Yugo --

It's a form of congestive heart failure called peripartum cardiomyopathy. When I first heard heart failure I thought transplant, but that isn't usually the case with this; it's usually manageable through medication, and she seems to be recovering quickly enough that a full or nearly full recovery is possible.

She lost ~60 L of fluid in less than a week in the hospital (diuretics) so that helped too. It's certainly one way to get that baby weight off quickly.

Yeah, from the Wiki page it seems like full recovery is very possible. Super scary though at first when reading about it.

Here is how Justin says to transition squats in part 1 of the ebook

The first set is a total of 20% off of the max LP weight and the fifth set is a reduction of 10%. This represents a nice, easy transition. Jumping into the TM with a near max effort 5x5 will not only cause surprising amounts of soreness, but will blunt progress early. The inception of a new program should be treated with respect, particularly the more advanced a trainee is. It will take several weeks to acclimate to the TM, and the trainee mustn’t get greedy in the first week. By low-balling his weight, the trainee will set himself up for solid progress in the coming weeks.

Weasel --

Based on where I was when I came back from my short hiatus, that is pretty much what I ended up doing (and I did have that in mind). I'll take another two or three weeks or so to ramp up to 225x5x5 and take it from there.

This first day was relatively easy so there's definitely room for growth in there.

I don't plan on doing much baby trolling, but since this is H&F, I figured some people would get a kick out of it:

Some cursory googling has told me that most babies don't roll over until 2-3 months at the earliest, with 4-6 months being relatively standard. One of my boys just did it today (at 3 weeks); apparently the fact that he and his brother have both been GTGing rolling onto their sides and pushups while on their belly has sped up their timeline. I'll have them squatting in no time!

7/19
Upper Intensity

Bench
wu+ 1x3x265

This was pretty disappointing (almost got the 4th), but I'm still feeling the effects of that layoff I guess. Hopefully this additional upper body work will get me back to where I was before the boys in a few weeks. My left pec is a little tight, so that will be a job for the lax ball tonight.

Closegrip Bench
1x5x205, 1x5x215, 1x5x225

Kept it really light since I haven't done these in about six years; felt pretty easy, although it's harder to keep my wrists set with my hands so close together. I'll probably try to get to 3 sets of 225 across next time and then progress from there.

Curls
1x10x45, 1x10x55, 1x10x65
Those weights are assuming an EZ curl bar is 15 pounds, which I am pretty sure is correct. I had no idea how crappy my curling strength has gotten, but hopefully I can get to something respectable in the next few months.

All in all a pretty quick workout, once I work up to moving some real weight I'll feel better about it.

Yeah, easy if you're DLing or Squatting that weight, .

I could actually always CG about what I could bench, but it was nice to see I could still handle decent weight. I am hopeful all my lifts will round back into shape over the next few weeks, though, so I hope to be roughly equivalent with my normal bench in the next 6 weeks or so.

Lower Intensity

wu+1x5x265

Just got my new Kono knee sleeves, and was excited to use them for the first time. These were really easy; probably should have gone higher but I didn't want to overdo it.

DL
wu+1x5x285

This is starting to get difficult, although doing them right after squats is probably going to depress my numbers a bit. My fourth rep had some lower back rounding for sure, but I reset and took about a 20 second break in between that rep and the last one and pounded out number 5.

Pullups
5/5/4xbw+0

Man, it has been a long time since I've done these, this is getting kind of sad. Need to start progressing and adding weight on these soon for my sanity.

Back extensions
3x15xbw+0

Hadn't done these for a long time and just kept it light. I thought there was a chance I could do rounded back extensions, but the apparatus in the gym isn't right for it. This way is probably better anyway; I'll be adding weight next time for sure.

7/23
Upper Volume

Bench
wu+1x5x235, 1x5x245, 1x5x255

Pretty happy to get this, given how poorly last Monday went. Not sure if I'm going to try to get back to three across at 255 and then microload up or just start microloading now and keep the ascending sets. Thoughts?

Press
wu+ 2x5x135, 1x6x135
Pressing after benching is pretty hard on me, so I decided to just AMRAP my last press set instead of increasing the weight. The second set was pretty grindy so I was happy to get a sixth rep on the last set.

Dips
1x3xbw+25, 1x3xbw+35, 1x3xbw+45

Getting pretty hard, but I think I can try 45 across next week and then increase by sets/reps as necessary. I do like doing some low rep work on this, it's a lot different than what I used to do.

Chins
5/5/4xbw+5

Not so bad, I guess, but this is going to be slow going apparently.

Low rep dips are an intensity workout, rather than a volume workout, no?

Well, the benching assistance program has you doing weighted dips on either day, depending on preference, but you are correct that he recommends the low rep version if you're doing them on intensity day.

Since I'm doing them on volume day, I guess I'll work up to 45 across and then increase the reps until I'm doing three sets of 6 or 8 or something.

Montecore - thanks for directing me here, some really cool stuff going on. I'm very interested in this upper/lower split thing. What are the pros/cons to this? Any reason to not do this other than can only get to the gym 3 days/week? Thanks.

saw --

This is a split from the Advanced TM ebook, and as I recall, it arose from him randomly skipping light days (traditionally Wednesdays) and not having it affect his squat numbers at all -- the money makers are volume day and intensity day. As he states, the split templates allows for a more even split of the workload and/or more accessory exercises.

Personally, I was really excited to move to a program that would give me the time to do more back stuff (get the chins and pull-ups back in), get some more upper body assistance stuff in like dips and close grip BP, and do some extra lower body assistance for my posterior chain (RDLs). I'm doing a template specifically for bench assistance, but if you're more interested in press you can press 2x/wk and bench once, or press once and bench once, whatever. I like that it's more customizable, and that I get to do all the brocentric upper body exercises I used to do (even curls!).

I'm not very far into it yet, but I am really enjoying it a ton. Once the squats get heavier volume day is going to be brutal, but c'est la vie.

Thanks a lot for the details man, this program sounds great. And I'm on a college campus with free time and easy gym access, so the more gym days in my program the happier I am .

Anyway, if you're interested, keep an eye out. I'll be crafting my program (starting next week) in the next day or two. Probably heavily inspired by yours since I'm competing in powerlifting so I'll be benching on both days (with ohp thrown in one way or another).