I am not sure – which means just exactly that – in cases where there is no particular reason calling for it.
But for example at the moment I’m doing it, because I have come up with an idea of combining the most fiendish ideas of Arthur Jones together with the most fiendish ideas of the damned Communists.
Namely, four days a week – this means, necessarily, there are two days that are back-to-back and never more than one rest day at a time – at 65, 70, 75, and 80% 1RM respectively, of:
- Hammer Strength Iso Row, single-armed
- HS Iso Row, two-arms: maximal reps with lower pronated grip, then immediately switch to higher neutral grip for maximal reps
- Leg Press
- Shrugs on a squat machine that has a shoulder yoke
- Shoulder width supinated pulldowns, one-and-a-third style (letting the weight back only 1/3 of the way and then pulling back to full contraction again, before letting weight fully down to complete the rep)
- Romanian deadlift
- Good morning
- Bent row (45 degrees max reps, then immediately 20 degrees max reps, then immediately still 20 degrees but now with leg drive for max reps)
- Don’t know a name for it: low pulley cable row using rope attachment, seated on bench, leaning way forward
- Cobra pulldown (this uses the crossover machine at highest setting, kneeling in the middle, pulling completely down and in)
- Voyer Shrug (Thibs has an article on it.)
- Strive Extreme Row (weight split between the positions that maximize load at bottom and at midrange, for max reps; then as fast as weight can be changed, with weight all at position maximizing load at bottom)
- Deadlift (made harder via having shoulders completely retracted at start and employing rather little legs, for max reps, then immediately strongest-form style for max reps)
- Snatch-grip deadlift. Likewise on making the earlier reps deliberately harder to do.
- Drag curls with EZ-curl bar for max reps immediately followed by DB curls at two lighter weights for max reps each.
Also there are warmup sets where needed or thought beneficial.
All exercises, whether so mentioned above or not, are for maximum reps that can be done.
Now, one thing that is easier than Arthur would have it is that I allow the negatives to be faster than he’d appreciate, and also do the positives faster. But this also results in having to do many more reps, so it’s not all peaches and cream.
Actually there would be more than this, but I’m unusually beat up at the moment and so am very temporarily having to leave out squatting and pressing movements.
Since I am having to cut up at present, I could not do this in one workout. I would need a different workout plan entirely. (And even if not cutting up, I wouldn’t consider it personally workable to do the Romanian DL and good morning right before the deadlift and SGDL, but would reverse that order. However the break makes this order possible. For me: perhaps not for some given other person.)
However, as a two-a-day – first 7 exercises in the morning in right about 60 minutes, the last 8 after a 3 hour break, also taking right about an hour – it seems very good, at least as a short term plan.
It is only if there is a specific reason like this that I do a two-a-day, though. That is just personal: it doesn’t mean I’m saying it might not be better even if not necessitated from the training plan.
Note: not counting warmup sets, which in this case is reasonable not to count as they are deliberately quite non-tiring, this works out to 60 sets a week, which if anything is a reduction from what it would otherwise be.
And incidentally, if wondering how that would fit in with Arthur Jones’ most fiendish ideas, I am referring to the period in which he advocated 72 sets per week (24 sets 3x/week.) So the weekly volume actually is not at all in contradiction to what Jones would have approved of, at least at that time. I am using slightly less on account of there being really only one foo-foo exercise in there.