Progress Report: it was bound to happen

The basic building blocks of any successful strength training program are stimulus and repair and recovery. You stimulate strength gains by lifting heavy weight and then you rest for a number of days and while you recover you eat animal protein to repair muscle fibers and joints. There's nothing more complicated than that.

How you choose to put forth those basic principles is up to you.  You could for example do what I've been doing for the past eight months and do full body workouts and then take 96+ hours of rest to adequately repair yourself through sleep and animal protein intake.

There's also another option besides the full body workout and that is as you probably know the split routine.

This guy, that's all he does. Split routines. And he's strong as f*ck or SAF as he likes to put it.

So I figured hey if he can do it, so can I.  I'll split my training into three days. Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. On Tuesday, I'll be doing movements that I think can help my deadlift. On Thursday I'll be doing stuff that'll help with my bench press. On Sunday I'll be lifting according to what's good for making squat gains.

Click here for what the numbers mean.

Here's what I did on Tuesday:

Gym Tuesday 9/16/14 10 a.m.
Conventional deadlift with straps on 45 lb plates 535-0
Stiff legged deadlift with straps on 45 plates 525-0
Wide grip deadlift with straps on 45 lb plates 465-0
Life fitness seated row machine 305-1
Bicep curl free motion cable machine
Rack pull 455-1, 505-0
Romanian deadlift with straps 365-1

As you can see, it's all movements that are variations of the deadlift with a couple isolation movements.  I didn't know which day to put bicep curls so I put them here for no other reason than I like having massive arms.

I've figured out long ago that the only way to improve my deadlift is to break it up into two halves. There's the lift off from the ground and then the lift is completed with a hip thrust, so the variations will revolve around that. Wide grip deadlifts and stiff legged deadlifts help with breaking the bar off the ground. Rack pulls and Romanian deadlifts help with the forward hip thrust at the midrange and top of the lift.

On Thursday which is today, I did this:

Gym Thursday 11:54 AM 09/18/2014
Shoulder press seated 345-0
Dead chest press 265-0
Dead chest press legs in the air 265-0
Leverage chest press machine handles set there is no stretch reflex on the front deltoids 315-1
Shoulder press life fitness machine 205-2
Free motion cable machine decline press 160-1
Precor incline press machine 220-0
Tricep extension rope attachment cable machine 115-1
Pec fly dumbbells pair of 60's-2

My reasoning for picking these movements is any exercise that focuses on the front deltoids and the triceps will have excellent carry over effect to my bench press, and as you can see every exercise today was focused on those muscles.

On Sunday, I'll do legs. Squats, pause squats, lunges, and kickstand squats. Any exercise that hinges the knees down and brings the glutes to the ground will transfer over to the squat. 

How will it go you ask? I don't know, but the fact that I only have muscle soreness contained on the front of my torso and a slight lingering pain soreness on my backside feels great compared to the total body soreness I would get from a full body workout. The full body workout good as they are for making gains also lead to overall body aching and that kind of pain can demoralize you and unmotivate you to train. 

Another thing about the split routine is I don't feel I have to eat as much to recover and repair compared to the full body workout. Even right now after having trained only arms and chest today I don't feel famished and weak and my hunger is only slightly noticeable.  If I had done a full body workout today I can almost guarantee the only thought in my head would be to stuff my gut with steak. 

Will I make any gains? That remains to be seen. I'll be getting seven days of rest in between for each body part exercised and that extended rest may lead to strength gains or losses. As a matter of fact, if you compare my last progress report's numbers and these ones you'll see I didn't make many gains and I lost a little strength on almost half my lifts. I'm going to blame that on the fact there wasn't enough stimulation for adequate muscle growth because I didn't do enough accessory movements. 

I have a theory on muscle growth and rest periods. It's that the heavier weight that needs to be lifted, the more the amount of time that needs to be extended to adequately recover for proper muscle growth and central nervous system recovery as well. 

The second part of the theory is that in order to get into the bigger ranges of weights like the five hundreds and up, the more accessory movements have to be performed in order for that lift to go up. 

Will the theory hold true in the real world? That remains to be seen as well, and I'll post my workout numbers next week to see if the split routine is worth anything as far as strength training goes.