Just had a quick question regarding programming for strength 3 v2.0
Im finding that once i got to hitting singles at rpe8 for the squat and the deadlift every week they are killing me in terms of recovery.
Squat and deadlift max are both in the mid/upper 500’s and while my diet is ok i definitely am getting enough protein, i struggle with sleep some days and thats always been an issue for me that im constantly working on.
With that in ming though Im thinking the relative intensities of both lifts in the same week with my given level of recovery are making it more difficult to progress weekly or bi-weekly.
I was thinking of focusing on one of the lower body lifts at a time for 4 week blocks and just training accessories for the other to build up weak point without overtraining my hips and low back in a sort of undulating focus style of training.
My question is would you recommend this for someone in a similar scenario to me or continue with training both comp lifts every week?
Hey! There are a lot of options for managing this kind of situation.
One in particular that I like using is actually distributing things across a two week cycle, such that week 1 the squat top set might be a 1@8, whereas the deadlift might be more like a 2@7, then on the subsequent week things “flip”. This way you can extend out the “exposure” period without digging yourself into too much of a hole, and without neglecting a lift for 4 weeks at a time. You can also bump down the top set RPE targets by a point in general, if you’re finding that you don’t tolerate it that well.
So just a follow up question on that as the follow up set is a 4@8 right after the top set would i then reduce the intensity of that set as well and say do a 4@6?
Just a follow up but thank you very much that answered my original question
You can vary any of these things based on your tolerance, in an iterative/“trial-and-error” fashion to see what you tolerate & works best for you. So yes, you could drop the RPE target of that backoff set, or to make it easier you could just take a set percentage off your top set for the day, so that your top set ends up scaling your back-offs as well.