My goals

For what it is worth, my new goals are:

• a double bodyweight pull up (bodyweight plus 75kg / 165lbs)
• a 2.5x bodyweight conventional deadlift (187.5kg / 415lbs)
• bench 100kg (220lbs)

There is other stuff that I want to do but I don’t really allow myself to focus on more than 3 goals at a time. I find that if I allow myself to accumulate too many goals then I don’t really achieve anything worthwhile.  Dan John has written well on keeping your goals to a minimum so I won’t say any more.  What I will say is that the overall purpose of the whole programme is to build another layer of work capacity to support my 2010 goals and (hopefully) build about 5kg of muscle too.

A more chilled approach

The first thing to say is that these are not very adventurous goals for me!  The second thing is that I’m hoping that I can take a more chilled approach to training for the next 2 months, especially as I have a tendency to get beaten up by deadlifts if I do them too frequently.  I suspect I will have to go 3 weeks on and 1 week off when it comes to pulling from the floor.  I just want to eat well, lift heavy and get stronger without killing myself.

The main reasons behind the goals are as follows: 

• a double-bodyweight pull up – I need to get closure on the whole weighted pull up thing as it’s been dominating my life for too long;
• a 2.5x bodyweight deadlift – I’d like to go back and finish what I started last year.   Having said that, I’d also like to set myself up hitting 3x bodyweight some time in 2010 (I can get just as fanatical about deadlifts as I do about pull ups).  And anyway, it bothers me that there are people out there who can pull more than twice what I can at the same bodyweight;
• bench 100kg – this is another staging post on the way to 1.5x bodyweight, which is definitely going to be on my 2010 goals list.  1.5x bodyweight is the qualifying weight for the British Drug Free Powerlifting Nationals.  I’m not sure I can commit to entering as I probably won’t have the recovery time to back squat regularly as well as fulfill my other goals but it’s a good benchmark, none-the-less.

A sketched out workout plan

Saturday – Upper

• Bench press                                           10 sets of 3 reps on 1min
• Pull up                                                     10 sets of 3 reps on 1min
• Military press                                       5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Elbow flexor pull ups                        5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Dumbbell triceps extensions         5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Front lever practice                          3 attempts

Sunday – Lower

• Lumberjack squats                             10 sets of 3 reps on 1min30s
• Pistols                                                      5 sets of 8 reps on 2mins (both legs)
• Glute-ham raise                                   5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Hanging leg raises                               5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Heavy sandbag carries                     5 carries

Tuesday – Upper

• Dips                                                                 5 sets of 2 reps on 2mins
• Assisted one arm pull ups                     5 sets of 2 reps on 3mins (both arms)
• Military press                                             5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Close grip chins                                         5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• One arm rows                                             5 sets of 8 reps on 2mins (both arms)
• Front lever practice                                3 attempts

Thursday – Lower

• Conventional deadlift                           10 sets of 2 reps
• Pistols                                                          5 sets of 8 reps on 2mins
• Glute-ham raise                                       5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Hanging leg raises                                   5 sets of 8 reps on 1min30s
• Heavy sandbag carries                          5 carries

So will it work?

I think that so long as I eat enough to support the extra volume, it should work.

I am hoping that the double-bodyweight pull up will look after itself.  I think I have built enough work capacity to support an increase in strength on most vertical pulling movements.

I think that my deadlift will go up quite quickly to where it was before (c. 170kg).  After that, I honestly don’t know what will happen.   My gut reaction is that so long as my lower back holds out, I will pull 2.5x bodyweight before the end of March.  I am pretty sure I have the leg strength and upper back strength already.  The problem is the bit in-between.  So this programme is designed to put on whole-body functional mass to support this goal (higher reps, lumberjack squats and sandbag carries).  I will hate it but I have to do it or my body will break.

For my bench, I’ve added in some triceps extensions to build pressing power and I’ve added some rowing to help balance it all out.

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What works for me?

What do I look for in a lifting programme? Well, as a quick reminder, a programme works for me if:

• I get stronger;
• I put on a little muscle;
• I don’t have to get fat in the process;
• I don’t get injured;
• I recover easily; and
• I can go for a bike ride or a walk at weekends and not derail my progress.

It’s kind of a long list but it captures most of what is important to me.  Yes, I am hard to please sometimes.

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Basic principles

You develop strength by lifting weights that are close to your 1RM and in enough volume such that your body gets the message that it needs to get stronger.  There is a lot more science to it than this but that will do for the time being.

I think the trick (if there is a trick) is to make sure that you reach “enough” volume without tearing yourself down in the process.  At the moment, the scheme I am using to hit that sweet spot of “enough” volume is a combination of 10 x 3 volume lifting and 3x 3 intensity lifting.

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Volume days: 10 sets of 3 reps

I first read about this scheme in an article by Chad Waterbury but didn’t pay much attention at the time as his focus was on getting bigger.  He also talks about it here and here.  I really like this scheme as I can get through 30 reps of a really heavy weight without stressing my body at all.  If I did the same volume with a 5 sets of 5 reps regime, I would be burned out within a few weeks.

For example, at the moment, my 1RM pistol is sitting at 36.25kg and I am doing 27.5kg for 10 sets of 3 reps on 1min30s (both legs within the 1min30s).  So I am getting only about 30s rest.  It’s tough but it’s not lung-busting like 20 reps squats are.  The interesting thing to note is that bodyweight plus 25kg is about 92% of my 1RM.  So that’s some pretty quality volume!

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Intensity days: 3 sets of 3 reps

I borrowed this from powerlifting and it has revolutionised my lifting.  With 3 sets of 3 reps, I tend to work up to a maximum weight with 3mins rest between each exercise.  So each set of 3 reps is heavier than the one before.  The idea is to break the PR from the previous week.

For example, if I am trying to push my pistol up, I might go for 32.5kg, 35kg and then 37.5kg.  I might get 3 reps with 32.5kg, 3 reps with 35kg but only 2 reps with 37.5kg.  If that happened, then the following week, I’d start at 35kg for the first set as I would be confident of hitting it.

I wouldn’t want to start again at 32.5kg as there is a chance that the early sets are harming my ability in the last set and I want to give myself the best possible chance of nailing the heaviest weight.  On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to start at 37.5kg in case I only got 2 reps and failed.

I found that switching to 3 sets of 3 reps while ramping up the weight meant that my pull up, dip and pistol improvements were twice as fast as they were when only using straight sets.

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A place for volume and a place for intensity

Typically, therefore, I will do an upper/lower split workout routine like this:

• Upper (max) – 3 sets x 3 reps (max effort)
• Lower (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Upper (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Lower (max) – 3 sets x 3 reps (max effort)

For the upper body, I’ll do a push and a pull at these set/rep schemes for both repetition and max effort days.  For the lower body, I’ll usually do 3 exercises on the repetition day: a squat, a hamstring exercise and an abdominal exercise but only one exercise on the max effort day.  I find max effort lower body much harder to recover from than repetition lower body work, probably because of the larger muscles involved (and the involvement of the spine, I suppose, which is the central nervous system).

Sometimes, I will hike the weight up a bit on my repetition work and do 6 sets of 2 reps.  I learned this scheme from Mark Twight’s book Extreme Alpinism.  He wrote this book in his climbing, pre-Gym Jones days and the scheme works brilliantly for improving top end work capacity and strength on pull ups and dips.  I wouldn’t want to do it all the time though, as it skirts along the top edge of bearable intensity for me on a repetition day.

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Regenerate from time to time

When I need to regroup, I’ll cut out the max effort lifting and switch over to a regenerative cycle for 3-4 weeks like this:

• Upper (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Lower (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Upper (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Lower (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)

While I’m doing this cycle, I don’t try and drive the weight up very much.  It probably only goes up a few kg over the 3-4 weeks.  I concentrate on just getting quality reps in and grooving some good movement patterns.

So that’s what’s working for me (at the moment).  If anyone else has had good (or bad) experiences with 10 sets of 3 reps, I’d be interested to hear them.