Intermediate Squat Programming

[Treg]

Hi, Mike. I’m thinking of making some changes in my squat programming and I’m hoping to prevail on your kindness and patience once again. Male, 56 years old, 6’1”, 200 lbs. Recent PRs:

Squat: 315 x 5 x 3
DL: 365 x 3
Press: 125 x 5 x 3 (many re-sets, finally making progress)
Bench: 175 X 5 x 3 (just started recently)


As I described in an old thread, I’ve been running a very clunky 2-week routine for a while, that goes like this:

Week 1 – Heavy
Mon.: Squats 3 x 5 (add weight), Press, Chinups
Wed.: DL 1 x 5 (add weight), Bench, Squats 1 x 5 @70 of Mon.
Fri.: Squats 2 x 5 @80% of Mon., Press, Chinups.

Week 2 – Light/Medium/Volume/Whatever
Mon.: Squats 3 x 5 @90% of previous Mon., Bench, Chinups
Wed.: DL 1-2 x 5 @80% of previous Wed., Press, Squats 1 x 5 @70 of previous Mon.
Fri.: Squats 1-2 x 5 @80% of previous Mon., Bench, Chinups.


I now realize that what I’ve been doing is sort of a really messed up, stretched out TM, with too much squat volume on ID (Mon. of Week 1). I just got completely hung up on the idea that 3 x 5 for squats is the only way to go, even for the heaviest sets. The absurd reasoning behind this is beyond the scope of this post; basically, I assumed that my age would preclude me running the kinds of intermediate programs you guys use. Granted, my routine works, just really slowly. And those heavy 3 x 5 squats take so much recovery time that they interfere with my DLs.

So I’m thinking of trying this 4-day split instead:

Mon.: Squats 1 x 5 (add weight), Press, Chinups
Tues.: DL 1 x 5, Bench
Thurs.: Squats 3 x 5 @80-90% of Mon., RDLs (or DL 1x5 @80%), Press
Fri.: Bench, Chinups.


How’s that look to you? For the volume-ish squats on Thurs, do I need to do 90%? 85%? Or would 80% maybe do the trick? Overall, is one heavy set on Mon. plus three volume-ish sets on Thurs. enough stress to drive weekly progress? When I make the switch, should I do a slight de-load on the heavy squats, or just repeat the previous PR?

Thanks once again for all the help! And hey, I saw the DL video on your IG - congrats on joining the 700 club!

pat

[Michael Wolf]

If you detailed your level of training advancement in the previous thread, I don't remember it but I don't like the looks of it much. 4 day split is fine, and continuing to work off a 2 week cycle is probably fine too. Put your upper and lowers together and do something like:

Week 1: Harder volume on volume day, easier intensity on intensity day (heavier 1/2/3s than volume day but well below your RMs for those ranges)
Week 2: Easier volume on VD and PR on ID.

i.e. Squat: 290x5x5 / 320x3x3 on week 1, then 265x5x3 and 345x2x2 on week 2.

As I always say, those numbers shouldn't be viewed as prescriptions - I don't know if you have anything except a 3 sets of 5 max, how your personal set of 5 translates into 3/2/1 rep maxes - and if you've even collected data on that yet, and how you respond to volume vs intensity etc etc etc.

The general idea is a harder volume week with easier intensity, then easier volume - but still enough to be contributory work, and a PR of 3/2/1 rep on intensity day.

[Treg]

If you detailed your level of training advancement in the previous thread, I don't remember it but I don't like the looks of it much. 4 day split is fine, and continuing to work off a 2 week cycle is probably fine too. Put your upper and lowers together and do something like:

Week 1: Harder volume on volume day, easier intensity on intensity day (heavier 1/2/3s than volume day but well below your RMs for those ranges)
Week 2: Easier volume on VD and PR on ID.

i.e. Squat: 290x5x5 / 320x3x3 on week 1, then 265x5x3 and 345x2x2 on week 2.

As I always say, those numbers shouldn't be viewed as prescriptions - I don't know if you have anything except a 3 sets of 5 max, how your personal set of 5 translates into 3/2/1 rep maxes - and if you've even collected data on that yet, and how you respond to volume vs intensity etc etc etc.

The general idea is a harder volume week with easier intensity, then easier volume - but still enough to be contributory work, and a PR of 3/2/1 rep on intensity day.

Michael, thanks so much for this. If I were to try to do a one-week cycle for a while, i.e., try to hit a new 5RM (or 3 or 2 x 2) for squats every week on intensity day, what might be the minimum effective dose of volume to shoot for on volume day? Would 2-3 x 5 @90% maybe be enough to drive progress for at least a little while? 3-4 x 5 @85%? I realize this will take some experimentation on my part to see what’s enough without being too much, just wondering where you might suggest I start.

I’ll be really happy if I can hit a new PR every week, even if it’s just for a short time. Once that gets to be too hard, I figure I can spread things out a little more into a 9-10-day cycle, then when that gets to be untenable, go to two weeks.

Thanks again!

[Michael Wolf]

Once again I don't remember details from the old thread but if you've been running and succeeding at doing a 2 week progression for a while, I'd say not to mess with it. Especially at 56, where the consequences of pushing too hard and trying to chunk too much into one week will be harder on you and take you longer to recover from and make gains again, than if you were 26. So don't try to go to a one week cycle.

And the whole idea of going to a 9-10 day cycle, then 2 weeks...eh, it's kind of like making 2.5 lb increases in the squat. You could do it, but I don't think it's very productive as a strategy. The rotten truth is that once you get outside of predictable Novice and very early Intermediate progress, the length of time between PRs is not nearly as predictable. You still stick to a program that plans for them on a regular basis with appropriate doses of stress and recovery to facilitate them, but you're making an educated guess based on what we know about people generally and what you know about this lifter specifically. If you're a good coach who pays attention, or a very attentive lifter who pays attention, you can keep this going for a pretty good while. But trying to "microload" in increments of a few days at a time assumed we have a good and precise bead on the multitude of physiological processes that are taking place within the body wherein it simultaneously recovers and adapts to previous stress but also still carries some stress from recent workouts. This is easy to to do at first, but harder the longer you go. Once you're past the stage where you can reliably do it every week, you're estimating, and if you're already estimating, you use a time frame that recognizes that you're estimating, not 2-3 days.

So we go from PRs 3 to 2 to 1 day a week. Then every 2-3 weeks. Then every 4-6 weeks. Then maybe you PR at the end of a 10-14 week block. Then maybe you PR once or twice a year. And as any advanced lifter, including myself, will tell you, at that stage sometimes the PRs don't come on an exactly predictably planned schedule. You still plan for them, and train to facilitate that plan, but when you're a trying to get your deadlift from 750 to 800 after 12 years of serious training, it's not predictable in the same way that a Novice going from 145 to 150 in his 3rd week of LP is, or even an Intermediate going from 325 to 330 one week to the next on HLM.

The point of Novice/Intermediate/Adavanced - certainly beyond the early intermediate stage - is to very succinctly explain a concept. The concept is that progress happens very quickly at the beginning, then less quickly the further you go and the more you have already progressed. We use these time frames because everyone uses weekly schedules so they're easy to plan and understand, but the body doesn't suddenly say, "Hey wait, I'm an intermediate now so I don't make progress every 2 days, I make it every 7 days!" That's not how it works.

I think it's very useful to use the 2-3 days/1 week/1 month for educational purposes, because that's what conveys the concept well to people who don't know it.

But once you're more familiar with it, and actual intermediate programming beyond the immediate post novice phase, you can think of it this way:
Novice: Very rapid progress.
Intermediate: Slower but still pretty fast and pretty reliable and predictable progress.
Advanced: Very slow, and less perfectly predictable and reliable progress.
- progress displayed by PRs. One reason things like e1RM are fashionable are because for the latter group, Advanced lifters, they provide a way to have a good sense if you're making progress in between the 4, 8, 12, or even 48 weeks between your ACTUAL PRs. How do you know if you're headed in the right direction? Do you just hope you're doing good work for 9 months but have no idea? Well, if you hit your old 3 rep max, but do so in a way that demonstrates that it's not actually a 3RM anymore, but you could do 5 reps with it, that's one way you can have a sense of direction as an advanced lifter.

The problem, as I see it, is people in the first and second groups thinking that they need to use that as a barometer and as Rip has been saying for 10+ years, craving complexity when something simpler is still effective. For people in categories 1 & throughout much of 2:
a. They have not accumulated enough experience or actual successes and failures at heavy and hard weight to know how to properly gauge how hard a rep is.

b. They have not accumulated enough experience or actual successes and failures at heavy and hard weight to know whether they are truly pushing as hard as they can through it or just pulling back when it seems to them, in their inexperience, to be heavy.

c. Even after a. and b. are complete, they probably still don't have enough data to really compare apples to apples. How many times have they hit a certain weight for 5? For 3? For 2 and 1? You need a lot of data for comparisons of this sort to be useful. And that's after you can reliably gauge how hard a rep and set are, and know that you're actually pushing through properly.
Some of this would be mitigated by bar speed tracking devices, once you've established b., but very few people are training with one of those right now.

So as a Novice, and early to mid intermediate, we expect you to be able to set actual PRs on a regular basis. Very quickly at first, a little less quickly after a few months, less quickly again after another few months - but it'll be pretty regular and predictable throughout this time. They tell you that what you were doing previously was working and also provide good stimulus for your next planned PR pretty soon after.

When you've accumulated enough of those that your PRs are very costly and expensive in terms of recovery, you have to take longer between them both because you need a ton of accumulated stress to get the next one, and because the one you hit might leave you fatigued for a week or two, instead of a day or two, and mess up training. But that's later on. For a good while, you can and should hit regular PRs.

But you're hitting those on a time frame that, after you pass one week, leaves enough leeway for the fact that we are not predicting down to the hour when these physiological processes have taken place. Don't add one day, or two, to your planned SRA cycle programming. This is like "trying to time the market." We go in increments that make sense in recognizing that beyond the 1-2 week mark, we don't and can't know down to the day when exactly your physiological processes are taking place, but things are spaced out on a long enough timeline that you can make PRs even if we don't get that timing exactly perfectly right down to the hour or day.