Good vote if you know how to go absolutely berserk. You have to make up for the lack of volume by bringing a lot of intensity. When I explored DC, I read through the old Cycling for Pennies thread. Here’s a good measuring stick,
Either next quad workout or next time you dont feel like doing your normal leg workout, be true to yourself and take the number of plates you load up on the leg press for a hardcore 10 reps deep —cut it exactly in half and do one set of 50 reps deep. So if your bragging to everyone that you can do 12 plates on each side for 10 then guess what your going to be doing - 6 a side for 50. And you know what-- everyone reading this can do the 50 reps, it just comes down to who has the most balls or not. You cannot lock your knees the whole set and you cannot rest your hands on your knees either. I try to get 25 first and then pause at the top (with knees slightly bent) and take 5 deep breaths and then get 10 more (5 deep breaths) and 5 more.(im at 40 now)…then the last 10 reps is pure tortuous hell…i usually do 3 reps (take 3 breaths)3 more reps, 3 more breaths, then 2 reps (3 deep breaths) and finally the last 2 reps=50 reps. Your legs will be absolutely destroyed and you better start stretching or walking the next day is going to be an adventure.
Now, I didn’t do leg press that often before that so I kind of went in… blind? And, I was already somewhat fatigued from other stuff in the gym. Anyway, I worked up to a heavy ten. And then I forgot about the halving the weights bit and “just” did it again for 50. People look at you when you scream, but I did do all the reps.
There’s also a neat three-day split of Fortitude Training. Scott Stevenson was a DC-trainee for a decade or longer if memory serves, but personally I prefer FT over DC for the variety and higher frequency and it’s more “balanced” with regards to hypertrophy triggers.
If you explore either I highly recommend watching some videos of trainees that employ either system to garner the intensity, and the rep style. The programming in genuinely good, but the programming in and of itself isn’t the entire puzzle. The way in which the reps are performed also has an impact (mTor).
Caveat emptor: if you were to adhere to either, you’d find that performance increase at a slower rate if you adhere to something else given the rotation of exercises. And arguably, you shouldn’t adopt a system partially. With programs, finding exercise substitutions and so on is fine, but I wouldn’t recommend someone to massacre 5/3/1, nor would I recommend someone massacres DC/FT.
And therefore it was good that @Frank_C asked what your goals are.
And, maybe I’m reading too much into this,
Because then you kind of care about performance still. Which is fine! I’m not, for as much as I want to be, solely motivated by hypertrophy either. Then the game becomes figuring out how to balance the two. How much of a strength component do you need to stay motivated. And, do you need it every workout, or some of your weekly workouts or are you fine rotating say 4 weeks of hypertrophy with 2-4 weeks of more strength-oriented work.
And, honestly, only you can find that out by trial-and-error?
FWIW, CT says that for people with our build that are in it for the aesthetics should eschew back squats (either kind) for front squat. I don’t do this, because all my squatting is limited by poor core stability so I do both. But, and it’s important to note, CT predominantly writes programs that are a mixture of performance/athleticism/hypertrophy. You don’t need to barbell squat to build legs. But it’s nice to squat, in a self-hating kind of way.
I recently linked Charles Staley’s M-W-F split, that could work for you I suppose. I added some additional nuance to it when I did:
If you want a higher frequency of practice on the big lifts, I’d do maybe something like
All days:
Squat
Incline Press
Deadlift
and then do these either in different rep ranges or emphasize different means of contraction through tempo work and then tack on some hypertrophy,
Monday:
Upper body push
Wednesday:
Upper body pull
Friday:
Legs
Sorry @T3hPwnisher, I noticed now this became a reply to you, while the rest of the post is referencing @aldebaran whenever I use the word “you”
I’ll @ @danteism because without him I probably would’ve never tried DC or FT.