Okay, all done. The year of the Archives is wrapped up. I finished with the twice a week plan last week and did the 365-Rep Challenge on New Year’s Eve. (Legs are still kinda tender.)
I’ll play around doing something today or tomorrow (we’re due to get a big blizzard overnight, so it’ll be garage lifting and plenty of snow shoveling), then take new baseline measurements/maybe pics over the weekend and attack things fresh at the start of the week.
The twice a week program, if I’m honest, I probably stuck with two or three weeks too long. My suspicions were right and it did more or less feel like an extended deload/maintenance plan. Low frequency and low volume. The lower body day was killer - there’s no easy way to get through 30-rep squats - but all in all, the plan didn’t kick my ass all that much. I also did seem to do well on that type of twice a week benching. Progress was slow and grinding there.
The good news is, I’m very ready to get back into doing my own thing. Everything in the Archives is solid, for sure, and I remain confident recommending people to consider trying any routine that’s been posted here in the last 15+ years. But at the end of the day, we always need to cobble together our own unique, individual, customized plan. Bruce Lee was right… absorb, filter, discard, always fine-tune.