Heavy, Light, Medium: Feedback on Program

I was planning to rotate the main lifts like below, as was suggested previously in the thread. And then carefully add a little bit of assistance work every workout.

Monday
Deadlift - Power: Conventional
Squat - Strength: Low-bar squat
Bench - Hypertrophy: Overhead press
Assistance: Ab-wheel + back extensions

Wednesday
Bench - Power: Bench press
Deadlift - Strength: Conventional
Squat - Hypertrophy: Front squats
Assistance: Pull-ups

Friday
Squat - Power: Low-bar squat
Bench - Strength: Bench press
Deadlift - Hypertrophy: Pendlay rows
Assistance: Leg-curls

I’m not sure if I managed to communicate it clearly in the last post, but as you see I’ve replaced each of the lifts for the hypertrophy work with another relevant lift. My motivation for doing this is different for each of the lifts.

Squats: I believe that my quads are a weak, hence I though I could use front squats instead to give them some extra attention.

Bench press: The program I’m completing now is the first time I’ve had a bench frequency of 2, before it’s been 1 or 1.5 per week (1 and 2 every other week). As I seem to be progressing fine for now with this frequency for bench and my shoulders are happy every time I overhead press, I though that these things combined made good reasons for doing overhead press for volume bench.

Deadlifts: The amount of deadlifts I’m doing now and even more so in the coming program is the highest deadlift volume I’ve ever done. The volume has felt really nice the last 12 weeks, greasing the groove as they say, but it also seems to give me enough stimulus for now. Hence, I thought that there is no reason to up the frequency. I’ve yet to find a movement that targets my upper back as well as pendlay rows and in addition I find them to be good training for staying tight in the starting position of my deadlifts. For these reasons I though I could use these rows for my deadlift volume.

Does these choices make sense? And is my idea of not changing things too much at any point a good standard to have as long as things are moving forward? Are you still in the opinion that I should replace the Pendlay rows? Or did you believe that I was planning to do them in addition to doing deadlifts 3 times a week?

When you say that I should always include some lat, upper back and ab/low back work, you mean that I should hit each of these once with some pump work during the week right? I can for instance super set the pull-ups with close grip push ups to get a full arm workout. And of course I’ll treat the assistance as assistance work, skiping them if I feel low on energy or having other issues. It is the main movements that are the fun part anyway… I should maybe also mention that I’ve started to do band pull-apparts or band face-pulls in between the sets of either squats or bench. This feels really good and I hope that it will aid in keeping my shoulders healthy.

I always log my trainings in my training diary. And I’ll probably test after every cycle for now to verify that I’m getting progress, but I’ll keep in mind that I should eventually also end some of my cycles in a 2 or 3RM.

I cannot express how valuable your help has been for me!

I can’t say that having lifts other the comp lifts as main lifts in a day is wrong, but it goes against the principle of DUP which is to train the main lift itself ever training session for specificity while training different qualities of those lifts.

I think it would be good to have in mind, but I would stick to comp lifts for now if you want the true DUP experience and see how you respond. Once you’ve run couple to many cycles like that, than try experimenting with different lifts or even conjugating sequencing. AKA swapping out lifts to avoid accomodation ala Westside.

To be truer to DUP, I would do some bodyweight leg extensions after regular squats instead. If your shoulders do better including OH work you might include some db standing presses for a pump. And find a less stressful option than Pendlay rows after deadlifting. But if you’re going to do a BB row, pendlays are the way to go since it focuses much more on just the concentric portion. Since squat uses the same muscles as DL using lower DL training volume is often a good idea for many people.

It’s just you’re delving deeper into terra incognita which will make it more difficult for people to help you and require even greater training knowlege and that doesn’t seem like a good idea for making your first training template. You want to stay with more proven and basic principles to start so you have a base of experiential knowledge and a frame of reference when you start getting more creative and experimenting more later.

And I’ll reiterate. If ever you start to feel lost, confused, or can’t stick to a program go while on your lifting journey, go back to the basics. You can learn a lot and make some gains that way.

And I did think you meant Pendlay rows in addition to deadlifts, but as far as recovery that’s fine what you have there.

I never though about it this way! My approach to the whole situation has been as follows: What I’m doing right now is making me stronger. I like the principles of DUP so I would like to go there. However, doing strict DUP would imply increasing my volume drastically (~50%) even though my current volume is enough to drive progress. So let me do what I’m doing now for as long as it works and then whenever a lift stalls, remove more of the substitute lift and introduce more of the main lift. For example, if my squat stalls, replace half of my front squat sets by low-bar squats, and the next time I stall, throw out the front squat completely. And then over time get into a pure DUP program.

My reason for doing so was that I’ve been taught that volume is the key driver for strength gains and that one over time will have to increase the volume for the exercises. Sure, increasing the weight every cycle gives some more volume, but that is incomparable to adding another day doing the same movement. With this in mind, I concluded that after doing a pure DUP program, it would not make sense to go back to the program I’m doing now, because the volume would be much lower. While the other way around makes sense as the volume would be increasing…

Am I mistaken? I guess this goes for selecting programs in general. Does it ever make sense, given that you restitution is on point, to make a long term switch to a lower-volume program? And if not, am I better of using a program with as little volume as possible that drives progress, so that there is more room for increasing volume. Or should I aim for a program that has as much volume as possible, while still allowing me to recover properly?

And by this, do you think that I should do DUP in its full glory immediately? Or go and do a tested program? If I were to do a tested program, would beyond 5/3/1 1.1 - 1.4 as laid out here at t-nation be a good choice? It would drop my squat and bench volume, compared to what I’m doing now… I always stick to my program and the reason I started this discussion now is that I want to know what I’m going to do after next week when I’ve finished the program I planned for myself in June.

I’m sorry for all the questions! It started out being so simple in my head, as I already had something that seemed to be driving progress and only wanted to improve upon this. But as this thread evolved I ended up with more questions…

Volume is volume whether it’s from your front squats or your comp squats.

In Westside, 0 training volume is from the comp lift. They’re philosophy is to avoid accommodation.

In DUP, nearly all volume is the comp lift. It’s philosophy is almost exclusively practice and train the comp lift.

I’m just saying that if you’re going to get the help from people who have done DUP in the past, the road will be more clear if you do according its principles at least to start than changing things too much.

I can’t tell you it’s not going to work. It may very well be what works best for you. I just think it’s good to develop a frame of reference.

I never expected this thread to be so lively! I want to thank everyone for contributing. Especially @Fletch1986 for proposing the rep-set schemes and intensities I’ll be utilising in my new cycle. And @badboy69cancer for his suggestion of rotating the exercise focus, so that every training has some power, strength and volume work instead of one training being only power, another only strength and so forth. Although not I’m not staying entirely true to what you suggested (and hence my potential failure is all on me), I really appreciated your comments!

The changes I’ve made to the DUP layout is to do front squats for squat volume, pendlay rows for deadlift volume and overhead press for bench volume. I’ve also slightly reduced both the volume and intensities of the deadlift. All these changes bring the new program closer to what I was originally doing and hence closer to what I’ve progressed with, but in a much better framework than originally!

With respect to the program I wanted to improve upon, it led to a 150 kg squat, a 130 kg bench and a 180 kg deadlift, each being a PR of either 7.5 or 10 kg. The main lesson from the version I ran this time was how hard it is to do 10 singles with 90%+ each week for several weeks. But I learned a lot and will definitively both shorten and decrease the intensity of my intensification phases for now.

I’ve shared the new program I’ll run from next week [here] (File Dropper - Online file sharing) and I’ll post an update after I’ve finished the first cycle.