My goals for the LRB Split and Strong-15 Short Cycle boil down to:
1) Chase Rep PRs in assistance work to build supporting musculature.
2) Focus on the Squat overall.
3) Eat real food, prepared by myself as much as possible, and try to eat "normally."
More detail on each of these.
1) Rep PRs. I covered a lot of the Rep PRs under the LRB Split
here. DB OHP, T-Bar Rows, Fronts, GMs, RDLs.
Under the Strong-15 Short, I had Rep PRs in
Bench, Incline Bench, and more RDLs. Additionally, the way Paul Carter programs Squats and Deads, you could look at my back-off sets as volume PRs. 5 sets of 3 for both Pause Squats and Deadlifts after working up to the day's single. In my last Deadlift workout, I backed-off to 4 sets of 3 with 295. Now I've lifted 295X8 before, but the density of volume is even more here, AND
the bar speed was fast on all the reps. For Pause Squats, at the end of the Strong-15 I did 1 set of 3 with 215. At the end of the Short Cycle, I did 3 sets of 3 with that same weight.
Leg Presses were also introduced and used in both cycles and the weight/reps were pushed throughout; you could say weight/rep PRs and volume PRs were set on that as well, but 1) it's a machine and therefore highly variable and 2) it's a seldom used exercise for me and so is ripe for improvement.
2) Squat Focus. For the LRB Split, I wanted to emphasize quad development as much as possible, so I did Front Squats on both leg days. On the heavy squat day, I did 4 sets of 10 with fronts after my back squats, and on on light squat day, fronts were my main movement. The program calls for working up to a few fast triples on that movement, however I over-rode that, and pushed for max reps on the last set 531-style. I set Rep PRs every week on that day. This was all in addition to Leg Presses, BW Lunges, and Leg Extensions. Really trying to take
what Dan Green says to heart.
For the Strong-15 Short, I decided to back all my goals down from what I did on the full Strong-15 earlier this year. I decided for Bench and Deadlift I would program so that my top single at the end of the cycle would be my Everyday Max (EDM), 175 and 315 respectively. For squat I programmed to hit 255, or 10 lbs. over what I thought my EDM was.
The culmination of the squat focus was that I killed my pause squats and top singles every week, including the
EDM+10 in the last week. And my legs are bigger.
3) Diet and Food Prep. Not a lot to say here. I'm an avid cook, so the main thing was making time one day a week to cook a large amount of lifting friendly food. This mostly consisted of a variety of grilled meat with some vegetables and rice on the side. No supplements, and minimized eating out as much as possible. Over the two cycles my weight slowly and steadily climbed from the low 190s to the low 200s. About an 8-10 lb. swing, or about a pound a week.
Conclusion. I had a great time running these. I looked forward to every training session and felt like I got a lot of good feedback from what I ran. I set modest goals and hit them. Now I can only hope I'm setting the stage for continued progress. It's been an awfully slow climb for me this last year and a half considering how light my weights are. I'm pretty good about not comparing myself to what other people are doing, but because I like to read up about this stuff it's hard not to notice 175 lb. guys on straight linear progression squatting 450. I want weight on the bar, but I've just got to be patient and believe it will come if I keep putting in the work and the time on a consistent basis.
