Beginner Template Pressing Questions

Hi Docs!

Appreciate the beginner template. I am on week 4 and I am really enjoying it!

Is there any reason the the vertical pressing gets the sets of 10 on day one and the sets of 4 on day 2, and the horizontal press gets only the sets of 8 on day 3? Would there be any reason to not have a 2 week cycle for the pressing (example week A is vertical press on day one for sets of 10, horizontal press on day 2 for sets of 4, and vertical press on day 3 for sets of 8, and then week B is the opposite)

I have about 15 years of on and off weight training experience but have been more consistent with upper body training than lower body training, and thus have much higher starting baseline for my upper body pressing movements. I think I will be able to make progress for a while for lower body lifts staying on phase one and would like to do so, but feel as if I’m only a few weeks away from having my E1RM for the bench press only doing sets of 8 once a week stall out, as I started closer to my ceiling for pressing, and generally had a more accurate estimation of my strength levels to start.

HWAT Do? Would cycling weeks as I described above give me more variance and exposures for pressing rep ranges and avoid an upper body stallout sooner? The only downside I can think of is that it wouldnt work in the excel spreadsheet, but you guys are the experts

Thanks in advance!

Patrick

Patrick,

Thanks for the question. I don’t think 2-week training cycles work very well overall for movement exposure and subsequent training adaptations. That’s mostly speculation based on my experience, but that’s why I don’t really use them. Similarly, I don’t think equal prioritization of vertical and horizontal pressing works well most of the time. That said, you can pick the movements you’re doing for the template and I wouldn’t have any issue if you changed them for a block.

As a final thought, I wouldn’t be opposed to running the template even if strength gain week-to-week has stopped. I feel more strongly that programming should change if there’s a 3-4 week strength plateau.

-Jordan