Week 69 Diet
Mass Phase Week 10
Another week that I took a more relaxed approach to logging. I basically didn't plan my meals and ate intuitively, filling in what I ate on each day but going back days later to tally up the calories. Other than on Friday when I under-ate, this worked remarkably well.
***
My shoulder feels pretty good now, so I'm pretty excited to get back into training. I've been feeling an urge to change things up considerably, so I'm going to switch to a more strength-focused full-body program for a couple of cycles. Mike Israetel (my chosen guru for those of you new to this thread) advocates running lower-volume strength blocks for 1-2 cycles after every few cycles of high rep accumulation.
Main goals and implementations:
1. Get better at sumo deadlifting:
I'll be deadlifting twice a week to get more practice with the movement. The second day will be lighter, with ramping sets up to a top set at the same weight as the sets across on the main sumo day. Once I've tightened up my form, I may change this day to paused sumo.
2. Get better at overhead pressing:
In the same vein as 1., I'm pressing one more day per week, but in this case, it will just be for higher reps, lower intensity, and lower rest between sets. Just pounding the groove with a weight with which I'm comfortable.
3. Find a barbell bench variant that doesn't ruin my shoulders, and become reasonably strong at it:
I'm going to start off with reverse-grip, but I may end up going back to close-grip if it doesn't pan out. Benching 3x a week (once with dumbbells).
4. Keep trucking on squats and use more aggressive progression for all the main lifts:
I simplified the progression a bit from my former program. It's still steadily increasing volume and intensity each week until the deload, but it's less volume overall, higher percentages, and weight is increased every two weeks instead of every cycle. The pictured example is for the squat, but it's the same sets and reps for all the main lifts. I'll determine the TM increase for the squat by how many reps I get in the last set. For the deadlift, I won't be doing an amrap set, and instead will increase the TM based on how hard the last set was. This is to avoid accumulating too much fatigue with squat and DL amraps in the same week. I also won't be amrapping on press or bench, but for different reasons (my sad shoulders).
That's about as far as I've 'sperged. The paused work will be sets of 4-5 and the assistance work in sets of mostly 8-10. The main goal of the program is greater specificity, somewhat higher percentages, and somewhat lower total volume.