Hello CT , finished the first period of the system layers to hypertrophy, which was the accumulation phase. You mentioned that it was to merge between strength and hypertrophy. Start phase force this week, and noticed a huge wear on my hamstrings, gave the feeling that he was going to rip.
My question is if I can go straight to phase Intensification without taking any damage. What do you advise?
3 periods:
Accumulation
Intensification
Transformation
ACCUMULATION: Use a more voluminous method (5-4-3-2-1 with 70%)
INTENSIFICATION: Use a higher intensity method (max reps/15 sec/max reps with 80%)
TRANSFORMATION: Use a more qualitative method (Hard 5 with 80-85%)
Each phase is 3-6 weeks long depending on how fast you adapt.
I will offer some experience here, Do not skip any phase as they all serve a certain purpose, but I would put some kind of alteration in training in between each block. I did each for 4 weeks, and did that back to back (so almost 6 months straight of Ramp - Cluster -HDL layers) … And what I noticed was that my strength initially shot up fast, gaining probably 10% strength on most lifts, then kind of waved ± 5% of the top
Example my Incline bench went to 225 for a triple, then on some days I could ramp to 235, and some days 215 was hard, but it never went much above that.
I suspect that my body adapted to the stimulus of the ramp/cluster/hdl format and would probably have benefited from a change in stimulus (while using the same lifts as CT recommends, something like the Strength Layers) in that time period. He actually suggested this same strategy and I stupidly did not listen, but now understand why he said as much.
I’m also finishing up this program, which lasted me about six months. I did 2-3 weeks of the strength layers in between the three phases and strength gains were consistent.