Assuming you got enough rest/recovery - could you run all at once? Or maybe bench squat or DL. And have an easier day. You know. Cuz these look great / really fricking hard.
Just for farts and tickles, I punched in the numbers for all 3 programs:
Deads were very do-able, and no programmed accessories would make that an “easy” day.
Bench looked like a kick-ass progression, but would drive me crazy staying in the low ranges of my capabilities during the first half. Check the ego.
Squats, on the other hand, looks like a cold-hearted bitch that would max out your credit cards, wreck your car, and leave you with a bad case of crabs. 10 sets of 5 with 70% of your real 1RM and only a minute of rests between sets? I’d rather have a red-hot poker stuck up my ass. I knocked 30lbs off my 1RM -recalculated- and it still gave me dreadful, but do-able figures.
One thing that would line up in your favor if your ran these concurrently -and started them at the same time- is that the high volume bench day would line up with the heavy squat sessions. So if you did heavy squats on Monday, you would get the high volume bench work every other corresponding Wednesday. Do deads on Friday and get a good weekend’s rest to get ready to be annihilated again on Monday.
I would have to run it Thursday (squat) , Saturday (bench) Sunday (deadlift). I have judo Tuesday and Friday. And my wife is out Monday and Wednesday.
This is only a work in progress right now. I’ll look at the numbers and an accessory programme. I have time - another 5 weeks of 531 to finish a 12 week cycle.
Ill pour over the articals and post what I find.
But thanks for the heads up!
I’ve run it a few times (well, the one out of the Insane Training book, which is slightly different, but not significantly so). It works well each time. Just about perfectly dialed in.
I’ve had so much going on the past half a year that it was a while before I could get to this program and it took everything I had to finish it (oldest daughter reaching puberty, turning into satan reincarnate, putting her in counseling, and the countless sleepless nights that ensued, selling our house and buying another one back-to-back and all the stress the buyers caused us which was multiplied 100 times by our oldest daughter’s issues, moving both kids to a new school district two months before school ended, wife’s father died unexpectedly and the subsequent trips out of state to handle funeral/legal/financial affairs, no life insurance so we were stuck with the funeral bills which will make it that much longer before we are out of debt–we may be debt-free sometime in our lifetimes if we are reincarnated several times–wife becoming suicidally depressed and put on medication) BUT I did manage to complete this program.
I used Kroc’s deadlift programming for deadlift, but I used his bench programming for press, bench press, and front squat. I figure if Wendler can have the exact same programming for all four lifts then I can use the same programming for three of them. I tested my 1RM before starting so I would know exactly what numbers to use and then just followed his programming. Aside from only being able to do two sets of squats on the first 5x10x60% day I never missed a rep the entire routine. I just tested my 1RM on press and bench press and I’m not the slightest bit stronger than I was before I started. They’re exactly the same. I feel like I’ve wasted another 16 weeks of my life.
Does any know of a good strength routine that actually does build strength? I ran Wendler for an entire year and gained absolutely nothing–which is why I tried Kroc’s programming.
…really getting tired of being weak and I’m not sure what I should be doing differently to be able to build strength.
So I was just thinking earlier I remember @T3hPwnisher talking about his best bench gains coming from a Mat Kroc program and thinking i’d have to look it up later, then this 6 month old thread gets resurrected.
I would definitely like to figure out what it is…I didn’t think getting stronger was rocket surgery. I mean, it’s essentially voluntarily manual labor. Lift eat and sleep.
However, when I was using more of a powerlifting style bench, Westside’s approach worked well. And I set my best bench ever in a meet using DoggCrapp.