They shut down the gyms again. I have in the meantime pulled the first two weeks of the Jacked Athlete 3-1 plan as amended in @jcmcnorton’s thread, and it’s great - I felt strong, happy, and well recovered, saw pretty much immediate gains in the traps and shoulders and loss in the gut, and the lifts went up!
Week 1 looked like so, all weights in kg:
| Week 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Front squat | 4x5 | 7 secs eccentric | 100 |
| Incline bench | 4x5 | 7 secs | 70 | |
| RDL | 4x5 | 7 secs | actually TBDL, 130 | |
| Chin-up | 4x5 | 7 secs | me | |
| Day 2 | ||||
| Zercher squat | 4x5 | 5 secs hold | 3x5x100,1x5x95 | |
| Push press | 4x5 | 5 secs hold | 70 | |
| RDL | 4x5 | 5 secs hold | 120 | |
| Seated row | 4x5 | 5 secs hold | 81 | |
| Day 3 | ||||
| Back squat | 6644 | No special note | 2x6x160, 2x4x170 | |
| Bench press | 6644 | 2x6x80, 2x4x90 | ||
| Trapbar deadlift | 6644 | actually RDL, 2x6x120, 2x4x130 | ||
| Pendlay row | 6644 | 2x6x70, 2x4x80 |
I was really surprised to see that the front squats, which I was hating before the second lockdown, were so much less of a problem. At 100kg x5 I was sandbagging a bit. One of my goals is to pay the ego lifting tax and get better form and RoM so everything is down a bit from my B4B log.
The swap of trapbar and Romanian DLs was just a cockup on my part on day one. I think I have all the mass I want so I went with a conditioning day as the “1” in the 3-1 rather than a hypertrophy day…or to be honest I counted dance class and a kettlebell workout as that in week 1.
The second week went like this:
| Week 2 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Front squat | 5x4 | 6 secs | 120 |
| Incline bench | 5x4 | 6 secs | 80 | |
| RDL | 5x4 | 6 secs | 120 | |
| Chin-up | 5x4 | 6 secs | me | |
| Day 2 | ||||
| Zercher squat | 5x4 | 4 secs | 100 | |
| Push press | 5x4 | 4 secs | 1x4x80, 4x4x75 | |
| RDL | 5x4 | 4 secs | 5x4x120 | |
| Seated row | 5x4 | 4 secs | 5x4x81 | |
| Day 3 | ||||
| Highbar back squat | 54321 | 5x150, 4x160,3x170,2x180,1x190 | ||
| Bench press | 54321 | 5x70,4x80,3x90,2x95,1x100 | ||
| Trapbar deadlift | 54321 | 5x125,4x135,3x145,2x155,1x160 | ||
| Pendlay row | 54321 | 5x70,4x75,3x80,2x85,1x90 |
It was great to do a real back squat for a change - apart from comeback in August I haven’t been squatting heavy all year.
Then I borrowed from Block 2 of the program for the conditioning day:
| Jump squat | 5x5 |
|---|---|
| Plyo push-up | 5x5 |
| Depth jump | 5x5 |
| KB swing | 100 |
| Pull-up | 5x4 |
40kg for the jump squats, 28kg belle for the swings.
And then they closed the gym. Which was a relief as my mother had taken to texting begging me to stop.