Thoughts on Periodization?

I agree, full body training just takes too much time. Also I feel like an upper/lower split works better anyway, at least for myself. I used to do full body training and workouts were 2- 2 1/2 hours, you often get to the point that you just want to get out of there but you still have another exercise or two or a few more sets.

Weekly undulation

Week 1 heavy squat/moderate bench/light deadlift
Week 2 light squat/heavy bench/moderate deadlift
Etc etc

also works well to keep things steady

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This was my experience. Also I workout in a garage gym . Limited room, 1 barbell. So I can’t even set the next lift up until I’m finished. When I do 2-3 deadlift variations in one day, I’m already warmed up after first variation and everything’s set up.

Opposed to deadlift then set up warm up squats then bench etc

2 hours to me gets old in one workout. I like to be done in an hour with conditioning added in. Sled pushes and stuff like that.

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This seems doable for a lot longer period of time without needing deloads.

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That’s basically the cube, I never found that to work well for me.

At the other end, I’m following a few IPF guys at the world level and both are DUP guys, 6 days per week 4-5 hours per session :astonished: I know competing at that level is going to require sacrifices but I can’t see how that is going to translate to the lay person… 4 days per week for 2 hours each?

That is going to push most people’s time management haha

I’m also with @marcb84, the warm up. It is the biggest killer for me. Something about it mentally, like it’s a reset of the session and all the previous work was for nothing, just get me.

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That’s been my goal lately, just trying to string together more productive weeks of training.

I was watching a Matt Wenning video and he talked about deloading one workout a week vs doing a whole week of deload workouts. So one week using using the belt squat machine instead of the barbell for Dynamic Effort squats, next week using half the number of sets for repetition work on bench day, maybe next week holding back a little on Max Effort deadlift.

I hated being dead for the third lift. Especially if the lifts were in dumb order. Like olympic style routines where you’re supposed to squat and clean before pressing. That upset me.

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[/quote]
I’m also with @marcb84, the warm up. It is the biggest killer for me. Something about it mentally, like it’s a reset of the session and all the previous work was for nothing, just get me.
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Man that’s me, I HATE having to re warm up on a movement I haven’t done that day after doing it on another. When I was running juggernaut AI I absolutely hated switching movements. It was mental.

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I don’t think that’s actually necessary, some people (outliers) can benefit from a lot of volume but even for them there are limits to it. Just because they are recovering and making progress doesn’t mean that its optimal. I remember an interview with Bryce Lewis, who is into the higher volume and higher frequency stuff. He was saying that to become an elite lifter or even world champion you don’t need more than about 10 hours a week. I have an acquaintance who is coached by Bryce, competes in the IPF and pulls over 800lb, say his workouts usually take around 2 hours. 4-5 hours is just ridiculous.

I just realized what you said here. Yeah I’ve seen some programming like that. Where one lift a week is deload. I can’t honestly remember where I saw it at. Maybe it was a template in 5/3/1 forever book? :thinking:

I like a lot of Matt’s stuff. He puts out a lot of free info.

I feel the same way. Start on the low end of what volume you need to advance, not on the top end.

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