Split because summertime entertainment

[Peter Dempster]

Hey Michael,

I put this together to run over the next couple of months. I’m feeling a touch bored (very) with my current program, mashing away on the main lifts, and taking some advice from Andy Bakers annual periodization articles, I’m going to entertain myself with a couple months of “summer bod” body building-esque training while maintaining some semblance of performance in the main lifts. To wit:

37 year old male. 6’2 tall, 225 lbs, 21% bf by navy method. Training for 2 years. Last program HLM variant. Current pr: bench 220, press 152, squat 360, dl 385. Suffering from slightly too high body fat and a slightly T-Rex build (skinny arms). Diet is approximately 190-200 grams protein, 250-280 grams carbs, 70-80 grams of fat. Other activities include golfing but nothing strenuous.

Goal is to slowly (.5-1.0 lbs per week) lose some fat over the summer and maybe build a little upper body mass. You know. Bro it out.

I write sets x reps.

Monday:
Bench press: weekly rotate sets of 3x8, 4x6, 4x5
Deadlift: weekly rotate sets of 3x8, 4x5, 1x2 + 2x4
Incline dumbbell bench: 3x12
Chins AMRAP 7 min max, in sub max sets
Hammer curls 3x20

Wednesday
Press: 5x3, 3x5, alternating weekly, plus back off of 2x8
Rows 4x8
Dips 3xmax

Thursday
30 min LISS
Dumbell Calve raises 3x10

Friday:
Squats: rotate sets of 3x6, 4x4, 5x3 weekly
Pause bench 4x6
Machine lat pull downs 3x8
Barbell shrugs 3x5

Thanks - much appreciated!!

[Michael Wolf]

Basically looks alright for what you're looking for. I'd opt for intervals over LISS and do them Tuesday when it's not the day before any heavy lower body taxing lifts, and I don't see much point in the paused bench for your purposes here either, just do regular or maybe close grip bench.

Nutrition wise, have you been gaining weight/bodyfat on your current plan? It's only ~2500 cals/day and you're a 225 male who's training so that seems odd. If that's the case, you might want to double check that you're tracking accurately. Make sure you're weighing and not just measuring, and also using correctly input entries if you're using MFP. I've seen lots of people use MFP and just pick one of the dozens of entries of a popular food at random without checking against the label or a reliable online source first to see if it's accurate.

[Peter Dempster]

Hey thanks the the comments.

As it turns out I did CGBP today instead of pause so...I’ll just keep doing that instead!

Good point on the cardio. I’ll move it. Or would a fourth day (Saturday) for say cardio only make sense?

I’ve been 223-227 lbs for about...4 months or longer. I not eat too many carbs so I’m pretty sure the number that I’m not hitting is fat, based on some retrospective counting I did last night. That pushes it up probably to 32-3300 cal or a bit more even. I’m probably going to focus on keeping fat in check and protein high and see if it makes a difference.

[Michael Wolf]

You should be able to do them with your calf raises on Tuesday, since you don't have anything taxing on the lower body again till Friday, which is a concern at this stage of your training. So Tuesday would work fine for intervals/cardio + baby cow work.

I think keeping fat in check makes sense. I don't know your priorities on the cut/maintain strength scale, but given that you've maintained weight for months on 3200-3300 per day, if you adjust your fat to keep 3000-3200 on your training days and 2500-2700 on your off days, that seems like a good start, and you can reevaluate with waist circumference or navy method every couple weeks to see that you're trending in the right direction.