Choosing the right kind of stress

I am currently running the upper/lower 4-day split as an intermediate program. My current squat volume day consists of 5 x 5. As you mentioned in the last podcast, as I progress, the volume day weight will be a higher percentage of my intensity day and at some point , it will be an unproductive grind. At that point I have to move to a different rep range or a variation etc. Is there a general order of preference to the choice of variation or it can be random as all variations might be equally productive?

No, we don’t choose variations “randomly” or just for the sake of variation itself.

Not all variations are going to be equally productive for all individuals.

If you’re going to use exercise variants, a reasonable place to start is with the concept of specificity (we’ve made videos on this before), where you’d generally choose exercises of higher specificity. Over time, as you gain more experience with the different movements, you may find specific examples that tend to work better for you than others, independent of their degree of specificity to the main lift.

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