I would leave the medium day static in weight or drop weight/ volume if you feel it's too much stress for your heavy day. Overall setup looks good.
Good afternoon people.
I've just joined the board and wanted to say hello and to ask for some advice regarding my HLM template. I've recently finished a 12 week program after my novice progression that I've found to be fun and productive; however, towards the end of it, i felt some fatigue kick in and i feel like this program may have led to some sleight overtraining, so i've decided to reset and make some tweaks. Any advice would be appreciated.
I've been running an HLM template with all the heavy work on one day (I know Andy Baker says its better to spread the stress out, but due to my work schedule i find it more convenient to get all my heavy work done during the weekend). I've basically been treating the Heavy day like a TM intensity day with some back off volume. I started with a top set of five that got ran out to singles across. Following the top set, i would drop the weight by 10% and do 3 sets of 5, which i ran out to 3 sets of 3. The deadlift was done with one top set and one back-off set.
The following example is my last training week.
Heavy day
Squat 370 x 1x3 and 335 x 3x3
Bench 277.5 x 1 and 250 x 3x3
Dl 415 x 1x3 and 375 x 5
Light day
Squat -20% x 5x2
Press 185 x 1x3 and 167.5 x 3x3
BB rows 195 x 8x3
Medium day
Squat -10% x 5x3
Bench -10% x 5x3
RDL 325 x 5x3
I've been able to make progress with this routine every week and would like to stay as close as possible to this template, but towards the end i felt like the medium day was starting to cut into my recovery so that i wouldn't be fresh for the heavy day and i wasn't quite sure how to deal with that.
Would you drop intensity or volume in that situation? Also, does this program look like something that can be sustained for another few cycles, or do you see any flaws that might prohibit that? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
I would leave the medium day static in weight or drop weight/ volume if you feel it's too much stress for your heavy day. Overall setup looks good.
Is the medium day -10% of the heavy day volume work or the top set?
Height/Weight/Age?
You probably don't need the squat recovery day once it gets up there in load. Always consider squats and pulls in the category and plan accordingly. You are doing 23 deadlifts per week + 24 rows and 37 squats. That's a total of 60 reasonably heavy (in absolute terms) hip extensions + the volume rowing. As it gets heavier you simply have to pull work. Alternatively you could switch to doing a heavy partial pull every other week and see how that pans out.