First, just wanted to say a big thanks to STB and everyone else who contributed to these two threads. Read through them all, and despite having read every book or article and watched every video I could find from Louie, these two threads have taught me a ton.
I have a couple questions related to the accumulation/intensification split, especially for someone who doesn’t plan on competing for at least another year or two. The main one is whether it would be a mistake to work up to a true 1RM on the ME days during the accumulation block. Louie has written on several instances that his guys work up to a true 1RM year round. And he has also noted a couple times (I’m paraphrasing) that a 1RM will do a lot more for building absolute strength than working up to a 3RM or 5RM. But I see STB and others advocate a 3RM or 5RM during accumulation phase. Would it be counter-productive for me to be doing a 1RM during this phase, just with no bands or chains? Could you see it as even being a benefit to working up to a true 1RM during this wave, while still doing LTT and very light band tension on the DE days, and a bunch of higher rep work and DB work for the assistance exercises during this phase?
The other question relates to how often one should do the standard lifts (BP, Free Squat, DL) as compared to variations on ME days. Some have said to “test” these lifts instead of a variation is kind of a wasted day. But if it’s just throwing in the conventional lifts once every 6 weeks or so, while doing a variation on the other 5, shouldn’t you be getting the same benefits of the conjugate system on the occasional days when you do a regular bench press, squat or DL? My concern is not getting enough practice in developing form/technique in the 3 conventional lifts. I know that you get to work a lot on form/technique on the DE days, but to me that’s never the same as working on form/technique with intensity at 95%+. This is especially true with a raw squat, for me at least, where I feel the form is quite a bit different than the way Louie teaches the box squat (another kudos to this thread. I was box squatting the way DeFranco coached it before reading these threads. While box squatting properly as Louie teaches it was a little humbling, the switch has had a noticeable carryover in both my DL and squat.)