Hi.
I need a few pointers. I've been training quite hard for the last two years and with a lot of focus for the last four months. It has gone well, my diet is pretty decent and so on, but not as well as I had hoped.
So what are my aims and my limitations? I'll start with the latter. I can devote three gym sessions a week, but I'd prefer to keep them to 45mins or less, and a fourth session at home with weights that will allow me to to perform exercises like military press, barbell curls, close-grip bench,
tricep extensions, upright rows (but my shoulders don't like it) etc, not big movements due to lack of weight and/or equipment.
I like keeping sessions fairly simple and am a big believer in both free weights and compound exercises. Up til now I have mainly split on a Squat/Bench/Deadlift basis, with shoulders and calves thrown in with squats and bent-over rows, pull-ups and shrugs thrown in with deadlifts. Incline bench and dips are often added to bench day. I've recently read the '10 exercises for mass' article posted on here and am glad to say I am proficient in most of them, probably the least proficient in barbell curls.
I'd like to get around to doing a form of periodisation, and specifically some conjugated periodisation type routine. At the moment my aim is to increase my strength dramatically, in all areas but specifically squats and bench.
To keep changing things up as required by Westside I thought I'd focus around:
Monday
Box squat
Squat
Deadlift
Wednesday
Bench
Dip
Incline Bench
Friday
Squat
Deadlift
Bent-over rows
Pull-ups
AND Calf raises, shrugs, stiff-leg deadlifts
Sunday
Close-grip bench, barbell curls, military press, good mornings (not proficient at these)
Obviously I don't want to box squat, squat and deadlift all on Monday and then on Friday. I do however want to regularly switch between them, doing a form of squats for max efforts (triples in my case I think) on monday for example, and a form of deadlift or clean on Friday for
dynamic effort (although cleans are already) and vice versa. Or on Friday I could do bodybuilding style (8-12 reps) on the basic group I am not doing on the Monday.
I know Westside guys do four days a week DE squat, DE bench, ME squat and ME bench, but I really can't give over that much time. I am really not sure how to include dynamic bench, unless I do dynamic floor press (no bench at home) on a Sunday, and even then I'd hope that in a few months I will not have enough weights at home to do even that.
They say a little knowledge is dangerous, but trying to advance beyond that state has left me dangerously confused.
I like the idea of regularly changing up the heavy exercise, I know that I can't keep training my bench and my squat in the 80-90% range indefinitely. I need a three day split (with maybe a fourth day of assistance work) based around the core lifts that allows me to switch up and periodise. Anyone got any ideas (that is if anyone has stuck with this post for this long)
Thanks.
Iain.
Linear Mode
