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Mike_Rojas said:
Absolutely. You're one of my favorites here...it'd be criminal for me to NOT say something
(Or, given the length of my typical post, might the inverse be true? LOL.)Ok, seriously, I've never tried a full-body split with sub-failure sets. Shortly after I started training in Feb. '93, I was a 14 year-old kid that'd eat glass if I thought it'd make me bigger. A few months after I'd been working seriously, my uncles turned me on to the old Art Jones style routines, similar to what you're talking about but with everything to failure.
I grew pretty well. I started out at an artifically low bodyweight, so even on a near starvation diet I went from 120 to 155 in four months. I'd say the Jones routine accounted for 10 lbs. of that.
I even had a 27" waist then. *sigh*
Anyway, everything was going pretty smoothly for a bit, then I hit a brick wall. I got stuck at 160 lbs., and by that point I was eating a lot better (read: MORE). My bench press had skyrocketed to that point, going from 155x1 to 240x1 I think. Then, BAM, nothing.
What did I do? I increased the intensity, and worked myself deeper into overtraining. I was constantly tired, and on days I didn't train, I'd come home and collapse after school.
You're significantly stronger than I was then, so IF you were taking everything to failure as I did (and beyond), even 1 set of 8-10 basic movements, 3 times a week, should quickly result in overtraining.
Since you don't plan to take things to failure, you've got more room to work with. A periodized TUL/intensity approach, like with HST, works wonders for most with the same frequency and volume (if not more, as per Casual's post).
Without those kinds of adjustments, though, and assuming you trained at 80-90% capacity thrice weekly, I'd still have to caution against overtraining. A few advanced guys have been overtrained on DC's default routine, sometimes even without the rest-pauses; and though it also has you training 3 days a week, each bodypart is "only" trained 3 times in 2 weeks--half what you're planning.
That said, as Casual said to me once, overtraining isn't quite "plastic." It's largely cumulative, setting in after a few weeks of hard training. You might be able to go a month hard, take it easy for a week, then start over again with this schedule. You're the best judge of how long you can take it.
If I had my druthers, though, I'd advise you concentrated on one exercise per bodypart/training day. I'd dig something like this. A couple or three sets for some movements, so long as you avoided failure, would be cool I think:
Monday Wednesday
Bench Incline
Pull-ups Row
Squat SLDL
Reverse hyper? Calves? Biceps curls?
ab hold
Friday
Bench again
Pull-ups ' '
Squat
etc.
That's the basic idea. I think with that many bench variants, your delts *might* get enough work, but a good argument could be made to the contrary. (There's also the fact that some guys benefit from training the medial delts "directly," though I use that loosely.)
In that case, you could always do two angles of bench, and on Wed. do militaries. Throwing a set of fairly strict laterals in once a week wouldn't hurt, nor would skullcrushers or BB curls for the arms.
Obviously, there are a lot of ways to approach an abbreviated routine
I suggest you try the routine as you've planned it first for a good two weeks, and see how you feel. If it goes well, do another week. At that point if you show signs of slowing down, tweak things a little bit. Within reason, of course, less can be more...working bench hard 2x/wk. instead of 3 might help at that point.I know that's scatterbrained
If anything's at all unclear, let me know.
