For some reason I just can't find a topic on this, so I wanted to ask others here. Anyone seen some decent success progressing on deadlifts weekly on light squat day during their advanced novice phase? I wanted to try this out and increase by 10lbs each time. I posted this in Andy Baker's forum, but he's gone until Monday. Basically I was gonna try this.
Sunday - heavy squat, back extensions
Tuesday - light squat, deadlift
Thursday - heavy squat, power clean
I was gonna increase my power clean by 5lbs weekly as well.
Awesome. Very encouraging. Would it also be acceptable to bench press on the 1st and 3rd days and overhead press on the 2nd day, rather than alternating them? I'm not going for any meets, and I don't think either lift is gonna stall anytime soon, but I would like my bench press to catch up a bit. I increase both lifts by 2.5lbs a workout. So.. instead of both increasing 7.5lbs every 2 weeks, the overhead press would increase by 5lbs every 2 weeks, and bench press would increase by 10lbs every 2 weeks.
Can you do some medium press after one of your bench days? I subscribe to the argument that a 1:1 ratio of benchress is better for shoulder health. So you could volume bench on "Monday", 3 x 5 Press on "Wednesday" and Intensity Bench followed by some "backoff" press on Friday and bring up the bench without compromising our golden ratio.
How about... Do bench press 3 sets of 5 on Monday, overhead press 3 sets of 5 on Wednesday, and then 2 set of 5 reps on the bench press with maybe 1 set of overhead press on intensity day, but I'd increase both by 2.5lbs each workout? I'd do one less set on overhead press overall each week, but at least I'm hitting them both closely enough.
I did this for months without any problems. Granted it somewhat defeats the purpose of a "recovery" day but it's not the end of the world. Towards the end of novice progression, I could not imagine deadlifting heavy after 3 totally grueling sets of squats beforehand. Deadlifting on light squat day allowed me to progress the deadlift without stalling all the way up to intermediate programming.
I second the idea of pressing twice a week while benching more often, both for shoulder health and to keep the press moving up as well. It'll probably move up more consistently if you're in the advanced novice stage and do both twice a week with an emphasis on whichever comes first.