After recovering from a back injury, my squat and deadlift are now following the beginner template whereas I’m re-running STR I for bench after having great results.
I will eventually do PL II after STR I for bench at some point, requiring me to train 4x/week. Is there a way I can squeeze the PL II bench work into 3 days to align with my current training schedule? I’m not quite sure how to go about it.
If there’s a better way to arrange the training days/schedule, I’m all ears. I prefer to train 3x/week (current setup), but I will train on more days if necessary.
There are 6 upper body slots in PL II and I’d plan on doing 2/day when training 3x/wk. It might look like:
Day 1- supplemental Bench 1 from PL II (e.g. day 2’s bench) and accessory press 2 from PL 2 (slot 3 on Day 3). I’d remove a set from each here.
Day 2- Comp bench (slot 2 from day 1 on PL II) + accessory press 1 from PL 2 (Slot 3 on Day 1)
Day 3- supplemental bench 2 and 4 from PL II (e.g. day 3’s, slot 2 and day 4, slot 2). I’d remove a set from previous day 4’s bench
I admit, I’m not too fond of the idea of reducing volume from the workload (even if it’s only 3 sets). Could I combine the two templates so it looks something like this:
Day 1
squat
comp bench (PL 2 - Day 1, slot 2)
DL
Day 2
supplemental bench 1 (PL 2 - Day 2, slot 2)
accessory press 1 (PL 2 - Day 1, slot 3)
Day 3
squat
row
Day 4
supplemental bench 2 (PL 2 - Day 3, slot 2)
accessory press 2 (PL 2 - Day 3, slot 3)
Day 5
DL
supplemental bench 3 (PL 2 - Day 4, slot 2)
squat
You could certainly do that. If doing the 3x/wk plan as mentioned before, I favor reducing the volume to keep the training load similar in its application. In other words, by combining all that work together, I would expect a higher training load when done 3x/wk vs 4x/wk due to the cumulative stacking there, you know?
Interesting, you learn something new every day! I do have one question though - Wouldn’t day 3 (of the 3x/week version) be a bit much even with the 1 set reduction? I can’t imagine doing both of those variations in 1 session (even with another movement between them) due to the amount of weight that can be lifted with those variations.
I have run this program multiple times now (this is the 4th time if I remember correctly) and have had great results.
The first 2 times I made great gains, however, both times I deloaded I lost the gains which was really annoying (I only did the dev blocks).
This time around I did the specialization block as well and I have been able to keep my gains so far (now in week 2 of the re-run). I’m going to attribute maintaining my gains to doing the specialization block, which I didn’t bother doing the previous 2 times, but who knows?
My 1@8 has increased by 15.4lbs/7kg (~10%) so I’m extremely happy with that considering I had stagnated for over a year.
Hope this helps!
P.S. I did the low fatigue template for ~6-8 months prior to running STR I for a third time. I returned to STR I based on Jordan’s recommendation.
I don’t think so, no, though it does depend on the person. I’ve programmed 3 and 4 bench slots in a single session before. For the right person, this can work just fine.