Back to the Beginning--A New Journal

[rangers97]

Originally Posted by a_welch503

Oh, and in case you didn't notice the 120's in each hand thing a few days ago...that was a joke.

No $hit

Originally Posted by a_welch503

Why are your 130's impressive? Because I can't do them.

I give you 2 weeks, you'll be nailing 135, and that will be awesome, nothing like curling a barbell with the 45s on the ends :

[.V.]

Rangers, I totally understand your reasoning - and the SLDL and squats on the same day do work well. I do them that way too. I just hate to see you missing the CDL too - even though you aren't powerlifting. If you do decide to give them a shot again some day, think about a split like mine - on your schedule.

M-legs, T-arms, W-shoulders, Th-back, F-chest/abs, Sat/Sun-OFF. That would give you 3 whole days after back before squatting. Another thing that may be hard for you switching to max ot style from the powerlifting is don't forget, you don't have to go as heavy as possible. If you need to use loose form to get 3x4 or whatever the first day you increase the weight - repeat the same workout next time with perfect form. ONLY after all reps are with good form do you work on increasing the reps. Then when you are getting your 3x6 or whatever your plan for the day is with excellent form - THEN AND ONLY THEN increase the weight. It's a bit slower, but the strength is really yours, not from some special technique or from loose form - it's yours, and you don't get injured while getting it.

That's how I do it anyway and after I switched to this, I haven't gotten hurt. Like I said, the progress is a bit slower - but to me it's worth it to be able to do all my preferred lifts and not get hurt.

Eithe way you go...good luck with it and don't push too fast.

[rangers97]

Originally Posted by a_welch503

Rangers, I totally understand your reasoning - and the SLDL and squats on the same day do work well. I do them that way too. I just hate to see you missing the CDL too - even though you aren't powerlifting. If you do decide to give them a shot again some day, think about a split like mine - on your schedule.

M-legs, T-arms, W-shoulders, Th-back, F-chest/abs, Sat/Sun-OFF. That would give you 3 whole days after back before squatting. Another thing that may be hard for you switching to max ot style from the powerlifting is don't forget, you don't have to go as heavy as possible. If you need to use loose form to get 3x4 or whatever the first day you increase the weight - repeat the same workout next time with perfect form. ONLY after all reps are with good form do you work on increasing the reps. Then when you are getting your 3x6 or whatever your plan for the day is with excellent form - THEN AND ONLY THEN increase the weight. It's a bit slower, but the strength is really yours, not from some special technique or from loose form - it's yours, and you don't get injured while getting it.

That's how I do it anyway and after I switched to this, I haven't gotten hurt. Like I said, the progress is a bit slower - but to me it's worth it to be able to do all my preferred lifts and not get hurt.

Eithe way you go...good luck with it and don't push too fast.

I tried to make my split with as little bodypart overlap as possible. What makes it hard is trying to separate things like deadlifts and squats. While it might be ok to get away with what you're doing, with the arms followed by shoulders, it doesn't work for your back obviously. I tried to separate things so every bodypart had at least a day off in between workouts including secondary stress.

Have you noticed any problems with your shoulder workout the day after your arms workout? See, I think my triceps would be fried from the close grip bench to be able to push maximum weight on the shoulder presses the next day.

also don't forget that if the powerlifting guys don't deadlift and squat in the same week usually, what makes me think that I can do it, and in actuality, max-ot methods probably make it worse. Heavy 4-6 rep squats and deadlifts in the same week? What are we thinking? The 2 sets I did on Monday at 315 felt a hell of a lot worse on my body than the max I accomplished of 380 or whatever during my powerlifting routine. The 3 sets of squats at 275 are a HELL of a lot tougher than a box squat single at 315.

trust me, I want to do them, but honestly, I think something is going to suffer if I continue doing both, and hopefully the thing that suffers doesn't turn out to be my lower back, lol

[.V.]

Originally Posted by rangers97

Have you noticed any problems with your shoulder workout the day after your arms workout?

Only in the motivation to get out there and do it. But that's always been a problem with shoulder work for me. The pulling I don't mind so much, but he pushing like DB shoulder press, MP - hate it...just gotta do it.

Like I said, just making a suggestion to see if you could find a way to fit both in...it's your body and you've got to do what it needs and the only one who can say that is you.

[rangers97]

Originally Posted by a_welch503

Like I said, just making a suggestion to see if you could find a way to fit both in...it's your body and you've got to do what it needs and the only one who can say that is you.

Feel free to throw your 2 cents in whenever you want, I don't mind. Now I will go hide in a corner as I think sunmedic wants to impale me with a metal stake or something for the lunges

[sunmedicFL]

Originally Posted by rangers97

Feel free to throw your 2 cents in whenever you want, I don't mind.

Personally, this is why I post my work on the WWW, I want other peoples input.

Originally Posted by rangers97

Now I will go hide in a corner as I think sunmedic wants to impale me with a metal stake or something for the lunges

Violence is not the answer... but it would be fun to lock you in a bakery or something!
edit: - When I see the results from these lunges, maybe I'll buy ya a beer!

[rangers97]

Originally Posted by sunmedicFL

Personally, this is why I post my work on the WWW, I want other peoples input.

Violence is not the answer... but it would be fun to lock you in a bakery or something!
edit: - When I see the results from these lunges, maybe I'll buy ya a beer!

A bakery! HA! That won't work on me boy! Now, if you were to say, take away my weights for a week, then you might see me on my knees!

[maverick]

There really shouldn't be a reason to drop deadlifts or squats. You've been around long enough to know that these are probably THE two most important exercises in terms of both size and strength. Change your split so that you are doing squats monday or friday and deadlifts vice versa. I would suggest deadlifts on Friday for true recovery time over the weekend. That way you get 4 days to recover, and then the weekend to rest til you cycle again.

If this is still too much, do 1-2 sets of either deadlifts or squats, and 2-3 of the other exercise in one week. Max-OT-like workouts put a huge emphasis on progressive overload, so you probably don't want to be doing your most important core lifts only twice a month. This is just my opinion and I'm sure if Firehawk were still around he'd disagree. But with these low volume workouts, you need to take a no-nonsense approach to exercise selection and nothing is more no-nonsense than squats and deadlifts.

On a side note, this is why I love my current split. I don't have to worry about the "I can't do shoulders on Tuesday, cause I did chest Monday, and I can't do legs Friday cause I did deadlits on Thursday" type situations. I know very well how hard it is to avoid overlap on a 5 day schedule, I did it for a very long time. It seeemed to work at first, but once the weights got heavy enough, I needed more time to rest, especially between the big lifts.

[Firehawk]

Hey guys, i know i said i wouldn't post anymore on this board, but I do follow a couple training journals around here and this is one of them, and I just have to jump in on this one lol.

First i agree with maverick that squatting on monday and then deadliftin on wednesday is not enough time to recover because both of those are taxing.

Second, I do disagree (as maverick predicted) with doing both real heavy in the same week, BUT, I feel that the more reps you do, the less taxing it is to the CNS. I might be wrong on that, but that's what it appears like, and that seems to be what I am seeing as i continue to learn. We do max out at the gym on the big 3 lifts every time we are on a max effort day. And the reason we change our lift slightly within 1-3 weeks of doing the core lift is just for that reason, so we don't get overtrained and don't allow our system to adapt.

It really does make sense, because the 1-3 rep range targets the CNS alot more than a 6-12 rep range does.

I think if you are doing sets of 6 for squats and deadlifts, that is borderline. I feel that everyone is at a different level of GPP (general physical preparedness). For instance, I think that Maverick is able to handle more volume than I can, but it seems my body is built better to handle heavier loads. And in this case (and i never like saying this), everyone is different and needs to figure out what they can handle without overtraining.

It may be that Ranger boy can only handle 1 set of 6 for a 6RM without overtaining right now, and Maverick can handle 6 sets of 6 without overtraining. Maverick also can run long distances and has a great ability to handle alot of cardiovascular training.

One suggestion to get through this, is to try raising your level of GPP. The more work your body can handle, the better. But this should be done slowly by trying to always beat your previous times with cardio, pulling a sled, doing sets a little bit faster, etc. So perhaps right now squatting and deadliftng for sets of 4-6 is too much for Ranger, but in the future, it may not be. Get what I'm saying? If you are feeling too beat up, cut the volume a little bit more or don't do both heavy in the same week. People can still grow with one heavy set of 6 reps.

So anyway, in conclusion, my suggestion would be if you are going to continue to do both heavy in the same week, don't go too low in the reps, or do deads for sets of 3 and squat with higher reps. And, change it up regularly.

Or, do one heavy each week and one light. Work on form on the light day and work on intensity on heavy day. Just my opinion.

BUt absolutely, whatever you do, do not drop the deads and squats, or any variations of them. They are too important for muscle mass and/or strength gains.

[maverick]

Great post, encapsulates the ideas I was too lazy to post. I still personally think you could do both as long as you start slow and stay towards the high end of the rep range on one of the exercises during the week (i.e., if you go heavy 4-6 reps on deads for 2 sets, do AT LEAST 6 rep sets of squats for 2 sets later in the week).

GPP, thats a new one for me, where'd you pick up that term? I believe it 100%, just never had a name for it. Pierini and I talked about it once in my journal. I mentioned that I had a much easier time doing high rep squats after I had been doing high intensity running for about month. He attributed it to the cardiovascular conditioning from the running, it makes a lot of sense.

[rangers97]

I don't think my problem is with the volume of what I am doing, I think it lies in actual muscle recovery of my lower back. My 2 sets of squats still managed to go up a rep each set and I went up 5 pounds on the lunges and ham curls went up as well, so it isn't a case of CNS overtraining, simply a case of muscle overtraining in a highly sensitive area. I felt like if I did another set of squats my back would just give in. I don't know if an extra day of resting my low back will make much of a difference, but I could be wrong.

I can try to space them out more, but in the end, I still think that one or the other is going to suffer. Mav, do you honestly think you can do 2 or 3 sets of heavy 4-6 rep to failure deadlifts on monday and then do 2-3 sets of 4-6 rep to failure squats on thursday or friday and expect them both to improve? Throw in SLDLs, bent rows, and anything else where you use your low back to stabilize. If you can do this, then you are truly genetically blessed and good for you then :

that was a great post though Firehawk, how the hell have you been? I;ve been meaning to get in touch with you via email, but things have been crazy for me with work and I found out my wife is pregnant, so that's a whole other issue right there .

I know that you used to do max-ot as well firehawk, what did you do as far as squats and deads with it?

[tim_mcf]

Wife Is Pregnant! Woo Hoo!

[maverick]

I think you'll find things different should your core and lower body catch up to your upper body. I think thats exactly where our differences lie. I hear what you're saying, but you need to make room for both exercises otherwise you'll never get that balance. Firehawk's light/heavy suggestion seems spot on for you.

[sunmedicFL]

Originally Posted by tim_mcf

Wife Is Pregnant! Woo Hoo!

or is it ...

Wife is pregnant! Boo Hoo!

Congrats!!!

[.V.]

Dave is right about increasing the cardiovascular capacity to increase the lifts. Since mine's been improving - all of my lifts have improved. I think it's because since I'm not gasping for air by the 2nd rep, I can finish and get stronger, increasing my ability to do even better the next time. There probably comes a time where cardio starts adversly effecting the lifts, but not so much if you feed it enough.

Congrats about the baby - you know, the best part about kids is making them.