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all right, make sure that the only other bodyparts youre working on another day are upper body pressing. dont like add squats or something because this program is lower body intensive. its also back intensive. not the best for quads, but will still hit that some.
do cleans first and dont do them to failure. failure on olympic lifts is way bad. theyre not designed for that at all. they're highly technical and meant for explosiveness. use them as kind of a primer of sorts but you can still get strong with them. however, if you just want bigness then you can actually drop them all together since theyre not the best for that. anything that has low time under tension and lacks an eccentric (lowering) phase isn't. they can work, but not best. however if you are getting stronger and eating enough then they will make you larger.
deadlifts next. be sure to exclude an eccentric phase. for some reason, controlling the lowering of a deadlift can be very injurious. these are typically good for mass even though the only phase is concentric (raising). partly because they're such a maximal effort lift. theyre excellent for bang for buck, and with your setup they're almost mandatory. you want to do them before any other back/leg exercises because they're the most important ones to maintain good form and fatigue in back/leg muscles will hurt that. even pullups fatigue a muscle used in back extension.
to pull ups next. no need to do rows really since the back is hit extremely heavily and completely by deads and pullups. you can add curls at the end i guess. i never much cared for curls. they're really really hard on the deltoids (which aided in injurying mine) partly because almost everybody does them wrong (if you do them 'right' you'll be using baby weights). the elbow flexors get hit real hard on pullups (also chinups, meaning supinated - palms facing towards you, they hit the flexors differently), and the last thing you want is to be an arm jockey. those are the stupidest looking motherfuckers around. they have big arms yet no lats, traps, rear delts, spinal erectors and such
for the most part, avoid going to failure. it can be a decent way of doing things, but id honestly only like to do that with really particular programs that im not sure actually work well or not (like dan johns one lift a day you can find on tnation). waht you want typically is to stop about two reps shy of failure. thats enough intensity for mass gains, so what you want then is to have adequate volume. when you stop shy of failure your nervous system is able to put in more volume and appropriate intensities without overtraining, and thats exactly what you want for mass gains.
cycle your days as heavy and light. if you have a heavy day then make sure the next day you lift the same bodyparts its a light day or even the next two days you lift. this allows your body to recover, but also keeps your motor learning intact. without recovery there are no gains, this is actually a form of active recovery.
basically, as we get more and more advanced what we need is to have periods of greater volume and periods of greater recovery. so as a newb we can go heavy quite frequently and make gains without overtraining, but as we become more and more advanced in our neuromuscular coordination (strength, for the most part) our body expends more effort into the lifts and thus gets fatigued easier. by fatigue, i dont mean that we get 'tired' faster, actually the opposite happens, but that our nervous system does and it appears elsehow (like getting sick, losing appetite, not being able to sleep, generally pissed off)
usually, the more advanced we become, the more frequently we need to lift heavy, but we also need to have longer and more frequent recovery periods. peaking for events like olympics involves cycles that can be around 3-4 months. when peaking correctly, athletes are actually substantially stronger. generally, most athletes are in a constant stage of fatigue, its just a matter of how much. optimizing the fitness/fatigue ratio is very hard to do, and usually just comes from experience and feel. the last year i was lifting i dropped all paperwork because i understood the theory and my body enough that i just wing it, and that was actually quite good.
also, you may wanna drop 3x8 (even though its not bad) and do 5x5. 5x5 is pretty much the most efficient and simple program for both strength and size. its about as close to general optimization of intensity and volume. a few years ago i recall glenn pendlay writing up a huge post on totalelite forum (its not around anymore) about how he loves using 5x5 for just about everybody. it was great before he said it obv, but you mentioned him so i figure id mention him.
also, your goal may be size, but that means your goal is also strength. it is impossible to synthesize muscle mass without getting stronger, and getting stronger directing aids getting bigger. there are some nuances involved with focusing on strength over size and vise versa, but really they're not that important. so when lifting just lift to get stronger. if youre getting stronger then it depends on eating to get bigger.
and hmmmm all this talk making me wanna lift again.......alls i need is to just put like three weeks under my belt then i'll realize why i love it so much
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thank you gabe
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Originally Posted by wufwugy
