Monday, January 7, 2013

Moving to Bulgaria

I did some thinking over the last three weeks of inactivity (one week of Christmas sandwiched between two weeks of being a bitch) and came to the conclusion that an accessory-heavy program with relatively light weights for the competition lifts probably isn't what's needed to keep me in the weightroom (and thus has led to me being a bitch). I hate to say it, but 5-3-1 (for all of its progress merits) probably isn't going to work for me given my current mental issues.

What I think will work for me is the utterly insane idea of training near-maximally seven days per week and approaching things the same way I did when I was (nerd alert) working on my Soldier play for TF2. This is colloquially called Bulgarian training and has a lot in common with Jamie Lewis's stuff (yes, back to him...oh dear). A secondary element here is that I'm basically giving up on any particularly formal programming for a while - I've got some template ideas (one of which I'll start with) but at this point I'm fairly sure that I:
a) Know enough that I can at least avoid crippling myself with this
and
b) Need to put the hunt for progress-optimal programs on hold and stick with "fun but unpleasant" (or "funpleasant," as I promise never to say again) for a while - presumably at least until my mood stops bouncing around like a yo-yo

Some random T-Nation author put out some guidelines a while back:
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/maxing_on_squats_and_deadlifts_every_day

The points that I took away:
1) Don't get excited. If you can't calm yourself down for a lift, don't do the lift. I intend to reinforce this by buying some earbuds and playing relaxing music and background noise between sets.
2) Train frequently. I'm planning on 7 days, with two of them lighter and shorter.
3) Emphasize technique. I'm bolstering this by going back to my old practice of repeating sets if I'm not satisfied with my form (up to the point of putting the bar back if I don't feel like I unracked it properly).

My current plan is for Monday and Friday to serve as lighter days (...starting next week). I'm thinking Speed Pulls and Press, since I want to keep pressing and I need to include Deadlifting work somewhere.

The basic layout for each day'll go (in the current iteration):
Warmup
Squat to a daily training max single or triple
Bench to a daily training max single or triple
Upper back work and shoulder prehab (e.g. shrugs and light pulldowns)

I may put in heavier shrugs one day per week, or something. I'm not sure what I'll do to handle grip.

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