Today’s workout was a damned good one! Everything felt like it was locked in, and I was firing on all cylinders going through the main movement and the supplemental movement. Everything is still relatively high-volume, and that’s mainly because I’m trying to focus more on my intra-muscular conditioning and hypertrophy. I don’t need to focus on driving up strength through neurological stimuli beyond what the main movement is providing since I don’t have any meets planned at this stage.
There is so much science, as well as art, to designing a good program. I’ve gone and jumped from program to program so much over the years, but I’ve always made it a point to follow each one to the letter for at least 3 months (at least most of the time). In my opinion, 3 months is the bare minimum time that one needs to stick with a program to see any kind of benefit from it. It’s very common these days for a novice trainee to start a program, follow it for 3 weeks, get bored and then claim that the program didn’t work for them.
Well…no, the fact of the matter is that it takes a really long time to actually build muscle. A long time, and concentrated effort. You aren’t going to see any kind of results in strength, hypertrophy or weight loss in only a few weeks. The human body just doesn’t work that way. Moral of the story: trust in the process and give it 3-6 months. I’d even suggest pushing it out to 12 months assuming you aren’t backtracking after 3 -6 months to get a true gauge on the efficacy of a program.
So with the end of today’s workout, I’ve now completed the first microcycle of the first 4 week macrocycle. With these 4 workouts, I’ve gotten a better of idea of the kinds of intensities I should be utilizing for dynamic work (ie. 60% was way too high to start with on the first dynamic day), and how the max effort work should be feeling as well. I have a good place to build from moving forward. Here’s today’s workout:
DE Bench Press – 130x3x12
- Used 3 separate grips, which I switched after every 4th set. Started with wide-grip (ring finger on rings), then moved in to my competition grip (a finger’s width in from the rings) and then to a closer grip (finger’s width away from the smooth). Everything felt like it was locked in and the bar speed felt great through to the last set. I tried to keep rest intervals to a bare minimum, only allowing myself 15-20 seconds, but mostly going by feel and breathing.
Incline Dumbbell Bench Press – 40x20x3
- Nothing really fancy, just getting pec volume in, and hoping that this will result in some decent upper pec hypertrophy. Originally had planned to use 50lbs for these, but decided that it was better to err on the side of caution and start with a weight that I knew I could get all of the volume with (AKA start too light). These felt great and I got a decent pec pump out of it.
Bentover 2-arm Dumbbell Row – 40x20x3
- My goal with these was to hit the rhomboids and upper back more than the lats, since I’m doing heavier and more lat-focused 1-arm rows on my ME Upper days. First 2 sets felt like they were doing what I wanted, but by the end of the 3rd set, I had a pretty good pump in my lower lats. Not a bad thing, necessarily, just need to keep an eye on this and see if I can get the mind-muscle connection to get the rhomboids stimulated as much as possible.
Chin-ups – 5×1
- Chin-ups are just too hard to put at the end of an upper body workout. I’m going to have to move these up to the front if I want to keep them in the program.
There you have it, that was the whole workout and only took me about 40 minutes, which was an awesome perk in all this. My workouts have been moving really well and I’m getting everything done in a reasonable amount of time.
Ramble on Fitness 