(1) Thoughts on just inserting the prescribed reps/sets/RPE for the competitive lifts into a 4 day/week heavy/light template and dropping a lot of the supplemental stuff? Day 1: heavy ohp/light bench; Day 2: heavy squat /light pull; Day 3: heavy bench/ light ohp; Day 4: heavy pull/light squat. I’m 41 and have had to drop an HLM routine before due to aches and pains accumulating. The 4 day/week heavy/light template seems to work well for me as far as spreading out the heavy work and keeping the aches and pains away. I haven’t started the 12-week strength program yet but I’m concerned that doing two main lifts each on day 1 and day 2 might be an issue after a couple weeks.
(2) The 12th week confuses me a bit. Are the workouts for days 1-3 what is listed in the exercise section as opposed to the sets/reps/RPE section? Then on the 4th “test” day are we supposed to do what is listed in the sets/reps section (1@8, 1@9, 1@10 or 1@93%, 1@97%, 1@102%)? I just need a bit of clarification on that.
I don’t have any specific thoughts here, as this represents a fairly significant alteration to the base template. You could obviously give it a shot for a few weeks and see what happens. Avoiding overshooting RPEs tends to help with avoiding aches and pains.
Yes, you follow what’s listed below, and test on the 4th day.
Thanks for the reply Austin. I’ll be running the program as written until something hurts enough to make me change it. Hopefully that won’t happen given the RPE aspect of the program.
I’d suggest starting the new training program with the confidence that you can do this, and plan for success rather than failure. That’s not to be all Pollyanna-ish or naive, but your expectations for the training block do greatly affect the outcome and your perception of the inevitable aches and pains.
I would look at it like this- you have RPE at your disposal and that we all get to work through aches and pains and most don’t matter.
Absolutely Leah. I’ve noticed Austin’s recent posts regarding the effect one’s perceptions have on aches and pains. I completed Day 1 today and it took longer than my usual workouts and I was definitely feeling exhausted, but in a good way. Definitely staying positive. In fact, I might try and enter a USSF meet after the 12 weeks depending on how some work-related stuff pans out.
After first two days I notice my bicep tendon flaring up. It hurts the most at the bottom of the bench press. WTF? I hate this thing. I’m still going to give it a few weeks before I spread out the competitive lifts but I’ve had the bicep tendon flare up before and the solution was spreading the main lifts out over the week instead of hitting them all so close together. Has anyone else had this type of lower bicep pain flare up? It can be pretty painful during bench presses and very annoying. And I don’t even do curls. Oh well, onward.
Oh well, onward.