Thanks! It’s a lot of volume for sure - recovery has to be on-point. Thankfully I slept good last night and felt mostly recovered, however I noticed my right hip is more sore than usual. Hip flexors feel tender but not weak if that makes sense. I’m guessing this is due to the higher squat/deadlift volume than I’m used to.
Ab Wheel
5x3 reps (90% reps), my core was still sore from the chin-ups late last week. I should have reduced the assistance volume to 5 sets instead of 8 for the de-load week. Anyways, got to the 5th set today and felt a minor strain on my right side stomach area while completing the 3rd rep so switched to planks for the last 3 sets.
Today felt great even though sleep was sub-optimal last night due to bad thunderstorms. OHP felt unusually light to the point I was thinking I mis-loaded the bar. I know it’s way too early for conclusions, but so far it seems like spinal tap sets are really helping the upper body lifts. I like the heavy singles in this program as it keeps neural side of things in check. Overall coffinworm feels like a good mix of technique work with 5x5 at a medium load, 2x/week frequency to prevent technical decay, and spinal tap (wave loading) sets to keep you familiar with heavy loads and lower reps. I’m trying to increase the assistance reps slightly during each cycle - went to 6 reps on dips per set. I may eventually switch to 5 sets of assistance work superset between the 5x5 supplemental work, and stop supersetting them between the warm-up sets as well.
Glad to see someone else doing Coffinworm - it led to 2 lifetime PR’s for me! It was amazing how much the program kept me right on the edge of overtraining/feeling like shit without ever totally sending me over that edge. One word of advice - be super careful with the assistance work, I wouldn’t even worry about progressing it or adding volume because it doesn’t take much to overdo it. Good luck and may the gains be with you
Exactly! That’s how I feel so far - that my recovery is just enough for this program. I’m going to take your advice on the assistance work. I was already leaning that way, but your feedback and reading the book again has me convinced that less is more for this program. I’m switching to 5 assistance sets (down from 8) starting tomorrow.
