Questions on The Best Plan for Natural Lifters

Coach, firstly thank you so much for releasing your book, it’s so great to see a program designed for Nattys. I have so many questions, but I will contain my excitement and ask just a few. I have completed 2 full weeks of the program so far.

  1. I’m considerably weaker using these methods, particularly the slow eccentric. As a comparison, my 6 RM for Romanian deadlift is 152.5KG, using 9 second negatives I could only do 90kg… and I’d say this felt harder than my normal strength max. Is this sort of drop off in strength normal using these methods? Note, I’ve never trained like this before.

  2. How much lighter than the final set should the prep sets be? In the example above for 90kg Romanian deadlift final set, my prep sets were 80kg. Does this sound right, or should I be backing the prep sets off more?

  3. I seem to need more calories using this method, even though in terms of number of sets it’s actually lower than what I was doing previously… I actually lost 1kg in the first week eating the same as previous. I am slowly ramping up cals to try and get the weight to increase… is this normal? At present it looks like I will need to eat at least 200-300cals more than previously.

  4. Can I sub front squats out for Zercher squats? My wrists can’t bend enough for conventional front squats… I could also try the cross over arms technique, but Zercher feels more natural for me and i’m stronger on these.

Thanks so much,
Matt

@mantra446 I haven’t ran “The Best Plan…” program yet, but I’ve done “The Best Damn…” which are similar in structure. I also had to significantly increase my calories in order to stop losing weight.

@Beershoes great, thanks for clarifying that point :slight_smile: