Thanks for the great articles regarding this program!
I have a couple of questions regarding the split if you have time.
Question 1: What exactly do you mean with “primary emphasis”? I have quoted the information for day 1 and 2 here. If you mean emphasis like “double wave” for the one movement stated I get it.
Quote:
Monday Overhead Pressing
3 main movements staggered with assistance work Lower Body Pressing
1 main movement
Tuesday Bench Pressing
3 main movements staggered with assistance work Lower Body Pressing
1 main movement
Question 2:Do you repeat the same workouts for upper and lower body each week (friday is just a repetition of the thursday leg workout)?
Question 3: Secondary emphasis. There is more “warm up” for the first lower/upperbody exercise than the second one. If you choose exercise number 2 or 3 I guess you include more sets and not jump right into the MTW right away?
Primary emphasis means that this is what the workout is primarily focusing on, but because of the fact that the workout also includes a secondary emphasis i.e. a lower body exercise on the upper body workouts and vice versa, it is not the only emphasis in the workout.
The quote you’ve taken from the article has now been updated, and there is now two upper body pressing days, that both use 3 exercises for overhead, angled and horizontal pressing.
If you read the other articles, you’ll see that the exercise selection is repeated over a cycle of at least 6 weeks, but that the loading methods are changed every two weeks; in order to increase the volume you can handle over time.
Liffy: Is your understanding that day 1 and day 2 are the exact same essentially? Also, with regards to squatting after the upper body pressing: My inclination leads me to believe that we would do one exercise in the exact same format as if starting a lower body pressing emphasis day. That is, after upper body (rhomboids, traps, r. delts thrown in), you do an activation exercise for the lower body then ramp with the same set/rep/wave scheme for exercise A. on lower body emphasis day…Is this how you’re reading it?
I think the idea is that 1 and 2 are the same, yes. In terms of the lower body exercise performed on the upper body emphasis day, I believe Thib said that you could pick one of the leg exercises you’re using, from day to day.
For leg activation it could be smart to pick an exercise at the beginning of the workout that covers the entire body, so that you won’t have to do a separate activation exercise for legs on that day.
This is just how I understand it, though.
Thanks for the reply liffy. Thibs really put a great deal of time and effort into these articles and it’s very obvious. It’s less vague that the “Perfect Rep” articles in its percentage prescriptions. Even though his philosophy of auto-regualation and working for your max THAT DAY instead of a numbers chart. However, I know its a guidline and to still incorporate auto-regulation when need be and that would, indeed, be representative of Thibs philosophies.
I do wish, though, that the set/rep format for the 2nd-ary emphasis exercises on both uppper body dominant and lower body dominant days would be more specific. Again, I’m just going to act as if its the 1st exercise on the leg-dominant day, though, doing jump squats then doing 25 minutes of upper body pressing, I don’t think, would maintain the lower body in an activated and “ready to go” state. At least not as much as if I did the activation work immediately prior to 2nd-ary (be it the 1 press of one lower body exercise) emphasis exercise.
From what I can remember, In the 1st video of the HP mass upper body pressing article CT gives at least 1 example about how you can emphasis one exercise over another. What I remember him saying is that for the emphasis exercise you can use micro-ramping to increase the volume for that particular exercise.
yeah, you emphasise a movement by spending more time doing it… so if you want to emphasise overhead pressing just do micro ramping, double ramping or whatever you want to increase volume on it…
Does anyone know why CT repeats the same movement patterns two days in a row? It seems counter intuitive to train the same body parts two days in a row.
[quote]RMichael wrote:
Does anyone know why CT repeats the same movement patterns two days in a row? It seems counter intuitive to train the same body parts two days in a row. [/quote]
does this mean where ct does overhead focus on mon we do mini ramping for military or whatever we choose and the traidtional protocol for incline/flat bench
and then on tue do traditional for shoulders and mini ramping on either incline or flat bench for benching focus?
CT outlined the WHOLE program in the article… just do it as it is… you dont even seem to know why would you do overhead or flat emphasis… so just do the program as it is… without too much complicating and you’ll be OK… one thing is how personally CT trains, another is what you need and how you’ll train…
[quote]swans05 wrote:
you mentioned mimi ramping etc
does this mean where ct does overhead focus on mon we do mini ramping for military or whatever we choose and the traidtional protocol for incline/flat bench
and then on tue do traditional for shoulders and mini ramping on either incline or flat bench for benching focus?[/quote]
gavra, I read through all of the Training Lab Livespill comments from CT and couldn’t find any helpful detail about concentrated loading. I also looked at the older I,Bodybuilder training progarm splits. Granted, these splits were targeted more for bodybuilding than strength/power, so it may not be a good comparison, but CT never had the guys train the same pressing movements for consecutive days in a row. If you can recall where you saw the Livspill talk about concentrated loading, I’d appreciate some help finding it…maybe I missed it somewhere. Thanks.
[quote]RMichael wrote:
gavra, I read through all of the Training Lab Livespill comments from CT and couldn’t find any helpful detail about concentrated loading. I also looked at the older I,Bodybuilder training progarm splits. Granted, these splits were targeted more for bodybuilding than strength/power, so it may not be a good comparison, but CT never had the guys train the same pressing movements for consecutive days in a row. If you can recall where you saw the Livspill talk about concentrated loading, I’d appreciate some help finding it…maybe I missed it somewhere. Thanks. [/quote]
I think he talked about it a couple of weeks ago in the Training Questions thread (#4 as far as I remember) - he was using it with Daryl Gee at the time. It may have also been discussed in one of the Daryl Gee livespills.