that Thibs 10% article, HELL, when I first joined, that was literally the first article I read, I had no experience, no knowledge, so I believed it. LUCKILY I didn’t cut down to 10% before bulking. I was convinced otherwise by more experienced guys.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, maybe it’s not worth going above 15% bodyfat, but the problem is reading your post may cause people to under eat and/or try to eat “clean” all the time - which we generally know does not work, in fear of going past 15% bodyfat. What I’m saying is, it is a bit careless to be throwing numbers around, especially since people are gonna listen to you Brick. No-one really knows when they are 15%, or 10%, or 20%. They can only guess (unless they have a really good body fat test done - I’m not sure of the best method tbh). Also what if there is a young guy who wants to get as big as he possibly can; let’s say he’s at 16% body fat. Should he be wasting time cutting down before gaining even though these are his best gaining years and he has practically no muscle yet? What if he’s already started a little late, and hasn’t really got any time to lose if he wants to get truly huge? It’s been a while, but from what I remember reading about Prof X and Way’s training, they never really did any cutting cycles (correct me if wrong!), but when bodyfat was an issue, did “damage control” instead, and it certainly seemed to work for them!

I think what you said in the second half of your post however is spot on. That is exactly what happened to Artem (people can learn from that kid’s mistakes). However, to break through a set point (there’s a great thread on that in T-Cell), you may need to go overboard for a little while (well, that is MY experience). What is most important is making sure you are seeing gains in strength that justify the bodyweight gains. You have to bust your ass in the gym.[/quote]

I have to agree with both you guys on two points made.

Bricknyce (and C_C often points this out), the poundage increases on the bar have got to justify the bodyweight gains your getting. If your gaining a lot less than 50% muscle, and your lifts are hardly going up, you need to get your training sorted before worrying about bodyweight increases via diet. In other words, don’t try to force muscle gains by overeating when your strength gains aren’t showing that you need to (you’ll gain much more fat compared to muscle doing this). This is more short-term monitoring - don’t get impatient if your bodyweight hasn’t increased by a certain amount each week.

The second point is more long term monitoring. So long as you haven’t been really stupid as regards eating more than your strength gains have justified, you shouldn’t be too confused as to when to cut. You should be spending much more time on gaining phases than cutting. Depending on where you store more fat (some people store lots on the stomach), it can be confusing trying to estimate bodyfat (this is the point where I agree with babaganoosh). For example, someone who says there’s no point in going above 12% bf, if they measured bf themselves, may actually have a much higher bodyfat than they think. And then, the guy who only measures his stomach with calipers, and stores more fat on his stomach, listens to this advice and stops bulking at lower bf than needed.

Ultimately though, it depends what the bodies main fat “set point” is…some people’s set point is a lot higher than others, and so bulking at a higher bf may be better for them (compared to cutting to a point where the body is “uncomfortable”). It all depends on what bf % is most easy to loose fat at. If a person looses a lot of fat easily until the point where his bodyfat lowers to ~15%, then that’s the lowest bodyfat he should go down to before bulking. With me though, I can loose fat easy when I get as low as ~10%, so going to a bodyfat level as low as 10% is no problem for me while bulking/gaining. If I were to advise someone who is naturally/genetically chubbier (from childhood onwards) - that is, someone with a high bodyfat set point - to cut as soon as he reaches 15%, then he’d probably spend more time cutting than gaining since his body is uncomfortable at this bf range.

If bodyfat levels get out of hand, recomp should be quick and easy (eating maintenance level calories and increasing cardio slightly for just a few months)…it shouldn’t be something that takes a lot of time / effort (e.g. like the kind of time/effort it takes to get lower than 10% bf). It’s only quick and easy if you’re bodies fat set point is lower than what your currently at.

126

A question thats ive been wondering for a while is, does it really matter how you get therE?
We can agree that you need to progress on the big lifts like squats/benches etc. so lets say theres 2 lifters both can bench 315
they want to bench 450 so thier pecs,delts and tri’s are bigger.
one of them does the training outlined in this thread (body part split 4days + in the gym) while somebody else does say a pull/pull/legs split 3 days a week.
they both get to their 450 bench- would they look any different?

im not arguing here lol, im asking because honestly i cannot be in the gym that long, i just dont recover, ive tried it so many items eating alot etc. you dont have to believe me but in reality 3 days with 1 rest in between is what i can actually PROGRESS on, otherwise i just spin my wheels. But reading threads like this makes me think my training isnt goin to achieve me the same results>i add days do a split>fail.
Thanks.

127

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:

[quote]DJS wrote:
Brick,
This is a great thread. Regardless of my goofball post earlier, I do have a question for you, C_C etc. What do you think of the method of taking the same volume you spoke about earlier for a given bodypart and spreading it out over the week? So lets say for quads… instead of doing squats, lunges, and legg extentions on one day, you did that on three seperate days… maybe in this case you would do squats on day 1, legg press on day 3, and lunges and extentions on day 5. Now when I say what do you think of it… i mean in a pure bodybuilding sense as you were going over the other methods. I started doing this recently for a change, with all bodyparts. Obviously there is a strength advantage on your second, and third excercies when doing it on a seperate day but not sure if its inferior for size for whatever reason…
[/quote]

That’s going to turn into a full-body workout, or an AB split in which you have to attend the gym six times per week.

No, I don’t like that at all. [/quote]

Yes i’ve been doing an AB with a six day rotation. I only go 5 days a week and then start with the sixth day the next week and rotate like that. So one week half the body gets hit 3x and the other 2x. Flips the other way the next week. It was worth a try but I think I’m going to go back.

128

[quote]kaoticz wrote:
A question thats ive been wondering for a while is, does it really matter how you get therE?
We can agree that you need to progress on the big lifts like squats/benches etc. so lets say theres 2 lifters both can bench 315
they want to bench 450 so thier pecs,delts and tri’s are bigger.
one of them does the training outlined in this thread (body part split 4days + in the gym) while somebody else does say a pull/pull/legs split 3 days a week.
they both get to their 450 bench- would they look any different?

im not arguing here lol, im asking because honestly i cannot be in the gym that long, i just dont recover, ive tried it so many items eating alot etc. you dont have to believe me but in reality 3 days with 1 rest in between is what i can actually PROGRESS on, otherwise i just spin my wheels. But reading threads like this makes me think my training isnt goin to achieve me the same results>i add days do a split>fail.
Thanks.[/quote]

I don’t think anyone in this thread or in this entire forum wrote you MUST train more than 3 days per week. All we’ve written is that from observation and experience, it’s safe to say that it’s necessary to train more than 3 days per week to get as jacked as possible.

No - it doesn’t matter how you get there! If you’re one of the few people who wants to take a chance on an approach different than the ones we advise here and are successful with it, then do it. Brian Siders, one of the best powerlifters and strongmen to ever live, trains “wrong” and it has obviously worked for him! Who are we to say that he should train the “right” way. I’m sure if we informed that he has been training “wrong” this whole time, he’d ignore our advice and continue what he’s doing - being one of the best powerlifters and strongmen to ever live! The guys workouts make absolutely no fucking sense to me–3 to 4 hours of training, over 8 exercise per session, with 2 of them being an ME lift–and would have all of us mortals headed straight to a hospital bed!

To put it briefly - if your approach works, disregard what everyone else advises, and continue with it.

Would the two people in your examples look different? How do we know? You didn’t outline the training programs in detail. And yes, two people benching the same weight can look drastically different! This is bodybuilding, not powerlifting, we’re talking about here. This is about building bigger pecs, shoulders, and triceps. Some bodybuilders don’t even rely on the bench press or as the same exercises as one another. One of those guys might bench press 450 pounds but have lagging pecs, tris, and/or shoulders and the other guy might have symmetrical development in all those muscle groups secondary to differences in makeup (eg, arms-dominant versus torso dominant or balanced).

You see? I’m not trying to argue with you, and I give you the credit for thinking outside of the box - including MY box - what you should be doing! But this is where most people’s problems start. They look at what all the successful people do, and for some bizarre reason, want to fight tooth-and-nail against the practices that successful people use because either 1) they don’t have the resources and attributes to be successful (genetics, obligations, priorities, time, money, self-awareness) or b) they’re not willing to do what it takes even if they have the resources.

The problems for 99% of people on here starts with the sort of stuff you have introduced - stuff like: “I see all these guys that do that and are jacked, but what if I try… ?”

See what I mean? I addressed this issue in the first paragraph of this thread - thinking of stuff that’s off the charts - stuff that has been shown to not work or is not even worth thinking about.

Successful BODYBUILDERS–NOT fitness fanatics, powerliters, O-lifters, athletes, and weekend warriors (all groups I respect EQUALLY)–DON’T use movement-based splits (eg, push/pull/legs, hip-dom/quad-dom/vert push-pull/horiz push-pull). All of the successful bodybuilders use BODYPART splits.

I don’t know why you can’t recover from over 3 days of training if your lifestyle and nutrition is in order. Training three times per week is not much if you have those things in order. However, I’m not gonna lie, if you have crumby nutrition, work more than 40 hours per week, have a wife, kids, and a home, then YEAH, you can get fried off of a relatively small amount of physical activity.

“Eating more” doesn’t say much. “Eating better”–which might entail eating more–is the key.
You didn’t list what you eat. If you want to, provide it so we can give some pointers. Just try to write a bit more clearly when you do.

129

[quote]DJS wrote:

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:

[quote]DJS wrote:
Brick,
This is a great thread. Regardless of my goofball post earlier, I do have a question for you, C_C etc. What do you think of the method of taking the same volume you spoke about earlier for a given bodypart and spreading it out over the week? So lets say for quads… instead of doing squats, lunges, and legg extentions on one day, you did that on three seperate days… maybe in this case you would do squats on day 1, legg press on day 3, and lunges and extentions on day 5. Now when I say what do you think of it… i mean in a pure bodybuilding sense as you were going over the other methods. I started doing this recently for a change, with all bodyparts. Obviously there is a strength advantage on your second, and third excercies when doing it on a seperate day but not sure if its inferior for size for whatever reason…
[/quote]

That’s going to turn into a full-body workout, or an AB split in which you have to attend the gym six times per week.

No, I don’t like that at all. [/quote]

Yes i’ve been doing an AB with a six day rotation. I only go 5 days a week and then start with the sixth day the next week and rotate like that. So one week half the body gets hit 3x and the other 2x. Flips the other way the next week. It was worth a try but I think I’m going to go back.[/quote]

If it works for you, then do it.

The less you split up the body–the least you can split is over two days–the less you specialize in each muscle group. That’s why bodybuilders evolved from that sort of thing you speak of.

130

[quote]kaoticz wrote:
im not arguing here lol, im asking because honestly i cannot be in the gym that long, i just dont recover, ive tried it so many items eating alot etc. you dont have to believe me but in reality 3 days with 1 rest in between is what i can actually PROGRESS on, otherwise i just spin my wheels. But reading threads like this makes me think my training isnt goin to achieve me the same results>i add days do a split>fail.
Thanks.[/quote]

In the past, I very often “span my wheels” because I did too many max effort sets/compound exercises in a workout. Explain what your sets etc are like? Do you do much more than 1 failure set per exercise, and how many exercises (including type) do you do per workout?

131

CC:

I’m doing good. How are you?

132

Thanks alot for the reply , great detail !
I understand your points.
Why i cant recover? CNS fatigue, really i just feel really drained and i cant beat my previous weights- If i train 4+ days a week it usually goes like this
week1- do all the liftts
week 2- make little progress/none at all
week3 - do even WORSE- lift lighter than what i did before in week1 .
week4- feel really demotivated- train less coz i just dont want to, suddenly i do this for a weeks weeks im doing so much better and im making gains and recovering, over the short time ive trained i always add days because its how “big people got big”
I guess the thing is to do what “works for you”

If i train less days with less volume/frequency i can actualy make gains in terms of strength.

Thanks again, also for making this thread and putting the time in to post such detailed answers!

133

You’re welcome.

How old are you?

What is your lifestyle like?

What does your workout look like?

Did you ever get a hormone panel lab test that includes stuff like testosterone, estradiol, thyroid, LH, and FSH?

I’m just really curious as to why you’re feeling so beat.

134

im 17 - stats- weight 150-155
bench 160
squat - i stopped squatting for a while tbh, was about 250lb when i was 140lb- back then i was training for relative strength to increase my vertical jump for basketball… worked really well.

lifestyle- im in my final year of school- lots of stress/pressure to do well.

Workout -
Monday - chest/tri/delts
Incline barbell press- ramp to top set of 3-8
flat/decline dumbbell bench press 3x10
Lateral raises 3x12
tricep pushdowns 3x12

Thursday - back/bi
Weighted pull up - top set of 6-8
cable rows 3x12
Bicep curl- ramp to top set of 6-8
face pulls (shoulder stuff) 3x15

Thats what i recover and progress on. lol. thats only done once each, so 2 workouts a week in total- very unconventional.

What i was doing before was basicly that cept double the frequency. so id do those workouts twice a week each for a total of 4
even before that i tried doing:
monday- chest
tues-back
thurs- shoulders
friday arms
and i couldnt recover from that day to do, so if i do well on chest, my back workout suffers hard.
the volume wasnt very high, about 2-4 exercises , and like 3 sets for each depending on the bodypart.

I dropped lowerbody- please dont comment on this i have my reasons and im aware that you need lower body to “grow maximally” or so i have read, but when i was squatting at the start my legs grew fairly well- relatively, and i didnt very little upperbody work.

I havent had any testing done - idk i think low /volume frequency just works best for me, my legs workouts looked like
squats- top set of 5
SLDL 3x10
SOMETIMES- lunges or something.
once a week
and i added 10lb everytime and made great size gains (im aware this is alot due to newbie gains, but my upperbody i trained 3-4 times aweek and made no gains lol)- by no means do i mean that i have huge legs, i mean my legs were REALLY Small and became better than average for my age- seein as no1 trains legs anyways LOL.

135

LOLOLLOLOLOLOLOL.

Eat.

More.

And go to bed early.

That’ll be $200 :slight_smile:

136

You wrote nothing on diet.

Discarding leg training makes one prone to back injuries. I have no idea why you would do this aside from BAD reasons.

137

[quote]Mr.Purple wrote:
LOLOLLOLOLOLOLOL.

Eat.

More.

And go to bed early.

That’ll be $200 :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Not much else to add to this lol. There’s no way you’d be overtraining on what you did (just under-resting/eating), especially when not training legs. Get in some decent meals - at your size you will probably progress well on as little as 2000 to 3000 cals/day, which is easy enough to get in.

Honestly, if you do all that, then as if by magic, your lifts etc will fly up :slight_smile:

138

So you trained your upper body FOUR times per week while training your legs ZERO times per week! That’s a recipe for failure in physique and strength development for risking future injury.

You asked for my commentary, but not for commentary on leg training, a very important part of training.

I don’t know who you notice not training legs. Everyone serious about health and well-being and/or bodybuilding trains legs. Do you want to compare yourself to those who don’t train seriously? How does that benefit us? That’s kind of like saying, “I don’t do my job good, but hey, some people don’t are lazy bums who don’t work at all.” I have NOTHING against being mediocre or ordinary–despite the new age of feel-good, self-help, law-of-attraction, aim-for-the-sky-and-settle-for-nothing-less BULLSHIT–but I don’t think that’s the best attitude to take with working out and other endeavors.

Your workouts are OK. They’re not retarded. But they don’t follow the guidelines I provided in my first post for this thread. That means you don’t do what successful bodybuilders do. So therefore, I say your workouts need revamping if you want to look like a bodybuilder. But it comes down to choice again. You wrote you’re undergoing a lot of stress with school, which is FAR MORE important than bodybuilding, because the chance of you have some significant, meaningful future (eg, A LIVING) in bodybuilding is VERY low, as it is for the rest of us. I’m not trying to discourage you, but if you can’t take on this shit seriously at a young age, then just relax, keep in shape, and do good in school.

The program you wrote IS flawed for bodybuilding (according to me that is). You have ONE exercise for bis, shoulders (and lateral raises alone, no less), and tris, and only TWO for back. If you can grow like that, then do it. Almost all bodybuilders don’t train like that.

Yeah, here we go - the DC posse might come on here and say, “Whatcha talkin’ bout? All of us DC soljas do only 1 exacize pa muscle gwoup! OG Dante said itz OK fo’ us ta do 1 exacize pa muscle gwoup!”

Good for you then! If you have success with DC, than who am I to say stop doing it or that others shouldn’t give it a shot.

Sorry about that. I get carried away sometimes because we have to watch what we write here sometimes. Some people get very offended over opinions and beliefs on training methods.

139

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
Its:

That issue has been gone over a whole lot on this forum. I know for myself, I wouldn’t have gotten as big as I was and the size I’m maintain now–220 pounds–on far fewer calories had I not gone through a long bulk. I bulked up too much at times, but not to the limits that X and Fatty Fat have. I can maintain 220 with about 14% bodyfat at 5’10" without even eating much or training as much and as intensely as I did. I didn’t even lose much muscle while consuming about 1,200 to 1,300 calories on the Rapid Fat loss diet with near zero starchy carbs and training twice per week.
[/quote]

Any particular reason you don’t try to stay leaner? A lot of the time I notice that those who don’t want to be as serious anymore instead decide to just maintain a leaner physique (8-10% or so) year round. [/quote]

The reason is that at this point, I don’t give a shit about being either VERY lean or VERY big. I’m at a point where, YES, I do take my diet and training more seriously than the average person because I want to be HEALTHY and not start looking WEIRD - like so many people start to look after age 30, especially men.

I’m actually on another round of the Rapid Fat Loss Diet because I think it would be pretty cool to get a little leaner. Whether I maintain such a low bodyfat percentage over the long term is not a huge concern for me. But I would like to be quicker when playing some recreational sports and increase my function in bodyweight exercises and running.

140

kaoticz,

I think the reason your splits had you more and more tired day in and day out probably had a lot to do with diet/rest etc.

Also, I think your workouts might have used too many of the accessory muscles that were supposed to be part of the next days workout. This could have led to too great a fatigue in your muscles over time.