100%. I don’t think I’ve ever tried or not tried a program solely based on whether the author was natural or enhanced or if the program was marketed towards one or the other. I think personal experience and observation is often overlooked. How else can you know for sure whether something is too much or not enough for you, personally?
A classic body part split, 12-20 sets, 8-12 reps set up has always worked great for me and I enjoy it. It’s how I built most of my muscle in the beginning and how I train now. It also just happens to be in line with the parameters in Jay Cutler’s program. A higher frequency works better for me for strength, but when I decided to go back to focusing on muscle, I went back to what I knew worked in the past.
I had started to fall for the natural vs. enhanced marketing, but some of your posts, @The_Mighty_Stu, and replies to my posts were my main inspiration for ignoring the marketing and just doing what works, regardless of what different articles or threads said. Honestly, there’s been a couple times I felt like I was slipping and I’d go back and read those posts again. Pure gold.
Now, my focus is to do as much volume as I feel I can recover from. I have a plan each day, but if I’m feeling great or have an extra rest day coming up, I push the volume, and if I’m beat up or decide to go heavy on something like squats, I cut it a bit. With that, even at 40, I feel like I’m still improving.
For the work sets, the goal is the rep range, so it may involve ramping during the work sets, it may involve reducing the weight. Cutler went over it a bit in one of his emails:
“You are always looking to end your set within that 8-12 rep rang - if on your first set you get to 12 reps, you can look at going a little heavier for the next set…If your first set you hit 8-9 reps, you probably doing need to go any heavier because the fatigue will naturally cause you to do less reps on the next set.”
To add to this, if you only get 8 reps on your first set, unless you left a lot in the tank, the chance you’ll still be able to get 8 on set 4 is probably low, so you may have to drop the weight a bit as you go.
He also talks a lot about using “feel sets” to start a workout or exercise, which are 2-3 sets where you are using lighter weights, but really focusing on the muscle and contraction to get everything warm and focused before the work sets.
For a workout like the one you quoted, I would do a couple warm up sets before the incline BB bench, but by the time that exercise is done, I’m warm and can go straight into the work sets for the rest of the exercises. If the order was a bit different and I did DBs first and then BB bench second, I’d likely do one or two warm up sets on bench, because I suck at it and a couple light sets are quick but help reinforce good form.
I think this is totally reasonable. Looks a lot like a PL workout I would do, except I would do these things after at least one barbell bench variation (or just standard bench press). I have found that for me volume training works pretty well for long term gains. I try to keep my peaking periods shorter than most, and volume periods longer.
Just wanted to emphasis this. I don’t think rep count should be much different between PED and natties. The volume adjusts itself based on the weight used. Now the rep count for the intensity used is going be individual. I think rep count can be pushed a bit on PEDs, but the difference between natty is smaller than people make it out to be (some seem to think you should do 2-3X the work on PEDs).