Switching to a 4-Day Split

[Spleen]

6'3, 20, 235lbs

Squat: 375 x 5 x 3
Bench: 192.5 x 5 x 3
Deadlift: 410 x 5 x 1
Press: 140 x 4 x 3

Eating 4000-5000 calories a day with at least 250g of protein. Sleeping well, resting 10 minutes between sets.
Running the program with pause squats in the middle of the week at 80% of Monday's weight. Power cleans are substituted with 3 sets to failure on banded chin-ups (not a real substitute, I know). I have a fourth day at the end of the week dedicated to either 5x5 bench or 5x5 press, depending on the week.

My question is about possibly switching to the 4-day split detailed in this article. I'm finding that resting 10 minutes between sets on 3 different exercises is becoming extremely time-consuming. My bench and press are continuing to lag behind, even with this extra 5x5 day that I've been incorporating. I think that switching to a 4-day split can solve both of these problems, giving me more time outside of the gym and hopefully boosting my bench and press numbers from the extra assistance work.

Is this a good idea, or am I just missing something?

[francesco.decaro]

6'3, 20, 235lbs

Squat: 375 x 5 x 3
Bench: 192.5 x 5 x 3
Deadlift: 410 x 5 x 1
Press: 140 x 4 x 3

Eating 4000-5000 calories a day with at least 250g of protein. Sleeping well, resting 10 minutes between sets.
Running the program with pause squats in the middle of the week at 80% of Monday's weight. Power cleans are substituted with 3 sets to failure on banded chin-ups (not a real substitute, I know). I have a fourth day at the end of the week dedicated to either 5x5 bench or 5x5 press, depending on the week.

My question is about possibly switching to the 4-day split detailed in this article. I'm finding that resting 10 minutes between sets on 3 different exercises is becoming extremely time-consuming. My bench and press are continuing to lag behind, even with this extra 5x5 day that I've been incorporating. I think that switching to a 4-day split can solve both of these problems, giving me more time outside of the gym and hopefully boosting my bench and press numbers from the extra assistance work.

Is this a good idea, or am I just missing something?

How long have you been training for and when did you start adding the extra day for bench/press?
Your squat and deadlift numbers seem legit for a late novice, especially considering the 10' of rest (you might wanna try to cut that a little bit and see what happens, I did and was surprised at how little rest I actually needed), but bench and press are pretty light, so mabye you've been limting progress with that extra day, instead of stimulating it (if they're not going up with this extra day, adding accessories won't help), or something's wrong with technique.
What is the reason you're not doing Cleans?

[GioFerrante]

Are your arms disproportionately long? Where do you fingers sit on your body when you stand straight up and let your arms rest in their normal position? Are they down closer to your knees, or up by your hip pointers? The bigger deadlift compared to your lagging press/bench seem like someone who has really long arms in relation to the rest of his body. In any case, it seems like your pressing is pretty behind for your height and bodyweight. Try posting videos of your bench and your press on the technique forum and see if there's a technique issue going on too. Additionally doing 3x5 on bench/press 3x/week in addition to 5x5 bench/press every week is probably too much. Try switching the 4th day workout to 5 singles on the press or 1 heavier set of 5 on the bench and see if that helps.

[dalan]

Agree with francesco. You shouldn't need 10 minutes between sets of bench and pressing. If you were benching a lot more, possibly. You could easily cut that in half, imo. On the deadlift it's only one set so it doesn't apply, unless you're also taking that long between warm ups which is unnecessary. The only time you might need that long is between WORKING sets of squats and even then I'd try to cut it down a bit and see what happens.

[Spleen]

Been training for a little over a year now. Added the extra 5x5 day maybe 2-3 weeks ago.

I'm not cleaning because I don't have proper coaching to learn the form and frankly I just don't want to learn it by myself. My technique is fine as far as I can tell, although I've been plagued with shoulder mobility imbalances for quite some time.

I have long arms, but not disproportionately to my body. My wingspan and height are about the same.

I always thought that when the bench and press started lagging, more volume was needed. Is this not true?
Note that my 5x5 day is done with 90% of Wednesday's weight.

[heinz83]

Intermediate Programming for the Upper Body Lifts | Nick Delgadillo