Alrighty then I have a question. Well it might be multiple questions or at least a big ass question with many small parts. Um, anyway.
I just started my Westside split 4 weeks ago and so far, so good (so what! - anyone?). I am historically bad with my exercise choices (I will put several things together then look back at my log and say “What the hell was I thinking?”) so I’m trying to be smarter about this.
I basically have designed my sessions around the basic template, hitting the main movement, triceps, shoulders, back each session. On lower days I hit the main movement, low back, hams, abs, and sometimes quads.
My current lifting schedule looks like this:
Mon - ME lower
Tue - DE upper
Wed - off or cardio or whatever
Thu - DE lower
Fri - ME upper
Sat/Sun - off or cardio
Now my first question is about intensity on ME/DE days and what you guys feel about this. My DE days are definitely DE/RE. This is also kind of the case on my ME days.
I read in one of the template docs that you should have a high intensity/low intensity day for the exercises for each muscle. So if you do heavy rack lockouts as your tricep accessory, you’d want to do extensions or something less intensive on your other day.
I’ve been doing this, but I’ve been putting my high intensity day for accessories on my DE day. I’m now thinking this is maybe not the best way to approach things. This means basically that my main movement is the only thing I go balls out on for ME day so I kinda end up with a fairly high intensity DE day.
I didn’t get it at first, but I think I’m getting it now that this is counterproductive to the idea of DE day. So after all that rambling, the question is should I move the high instensity movements all to ME day and use DE as basically speed and high repetition?
Q2: My lower body is weaksauce compared to upper (my squat is 25 lbs more than my bench, doh) so I’m really trying to hammer it and get it on par. Also, I’m trying to teach myself some new movements and add more stuff to my bag of tricks, so I feel like I can add in some extra things as learning exercises if I keep it light.
Currently I’ve not been getting in both a squat/DL variation on each lower day, but I kinda feel like I need to in order to boost my legs. At least a quad dominant movement as accessory to DL so as not to do heavy squat on the same day as heavy dead. I feel like I need the practice here as well and that extra punishment for my legs is in order.
So with all this in mind a potential lower split might be:
ME:
wide stance squat
RDL
hypers
leg curls (my hams are wayyyyy weak for GHRs yet)
abs
DE:
speed DL
front squat RE
GMs RE
abs
I’ve been switching deadlift and squat as main movement each week.
If you’ve made it through my tome, any thoughts, comments, concerns, flaming bags of poo? (He called the shit poo!)
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