Hello Doctors,
I have been running Strength III template and am currently during the pivot week. I have had very good bench gains, the best I’ve had outside my ‘novice’ gains during the beginner template a year ago.
Early into Strength III there was a three week lockdown in NZ, coming back to training on the squat I got an adductor related injury unfortunately, I tried to follow the ‘return to training’ artical by reducing loads and volume, but it is what it is.
I switched from low bar to high bar due to my pain tolerance and had restricted ROM. Over three weeks I was able to high bar comfortably below parallel, although low bar was still painful.
The entire time I continued my deadlifting and pressing according to the template and my exercises selections. I repeated week 5 for another 5 weeks since it was working really well. In the fith week my deadlifting felt weak and the D2 and D3 pressing felt tough, I decided to move to the pivot. Funnily I did a 100kg TnG bench on the Friday after the single at 8 where I estimated 90kg went really smoothly. Overall I went from 83.5kg to 89kg for 1@8 competition Bench over the 10 weeks in the development block, this is in comparison to being ‘stuck’ over strength 1 and a return to gainZzZ in powerlifting II.
I have spent days going through low weight squatting, recording myself, and through GGP days. Bringing back my confidence in the lift and feeling out tolerance. This week I followed powerbuilding 2 squatting and it was smooth. I did this since the rep ranges and intensities were lower than in the strength 4D/W templates.
Thanks for bearing though the context. My question is regarding my training from next week. I’m considering keeping bench and deadlift on Strength III and squat on Powerbuilding II (specialisation block S3 and Powerbuilding Hypertrophy block PB2). Would it be more sensible to move entirely to PB2 to keep deadlift and squatting programming consistent? Or is it better to keep going with Strength III and have squatting doing its separate training?
Thanks Doctors