8/5/2 for twice weekly barbell lifts only?

[Agilic]

Hey Andy,

28/6'/215/M/sleep deprived

I ran KSC PB very successfully from Nov '16 to Feb '17. Would have loved to keep it rolling but my wife delivered our second baby on Mrch 1 and training time is even more limited now, really to twice a week (usually sneak in a 20m Airdyne session on a third day).

For March and April I basically followed your training without a plan article advice of working up to a heavy single and backing off 2-4 reps @90% and 5-8 reps @80%. This worked surprisingly well as my sleep and eating got worse, but I managed PR's on all lifts: sq 320, bench 235, deadlift 405, press 147. I was lifting sq/bench/chins 1 day and press/deadlift/dips the other.

Once that ran its course I've recently moved to 5x5 for sq (ascending sets), bench (across), and press (across). I'm 3 weeks in and this seems to be off to a good start, but my deadlift shit the bed after pulling 405. It hit me that the lift probably needed more stimulus, so I figured I'd try the 8/5/2 with sets across cycle on it, which I started today with 280x8x3 (5lb more than I left off in Feb. and it felt great).

I meant to keep this short and of course got long winded, thank you if you've gotten through this, but my question is once my 5x5 hits a wall for the other lifts, could this setup comceivably work well or is there anything drastic you would change? I'm kind of afraid you might tell me that keeping up this level of intensity/volume on 2 big lifts per day won't be feasible.

Sun: squat and bench 8/5/2, chins
Mon: Airdyne Hiit
Thurs: press and deadlift 8/5/2, dips

That's really all the training time I see myself having for the foreseeable future and would greatly appreciate and value your input to help me make the most of it.

Thanks so much for all the free words of wisdom you offer here!!

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

It will probably work fine. Just try and see and adjust as you go. I can't tell you for sure.

[Agilic]

Thanks Andy. Mind if I shoot 1 more at you? Given this template:

Sun: squat and bench 8/5/2, chins
Mon: Airdyne Hiit
Thurs: press and deadlift 8/5/2, dips

Given that I'd be doing 2 lifts per day, would you vary the rep range of each lift? Ex: week 1: Squat 8x3, bench 2x3......deadlift 2x3, press 8x3. Or just keep it consistent throughout the 4 lifts and vary it weekly as per KSCPB?

If your answer is the latter, would you anticipate that adding in back-off volume on 2x3 week will be necessary, especially for upper body lifts?

Thanks again for your valuable time.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

I see no compelling reason you'd need to vary the rep ranges. Yeah, you might need to add in a little volume in the form of back offs if this isn't enough stress to move your forward.